Time is health

Time is Money?

We have all heard that expression, and many of us work within that frame of reference.

When you are in a service-oriented profession, you bill for your time - there is "billable" and "non-billable" time. With commodities, productivity is measured by time - "how quickly can I get the job done?" Of course, in our multi-tasking society we are expected to do various activities in the shortest amount of time. I think it's fair to say we all value TIME.

Time is Health

Ponder a bit on the following questions, and if you realize that your health, energy and vitality are low, but your value of them is high - give health coaching a try!

Can we strongly agree that we have power and ability to bring about health? Do we value health as much as we do time? Are we always making our decisions so that we may bring about health? Are we focusing on the balance of work, family, exercise, rest and nutrition? Do we think of health as only the absence of disease, or do we want to foster a healthy lifestyle?

Cooking Time

We are all challenged when it comes to having time for meal preparation. You probably know that if you consume more than 50% of your food from outside of your own kitchen, you running the risk of generating a disease state in your body. Restaurant food has increased salt, MSG, high levels of fat and low quality ingredients (such as vegetable oil rather than olive oil).

I personally know the challenges involved in cooking health meals in my own kitchen while maintaining a pretty busy lifestyle - especially with predominantly vegetarian cooking.

So in this segment I want to present my own tricks and ideas to save you time in the kitchen. Think that time is now for health!

1) Plan your meals
2) Group base elements
3) Manage Quantity

Planing is important because you will have all ingredients needed. You will not waste food. Planning is not only is that done at home but also at the market, where flexibility is important. Especially when buying your produce, you may plan to have stuffed peppers, but may get to the market and realize that the peppers are not available. For primarily vegetarian cooking, the planning is usually for a week at a time since you want to have fresh produce.

Group your base elements, which means you may want to plan your meals that can share base ingredients like my spanish tortilla, pasta primavera and vegetarian chili. They all have onions, peppers, tomatoes and shitaki mushrooms. So when I am preparing the ingredients I saute them for all three dishes, although I may only make one complete dish at a time. Save the cooked ingredients in a nice tight glass container until you need them.

Quantity helps to reduce cooking time. For instance, you can boil two cups of rice in just about the same time it takes to boil one. Instead of washing and preparing your salad daily, do the washing when you have extra time, then spin it dry. Then all you need is to add the other ingredients to make a nice salad. When making brown rice, beans, and other ingredients, you may want to cook extra for several meals.


P1000747

Recipe: Spanish Tortilla
Ingredients:

5 medium size potatoes
1/4 onion
1 yellow pepper
5-6 shitaki mushrooms
1/4 head of broccoli
6 eggs (free range)
Cheese and spices of your liking

Peel the potatoes, cut in large cubes, salt and boil until they are tender. Steam the broccoli (I use a double boiler pot so that both get done at the same time). Saute the onion, pepper and mushrooms. Lightly oil a deep pie dish, place in all the ingredients with the exception of the eggs - you may want to do layers or free style.

Beat the eggs, salt & pepper them, and pour over the ingredients. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Enjoy this delicious dish next to a salad and soup, or as a breakfast or lunch.