Lots of people have asked me what are the staples we have in our home and what we do for meal planning. I have to confess…my situation might be a little different from most other people because my husband likes to cook dinner and therefore he goes to the grocery store every evening to choose what he’s going to make for dinner. Yes, Orlando goes to the grocery store almost every single day. THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO DO THIS!!!!! This has it’s benefits because we tend to eat fresh foods instead of frozen foods, and because I can always have Orlando pick up something we need, but this doesn’t work for everyone…I, for example, would NOT go to a grocery store every day!

This being said…we do have staples in our home, and as time has gone by, we have started planning our meals much more than we used to in the past. Plus, the daily grocery visits only have to do with dinner. We buy at BJ’s, Costco, or any other grocery store for the week food for our breakfasts, lunches, and snacks.

STAPLES FOR YOUR KITCHEN

SPICES- One of the things Dr. Sanchez has told me is the importance of consuming different spices. Spices and herbs are supposed to have incredible healing powers and its really so easy to add them to your meals while cooking.

• Turmeric
• Coriander
• Cumin
• Cinnamon
• Ginger root
• Garlic cloves

TURMERIC, CORIANDER, & CUMIN: These spices are relatively new to our diet. I had never even heard of Turmeric until I met an Indian nurse who told me about it. I had always heard that Indian food was medicinal. This nurse told me that Indians season their meats in the United States with Turmeric to kill the pesticides. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I researched the benefits of Turmeric and found tons of literature. We incorporate spices such as Turmeric and coriander to most of our meals now, including our soups, our chicken, and anywhere else we can sneak it in. And we ALWAYS have it at the house ready to use. You can google the health benefits of any of these spices and take a look for yourself. Here are some articles I found interesting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/turmeric-health-have-a-happy-new-year_b_798328.html

http://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/herbs-and-spices/health-benefits-of-coriander.html

http://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/seed-and-nut/health-benefits-of-cumin.html

Ginger -I love having these 2 staples in our home because they add a delicious taste and are also so good for you. Ginger is supposed to help with headaches, swelling, digestion, common colds, etc. I put a little ginger in our smoothies in the morning. I don’t juice very often but I LOVE juicing carrots, ginger, and oranges. IT is delicious!!!!

CAVEAT: A little ginger goes a LONG way. I tend to buy a small root so it doesn’t go to waste. You only need put a little bit like half an inch when you’re incorporating it into your meals or smoothies. Otherwise it will overpower your meal and you will hate it! So make sure you err on the side of caution and start very small. Then you can add more and see what your palette and your family’s can tolerate.

Fresh Garlic – we love to roast our Garlic. It squeezes out like butter and has a sweetness to it. Its absolutely delicious in recipes. We used it when we tried our red beet soup and started incorporating it into other meals. We also chop up the raw garlic and use it as a base for soups, stir fries, chicken, etc.

The more herbs and spices you can cook with, the better. We are just giving you some we always have at the house.

FRUITS AND VEGGIES- In this department we go crazy because most of our daily diet consists of fruits and Vegetables. Since we order from a coop, Annie’s Buying Club, we get a box of fruits and vegetables every 2 weeks that forces us to cook vegetables that we’re not really familiar with. Our cabbage soup, which is now a weekly meal in our home, came from getting a head of cabbage in this box that we didn’t know what to do with. We’ve also discovered other jewels like eggplant lasagna, and beet soup.

But the weeks we don’t have that box, we stick to a few basics that we know we love.

FRUITS-

• bananas
• organic apples
• pears
• organic grapes
• organic strawberries
• organic blueberries
• organic  raspberries
• melon – watermelon or cantaloupe
• mango
• tomatoes – some think this is a vegetable but its a fruit. I like to add it to my salads or for with balsamic vinegar for snack.
• kiwi
• peaches
• oranges
• Pineapples
• frozen organic berries
• any other frozen fruits

 VEGETABLES-

• Broccoli
• Asparagus
• Leeks
• Green beans
• Organic Girl Greens
• squash
• zucchini
• sweet potatoes
• butternut squash
• onions
• mushrooms
• carrots
• avocados
• kale

AGAIN, we don’t necessarily have all these at the house at the exact same time. The food we eat is perishable and therefore we buy with caution. We don’t buy more than we know we can consume. The week we get our box we eat the veggies in the box and sometimes buy some additional veggies if a recipe calls for it. The week we don’t have our box we usually make cabbage soup one night a week (recipe in prior post) which requires a lot of veggies, asparagus and leeks (a combination we love) once a week. Steamed broccoli once a week. Sweet potato once a week (this serves as our carb and we have another green vegetable on the plate like green beans, broccoli, asparagus, etc.)

