Food Challenge: Power Snack

A conversation with my brilliant friend, Janine (whom I'm hoping will be recruited to be an author as well), reminded me that healthy eating starts with simplicity. Simple ingredients easily assembled can be the hallmark of a healthy diet. In the real world, most of us don't have time to prepare three gourmet meals a day (or even five to six meals as some nutritionists recommend), which can be where we are likely to fail in our healthy eating goals. That's why this week's challenge is focused on the simplest yet crucial meal, the snack.

Tiff sent me a post this week which I think totally exemplifies my point (Thanks Tiff! It is a great post!). In order to eat well, you need to fuel your body throughout the day with healthy options. For this week's challenge, I'm looking for your favorite power snack. This is the snack that curbs your 3 pm sugar crave and gets you through the day. It doesn't have to be complicated; in fact, bonus points for being easy to prepare. The Good Factor is definitely a must; no dry Kashi bars here!

Post your recipe by Sunday if you want to participate. Also, if you have other recipes, articles, or other blogs to share, feel free to do so! We can't wait to hear from you!

Careful what you pray for...

** Please note that the author for this blog is Tiffani.

I have been meaning to make a shift in some of my dietary habits since I got home from that 14 day eat-a-thon / cruise in January and today was April 1. It was about time to start forcing myself to evaluate the foods I am putting in my body and be a better steward of my little temple. J I knew it was going to be hard. Chocolate has literally become a 3:00 pm addiction. Why can’t chocolate be “GOOD” for you?? But as much as I wished to make a chocolate food group, I knew that these hips weren’t lying, something needed to change. Sigh. So today was the day. I like to include God in the large and small elements of my day and especially my efforts to make changes. I believe He is also invested in seeing me take care of my body, one of His creations. So, during my morning prayers I humbly asked, “Help me to take good care of my body and be wise about what I eat.” I actually pray for that a lot, but today I really meant it... until 3pm when the chocolate monster came a calling. I went through quite a few mental conversations, but it really didn’t take long to convince myself that I could wean myself off my addiction and just eat less today and none tomorrow. Perfect. Besides, it was a Friday of all days, and if you can’t have a little treat after a long hard week, I don’t know what you can do! When I was standing in front of the vending machine, I carefully weighed my options. Working the school of public health building we have friendly nudges towards healthy habits all around. The vending machine was not immune to this influence. All of the healthy options were highlighted in yellow. I didn’t pay much attention to those because I was on a mission; I needed chocolate in my hand in 30 seconds flat. What would it be? Snickers? Milky Way? Or a Cheese Danish? I decided against the Cheese Danish because of the lack of chocolate and the chance it was old and dry. I decided to go for the Snickers because there are nuts in there, and “they are good for you,” so Snickers it is. E10. That’s it. The money was in, all I had to do was hit E10 and I’d be on the road to sinful chocolate bliss. I pushed E… then 1… then… oh no… my heart sank when I realized I had failed to see the 10 button and selected E1 instead. To my dismay I saw that I had inadvertently bought a Kashi Chewy granola bar. It was tiny, it was dry, but it was “good for me.” I almost laughed out loud when I remembered my prayer this morning. Apparently God does care about what I put into my body. Ironically, I ended up only putting a few bites of the Kashi bar in my body because my taste buds couldn’t take it. But don’t worry, even if I did have another dollar in my wallet, I learned my lesson, no more Snickers… at least for today.

Good for Goodness' Sake

Food is a complex topic; on one hand, food is fuel and our bodies need the correct balance in order to maintain optimal health. On the other hand, food is a blank canvas for creativity, a chance to savor the beautiful gifts of the Earth and share these pleasures with others. Is there a balance between these two sides? Is it possible to create food that is healthy and pure while still exploring the creativity of cooking and eating? I hope so, and that is why I started this blog.

I love to cook but I think it is the social aspects of eating that I enjoy. There is something special about a group of people coming together to enjoy well-prepared foods. It would be vain of me (and an outright lie) to say that everything I cook comes from my own genius. I am constantly gleaning new ideas from everyone else, which is why I decided to create this blog. I want your ideas, plain and simple. Instead of creating a blog with just my recipes, I wanted to create a community space where we can come together and share what we love, what works, what doesn’t, and how to do it better. If you are interested in joining as an author, send me an email and I’ll add you to the list.

What to Post:

I am looking for healthy gourmet recipes.The concept is simple: “Good food. Good for you. Good for everyone.”

• Good food: I don’t want to put any pressure on anyone, but I am throwing out the challenge. I’m looking for your favorites, the best thing you ever ate, etc.  I want to have the standard that we would eat and enjoy your recipe whether it was healthy or not; the healthy part is a bonus.
• Good for you: What does healthy mean? I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, so I don’t want to pretend to have all the answers. When I think of healthy, I’m looking for recipes that use a lot of fresh ingredients (veggies in particular) and most, if not all, of the recipe is made from scratch (there are definitely some exceptions as you won’t see me making my own philo dough for example). I think calorie content should be a consideration as you can still eat too much of a good thing. I’m looking for recipes that really max out your consumption benefit with loads of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, protein, and healthy fats (well, maybe not loads of those).
• Good for everyone: This requirement isn’t as stringent, but I think it would be great to choose recipes that are good for the environment as well. Using local produce and buying what is in season can make a difference and you often get the best products that way anyway. Don’t worry, I still do a lot of shopping in the grocery stores too, but I love shopping at local markets and I use local produce in a lot of my cooking.

If you really want to wow us, recipes that are quick to prepare, kid-friendly, and/or inexpensive are always a bonus. 


Obviously I’m looking for recipes but it doesn’t have to stop there. If you see a great article you want to share, feel free to do so! Also, if you know of other good food blogs, send them my way and I’ll add them to our links. The recipes you share don’t have to be your own creations, either. Like I said, I have no shame in mining other people for good ideas, so feel free to share a recipe that you found and love (just make sure to cite where it came from). If you think of it, take a picture of your creation and include it with your post, because we all want to see what the final product looks like.

If you decide to join, I would like to hear from you at least once per month. I don’t want this to be overwhelming but I do want to keep each other motivated to share. I will also post “food challenges” to see what creative solutions you can come up with and we can vote on a winner. These challenges are optional but of course I would love your participation. If you know of another genius cook who would like to join, feel free to pass this along. The more the merrier!

A note regarding privacy: I am going to start with a public blog; however, if it gets out of control I will move to make it more private. With that in mind, please only post information that you are comfortable sharing with a larger audience.