We also like to make a vegetable stir fry once a week where we add a ton of veggies and no animal protein (recipe to follow in another post).

Raw veggies and Leftovers – I tend to use as much of our veggies as I can in our daily salads. I usually break a couple of pieces of broccoli from and toss in the salads. I use a peeler to peel the carrots. Instead of baby carrots or pre-cut carrots, I like the thin strips of carrots that I get with the peeler in our salads. I switch up the greens from Organic Girl. They have a super greens box which I like a lot. other times I get the 50/50 mix and sometimes I get just Spinach. They’re all good and I try different ones simply for variety. If I have leftover stir fry from the evening before or red beets that we roasted, I pack it up in a separate container. Then at lunch time I heat it up and sprinkle on top of my salad. I like adding hot food to my salads once in a while and the veggies are a nice mix.

FOR MY SMOOTHIES-  I always have kale, collard greens, or watercress for my smoothies. I love adding other ingredients which I will discuss in other posts but I have those as staples. When I run out of these, I can always grab some greens from my organic girl box and use that instead.

MEAT AND FISH-

• Organic chicken
• Wild caught Salmon
• Turkey picadillo

I find organic chicken at Costco. I usually buy dark meat for the boys because it is softer and easier to eat. And I buy boneless chicken breast for us.
I buy wild salmon at Whole foods. I wait for the sale, sometimes they have it at $9.99 per pound and they’ve even gone as low as $7.99. When they have this sale, I buy tons of it. and store it in my freezer. Then I leave it out to defrost and eat it for dinner once a week.

We usually eat chicken, salmon, and turkey picadillo each once a week and the other nights eat soup or stir fry and try to go without animal protein or fish. But from time to time, Orlando goes to Captain’s tavern (a fish market by our home) and buys a nice sea bass, or shrimp for us. And once in a while we have a new york strip. We have red meat maybe once a month and its usually on a Friday as a treat for us.

NUTS AND SEEDS-

Nuts and seeds are a great snack because they are portable. Its probably one of the only things we have that we can put in a ziplock baggie and take with us anywhere, or keep at our desks.

• sunflower seeds
• pumpkin seeds
• raw almonds
• raw pecans
• walnuts
• sliced almonds
• raw cashews
• macadamian nuts
• pistachios

I always have nuts in my bag in case i’m starving and i’m driving home or at my desk and ran out of food. I don’t spend all day snacking on nuts by any means, but I do probably eat them once a day.

I try to incorporate these into our salads as well as for snacks. I usually put walnuts, sliced almonds, and pecans in our salads. Sometimes I put the sunflower seeds in our salads also. I love adding crunch to our salads!

Dairy-

• almond milk
• grassfed cow’s milk
• oikos yogurt
• cage free eggs
• organic unsalted butter

I personally don’t eat yogurt. Its a texture issue for me. But my kids love it so I give them a yogurt every day. Orly drinks one cup of cow’s milk in the morning usually and I have one cup of the milk to make my cafe con leche. That’s it for our milk consumption. Justin doesn’t drink cow’s milk because he’s allergic to it so I give him almond milk, goat’s milk, or rice milk.

I use almond milk with my oatmeal.

I always have eggs in our house because I make hard boiled eggs in batches. Then I put them in our salads, with avocados (Recipe in prior post) or by themselves.

Grains and Beans – Grains and beans are really the only items we buy that have a longer shelf life and don’t have to be consumed within the week. I go to whole foods and buy grains and beans such as

• Millet
• Barley
• Quinoa
• Germinated brown rice
• steel cut oats.
• black beans
• red beans
• lentils.

I keep these in containers at the house. Then we have them in case we need them. Sometimes I make a batch of quinoa and use it for dinner one night,and for lunch for the boys the next day, etc. I do the same thing with all the other grains. We do not eat grains every day. We make lentil soup once every week or two weeks. And we always make enough to have leftovers.

I love making steel cut oats and storing it for breakfast for the boys. I sweeten it up with some vanilla extract and cinnamon.

CAVEAT: Sometimes we need to be practical. As much as I love steel cut oats, I always keep the little microwaveable oatmeal packets at my office or at home. I love these little packets because again they are portable and if I’m in a pinch in the office, I make myself a little oatmeal packet. And of course sometimes my kids want oatmeal in the mornings and I don’t have any more of my steel cut oats batch so I make them a quick packet with almond milk.

My motto is I try my best to eat as healthy as possible, but we have to always be prepared for when we are in a rush and eat as best we can in those situations also.

Other staples-

• liquid stevia
• natural peanut butter
• a good jelly made of pure fruit and with no preservatives
• ezekiel bread
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• coconut oil

We try to cook with coconut oil as frequently as possible to avoid altering the olive oil properties. I use olive oil for salads and to drizzle on other foods.

I think this is a pretty comprehensive list of the items we keep in our home. We use to have things like wheat crackers and deli meats, and slices of processed cheese. We have eliminated those foods from our diet. But as I’ve said before, we buy what we eat. We don’t typically have food sitting in our shelves, fridge or freezer for long periods of time. Sometimes I buy something different like Mint. And then I spend the whole week making different recipes with mint. I will post about all those things along the way, but at least this is a good starting guide for what to look for in your grocery stores.

Please let me know via comments or email if you have questions, suggestions, or if this is a helpful list for you.

HAPPY SHOPPING!!!! 

Most people’s weakness is dessert. They can do well most of the day…eat healthy, avoid temptation…but its when that cake comes out at work to celebrate someone’s birthday or that delicious dessert menu pops up after dinner… it is so hard to resist!!!!

Especially if you’ve been avoiding sugar all week and are suffering from withdrawals. We all need a sugar fix once in a while.

I am not tempted by all sweets. You can offer me cheesecake or flan or a key lime pie and I will pass without suffering. But I did have a weakness, like we all do. Chocolate chip cookies and Nutella. I could literally eat 10 chocolate chips in a row or a bowl of Nutella and be happy. Not to mention the raw chocolate chip cookie dough without the chips. When I started this journey, I felt sad to think I was giving up these yummies. No more half baked Ben and Jerry’s ice cream on Friday nights. 🙁

Well, my doctor told me that chocolate is actually GOOD for you! What a concept! Something that is so delicious is good for me? Well it is, but there’s a catch…what’s bad isn’t the chocolate…its all the milk and sugar and corn syrup and extra stuff they add to it to make it sweet. You see raw chocolate is actually quite bitter. So my doctor suggested that I try dark chocolate. Anything over 72% cacao.  I went to Walgreens and bought myself a Ghirardelli’s 72% chocolate bar. Brought it home and gave a square to Orlando and one for myself. We sat there in silence with this bitter piece of chocolate on our tongues…and the craziest thing happened!!!! When you let it sit on your tongue, instead of chewing it up and swallowing right away, the flavors of the chocolate start coming alive! After a couple of minutes we actually started enjoying it. I decided I would allow myself anywhere from 1 to 3 little squares per evening to satisfy my sweet tooth.

AND THERE BEGAN OUR DARK CHOCOLATE OBSESSION!

We started experimenting with darker chocolates and after trying several different ones have grown to love 85% Dark Chocolate. Our favorite brand is called GREEN AND BLACK ORGANIC 85% CHOCOLATE.  We also like the Ghirardelli 85%. We treat ourselves every evening for dinner. The truth is that we’ve  grown to love it so much that now if we taste milk chocolate, its actually too sweet for us. At least in my case, it has eliminated my desire for other sweets. I’ve even gone as far as taking a bar in my purse when I’m going out to dinner or to a family event…so when dessert comes out I can have my piece of chocolate. I don’t do this to be psycho! I do it because in the situations I haven’t done it and I’ve eaten the cupcake or other sweet, my stomach aches a little and I regret it soon after.

Of course these chocolates still contain sugar. In the organic one they put the evaporated cane juice…but it is sugar. But life is about BALANCE. And it is much better to have 15% of sugar added than 60-70%. And the cacao has great benefits for your body…and at least in my case…chocolate makes me happy! So I think its a great option. Since we eat it every night, we really don’t feel like we are depriving ourselves from the sweet stuff. And at the very beginning, it really got me through the drastic change my body underwent in eliminating so much sugar from my daily diet.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that one day you can’t have cake at a party, or treat yourself to a key lime pie. We all need moderation. But I think if you give the dark chocolate a try, it might reduce the anxieties that come from craving something sweet and help you avoid the bad stuff much more often.

If any of you have already begun this dark chocolate transition, please comment and let us know what your experience has been.

Have a sweet day!

BY ORLANDO:

One of our staple recipes in our home has become CABBAGE SOUP. We receive “shares” of different organic veggies and fruits every week. One week’s share had a head of cabbage in it, and I had no idea what to do with it. For a week I would look at it in the refridgerator with both fear and contempt. Caro suggested I make a soup out of it, so I looked up some recipies. I found a Weight Watcher’s recipe that got extremely high ratings. I read the reviews and took suggestions from others who have already made the soup (as you should do any time you follow a recipe). I added the red beans, which I think really round-out the soup. I also added the asparagus and the Rotele sauce in place of tomato paste. Feel free to add or subtract any vegetable you want. The soup is amazing. You can eat all you want because it is nothing but healthy, delicious goodness. I make this once a week and have leftovers for Caro, the boys, and myself throughout the week.

One quick storage note: You may want to seperate the broth from the veggies when storing because the veggies soak-in the broth and leave you with very little broth for leftovers. I considered adding more broth to the recipe, but with all of the ingredients already in the recipe, my pot would over-flow.

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• 40 ounces of beef broth (you can add less in place of more veggie broth if you want. But the beef broth is awesome)
• 14 ounces veggie broth (1 small can…you can add more in place of beef broth if you want)
• 1/2 of a large head of cabbage sliced
• 1 leak sliced
• 1/2 of an onion sliced
• 3 cloves of garlic sliced
• 5 ounces of Rottele original tomato sauce (just over half of a small can…if you don’t like spicy buy the mild, but I found the original to be perfect)
• 1/2 cup of carrots sliced
• 2 zucchini sliced in thick chunks (about 1 inch so they don’t turn to mush in the soup)
• 2 yellow squash slice thick chunks
• 1 cup green beans trimmed (cut in bite-sized pieces. They can be a bit waxy in the soup, so you can just add more asparagus in their place)
• half a bunch of asparagus (cut in bite-sized pieces)
• 2 15.5 ounce cans small red beans (or whatever bean you like)and dont forget to drain the liquid from the can first!
• You can add a handful or two of spinach leaves in the last 5 minutes of the cooking process so they just wilt.
• olive oil
• Salt (I salt as I go adding veggies)
• Pepper
• 2 tsp dry basil
• 2 tsp dry oregano

DIRECTIONS

1. Cook olive oil, leaks, onions, jalapeño, carrots, and garlic in soup pot for 5 minutes at med-high heat. Add a sprinkle of salt at some point while stirring.

2. Add cabbage, squash, zucchini, green beans, and red beans. Add salt, pepper, basil, and oregano and stir at med-high until veggies cook down a bit (like 5 minutes). Optional: You can also add asparagus, mushrooms, spinach…read below

3. Add Rottele sauce and stir for 3-4 more minutes.

4. Add the beef and vegetable broth and bring to a boil.

5. Lower to a simmer for 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper if it needs it.

BY CAROLINE:

NOTE: This soup is the perfect example of two of the principles we follow:

1. TRY NEW FOODS: We had never had cabbage before, nor thought of buying it in the first place. But we are members of a coop that allows us to purchase organic fruits and vegetables at a better price straight from the farmers. The catch with this coop is that you get what you get. You don’t get to choose. So when our box brought a huge head of cabbage, we had no idea what to do with it. We put it off for about a week and then I told Orlando, we need to make this cabbage before it goes to waste. He looked up recipes with Cabbage and decided to try to the Cabbage Soup. Had it not been because we were FORCED into working with this vegetable, we would have never discovered this soup which we LOVE! Not only is it delicious but it is so hearty that it allows us to skip an animal protein on the nights we eat it. And we can have seconds without guilt because it is literally like drinking a bowl of medicine. Nothing but good healthy ingredients!

2. PILE ON THE GREENS: Orlando has taken this concept quite seriously and this is a perfect opportunity to apply this principle. Not only does Orlando put the veggies in the recipe…every time he makes it he adds something new. Now he makes the soup with SPINACH, MUSHROOMS, ASPARAGUS. He even tried SWEET POTATO last time although that wasn’t my favorite. The point is that you can add anything you want. If there is a veggie that you’re unlikely to try on its own or is not your favorite, just hide it in the soup. The more veggies, the better.

And yes…our kids eat this soup also!!! We make a huge pot of it and we have it in the fridge for several days. I serve it as lunch for us a couple of days later and I give it to the kids for dinner the following day. I play with it with the kids, for example: one day I’ll give it to Justin (my 1 1/2 year old) as soup, but the next day I’ll get his portion and blend it in the blender and make a puree to change the consistency for him. Another day I’ll make it on a bed of quinoa pasta or germinated brown rice, or I’ll make them a sweet potato and combine the two to make it a bit sweeter. I always try to keep it interesting for them. With my 3 year old, I make him guess what veggies are in there and we spend the whole meal talking about them. I’ve noticed the more I talk to him about the veggies, the more open he is to trying them.

WE HOPE YOU CAN MAKE THIS SOUP A STAPLE IN YOUR HOME ALSO!

As with everything in life, there is a major concern with eating healthy…how much it costs! Everyone knows it is more expensive to eat healthy than not. Shopping at places like Whole Foods or Fresh Market can really hurt your wallet and some people simply can not afford it…. or can they?

I have definitely increased my grocery expenses in the past year. I am in no better or worse position than the average middle class family to incur this added expense. So how is it that I CAN afford it and others can’t? My argument is about priorities.

Everyone complains about not having enough money. Some can’t afford to live in a big house. Others can’t afford to own an expensive car, or send their kids to private school, or travel, or buy expensive clothing and purses. And for each person that complains about not affording something, that person has an expense the other can’t afford. The mom who can’t afford to drive a nice car, but her daughter goes to an expensive private school. The couple who can’t afford to own their own home, but travel to exotic places.

My point is that we are all spending money. It is a matter of choices and priorities what you spend your money on. Some spend in on True Religion jeans, others spend it on dining out at the latest “IN” club or restaurant, some spend it on golf, others spend it on cigarrettes. We all make these choices.

So what about food? I tend to think that there is a perception about food that it should not be expensive because it is a basic necessity and not a luxury. Not everyone needs a GUCCI purse, but everyone needs to eat. Its the same reason we all complain about Gas prices. Why are these basic needs bleeding our wallets to death?

My view on this is that food is no longer treated as a basic need. We have such an oversupply of all food products that what we eat has become a luxury. Groceries are stocked to their capacity. We have so many choices, and we constantly abuse this privilege and over consume food which leads to the problems we are facing with our weight and health. So in order to please the masses, greedy companies choose to use the cheapest ingredients they can find (i.e., corn syrup) to make the biggest possible profit on the quantities of food they sell. AND WE ALL BUY INTO IT.

We buy into the convenience, the pre packaging, the perceived value (look I can get 2 boxes of Lucky Charms for the price of one!) But there is a price to eating this stuff that we don’t necessarily calculate in our monthly budget. For example, the price of weight loss products that we are constantly buying to try to lose weight; the price of the medicine we use to treat the conditions that our bad diet causes (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, etc.), the price of wasted food…how many of us buy tons of soda because we got such a good deal on it, and a couple of weeks later realize the soda is completely flat and has to be tossed. Or the bread is moldy, or the chips are stale. We buy cheap food and therefore we don’t care that much about it, so if we go out to eat all weekend and on Monday have to throw spoiled food away, we don’t pay much attention.

I have adopted a different strategy towards the food I eat. My husband and I buy expensive food. Organic fruits and vegetables, nuts, whole grains, expensive meats… all pricey. HOWEVER, in my house, we eat what we buy. We do not throw away spoiled food because quite frankly we can’t afford to!  If I cut up a few slices of an organic apple for my salad, and I have the other half of the apple remaining, I toss it into my smoothie instead of putting it into the refrigerator to turn brown and find it a week later. We eat out less. We typically don’t go out to eat for lunch, and we don’t order food during the week because we make enough food to always have left overs.  I hope to be able to say that in the future, our biggest savings will come from our medical bills….Of course, that remains to be seen!

Part of the biggest problem with healthy food is the vicious cycle we’re in. Healthy food is expensive so we don’t buy it, but since we don’t buy it continues to be expensive. What if all we bought was the expensive stuff and the grocery stores were left with all the junk food? They would definitely start ordering less of it and more of the good stuff. And the more good stuff they get, the cheaper it gets.  So what if we all bought what we needed. Meat, fruits, vegetables, dairy, nuts, and grains? But we left on the shelves the unnecessary stuff. The chips, the sodas, the frozen food, the cereal boxes…what if we eliminated the crap.

In the meantime, I try to SAVE by:

• buying from a coop –http://www.anniesbuyingclub.com/welcome.cfm
• buying from Costco or BJ’s since buying in bulk is cheaper. (I buy here the stuff that won’t go to waste like the greens for my salad because we use it every single day. Organic chicken because it remains frozen. Organic frozen berries for the same reason.
• my friend and I actually shared our Costco purchase this week. We split the walnuts, the kiwi, the yogurts for the kids. We split the cost and don’t have to worry about the kiwi going to waste. We are going to do that again!
• For whole foods, I actually found an awesome way to save 10% on all my purchases.  http://spendfored.org/index.php?id=50 (Check this website out and see how you can donate to charity and save money on your groceries. This is awesome!!!
• And of course, the traditional coupon. Whole Foods is coming out with more coupons and sales and I take advantage every chance I get. For example, once in a while they sell their wild caught salmon for 7.99/lb which is even cheaper than Costco. I buy as many pounds as I can and I keep it in my freezer. I know I have salmon once a week for the next few weeks and I got a great deal.

We have decided that even if we have to sacrifice in other areas of our life, we will not sacrifice what we put in our bodies or our children’s. Food is fuel and we want to put the best fuel in us as we can so we can run a long healthy life! So the next time you think you can’t afford healthy food, just remember priorities.

What are your priorities????

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!!! Since most of us use our weekends to go out to eat with our families, attend birthday parties or social events, and relax….we don’t really want to cook or worry about food. This is why most people admit to “cheating” on the weekends. If this is you, don’t feel guilty about it. ITS OKAY!!!!!! I for one had pizza and fried mozzarella this weekend on Saturday!

But the beauty of this lifestyle is that there is no race to the finish. You are NOT on a countdown to lose any amount of weight in any amount of time.
So now its Monday again and routine sets in. You have been given an opportunity to start over again and incorporate good decisions in your diet.

So maybe start the morning this morning with a

• Pear, lemon, cucumber, celery, and water smoothie. Lemon and celery detox your body and cucumber is excellent for your skin.

Commit to making good decisions this week and make it your goal to have more vegetables this week than you did last week. Maybe next weekend, you’ll still have pizza but you’ll want 2 slices instead of 3. Or maybe you’ll have a burger but pass on the fries. The more you start to enjoy eating well, the less you’ll enjoy eating the bad stuff.

And you’ll know your lifestyle has changed when you only cheat when its absolutely worth it…instead of cheating just because its the weekend!

HAPPY MONDAY.