it's great to be back here my husband and i used to be president at the wellington school and i was chair of the charlie crist's playground which got torn down but it's just it was so wonderful to come back in here today and see the vibrancy and the energy with all the kids the after school program and i got to drive a pleasant street and see the lighted houses with the christmas decorations you know which ones are talking about i was laughing on the way over  so it's really great that you're here you're right where you're supposed to be i hope that you take away something tonight that will really serve you and your health your journey to good health i like what ruth says she's the former editor of the the editor in chief of the magazine which is no longer in existence she said i don't think there is one thing more important you can do for your kids than have family dinner life has changed over the past thirty years it's increasingly more of a fast pace we're no frills society and it's really pushed us into kind of an assembly line way of life we're moving so fast that we move we miss out on truly connecting with one another and i'm a big connector now that i've become a holistic health coach i realize the importance of connecting with each other even more so so it's wonderful to be able to connect with you tonight over food over nourishment electronics have really taken over our lives just last march i went to mexico and to loom i was at a restaurant and there was probably fifteen to twenty college kids sitting around a big table and they were waiting for their orders and none of them were talking to each other and they were all on their phones and how often do you go out to dinner and you might see a couple and the couple is not engaged in conversation but they're on their cell phones so we really we've really lost that vote so we have been lost touch with what it's like to sit at a table and really spend time with one another and have conversation when i sit at a table for lunch i make it a point to light a candle except if it's in the summer i light a candle and i just mindfully eat my lunch and when i get up from the table i know that i've actually had a meal so i don't sit in front of the t v set a lot of us to doing that now most meals are less than twenty minutes so the question that i want to ask you all tonight is to think about how you're feeling your tanks you know are you filling it with good gas are you taking time to reconnect after a busy day are you rushing through dinner as just another to do thing off your list and just how important it is for us to sit together and to really reconnect as a family and catch up after the day's activities and enjoy a healthy and delicious meal so not only can the meal be nourishing but the conversation can be nourishing and i think we need both people are spending more time watching t v cooking shows and they're actually spending cooking right how many times have you sat down to relax and it's just don't even cover your eyes because i do to mark bittman who right has columnist for the new york times he's an author very well known he said that eighty percent of the stuff in the stores so we're talking about grocery stores is crap we need to teach our kids the joy of cooking and where the food comes from it's important to spend time educating our kids about the kitchen about food about eating right about how to shop and the responsibilities of cleaning up so you shouldn't be in the kitchen by yourself cleaning up after a meal especially if you've cooked and i was guilty of that i was brought up to be a caretaker always putting my family first and it did not serve me well and i ended up having some auto immune problems oh i'm i'm here my mission is to educate people to learn how to take care of yourself first and then you could be a better caretaker i also encourage people to go to farmers market even in the winter you could there's lovely ones there's one in somerville at the armory on highland nav there's one out at brussels greenhouse and whalen it's a wonderful winter farmer's market it's really enjoyable and especially with all the snow we had last year i would so look forward to going on saturday morning to a farmers market and see the farmer from winter moon roots take out all his root vegetables that he had stored and all the beautiful beets and color carrots and it's just it really gets you connected in some way during those frozen tundra months i also think that it's important to teach our kids life skills whether it be doing the laundry and this might sound a bit old fashion but you know things have changed it's not just the woman who should be doing those duties around the house so when they before you know what they'll be leaving they'll be going off to college they need to know how to be self sustaining uppal they need to know how to do their laundry they need to know how to shop for food and how to make healthy food so i think these are skills that have been forgotten and we really need to help them make good choices for themselves and what better place to learn that then in their own home i also feel that healthy eating and cooking doesn't have to be complicated i worked with a chef recently who became a client of mine and she told me she was so tired at night she hardly had any energy to cook dinner and sometimes she would she wouldn't even eat lunch and i said well you know what kind of dinner are you cooking and when she told me i was totally flabbergasted and so overwhelmed and i said no no wonder you don't want to cook your cooking these elaborate meals that are really for special occasions and so after working with me on and off for six months she said to me you know you've really taught me an important lesson you taught me that cooking oil eating delicious food that food can be prepared simply so it can be simple it can be colorful it can be delicious and it can take twenty to thirty minutes to cook a fabulous meal so it all can be achieved we have we've really gotten away from cooking and eating close to nature  processed and refined foods seventy seven percent of the foods in the supermarket have added sugar in them and you all know dealing with high fructose corn syrup with food additives food preservatives trans fat they're all still in those foods and recently i did as a trip to stop and shop just to make sure that my food samples were up to date from my part one of this talk and i was just astounded that there were probably only one or two food samples that i was going to show that had actually changed that they were all still very toxic and children have developing bodies and the last thing we need to put in their bodies is toxic ingredients so i encourage people to cook simple healthy delicious meals most nights and if you can read you can cook i do have a flyer on the table over there for cooking class in january for soups so what i cut encourage people to eat is nutrient dense foods foods that really have a big bang for the buck and i call the food in my house my pharmacy it's f a r why not the ph so i really encourage you you know if you have good food in the fridge and good food in your pantry then you'll eat good food i also encourage people to eat the colors of the rainbow and i'll get into that when i'm cooking nuts and seeds lean protein drink lots of water whole grains healthy fats yes healthy fats we i remember eating a low  back in the i think it was the ninety's but it was low it was i'm sorry it was high carb high carb low fat and we became a fat phobic society and what we have found is it's not the fats that are killing us it's the sugar so we really need to avoid the sugar in our diets there are some flyers and handouts from the last talk so if any of you are interested you can pick those up on the table so let your ki pharmacy involve your family and have fun and keep it simple remember again if you have good food in the fridge and in your pantry you get to decide what you bring into the house and if you have good food you'll eat good  or walnuts you can just keep that in mind so in this pilaf so what you could basically do is give somebody like something with that and there is spoons here maybe we could just pass the spoons in the napkins and there's a tray here  so let me tell you what's in the king watch this is one of my favorite dishes to make in the winter and it's keen wa which is an ancient seed a lot of people call it a grain but it's technically a seed and you eat it for strengthen and durrance and it has nine essential amino acids so it's considered a protein so it's a great food for those of you who want to be vegan but if you just want to get energy it's just it's also a great snack like i'll do a bootable first snack and a bootable would be something like this you know so maybe in the afternoon if i have left of a cane while i'll just go have that as a snack it is considered a complete protein ye and it actually protects it's like a natural it's not a pesticide or a herbicide but the plant produces it and it protects the plant so if you rinse it in some cold water you'll see if you see a little soapy residue that means there was sap in on the seed and you just rinse it in a fine sieve because it's very tiny the seat is set in a really fine sieve from the cold water or put it in the pan with cold water and then just put the lid on and drain it and then you can add the rest of your ingredients to the to the recipe so i saute had some onions and then i added some crimean a mushroom sauce and then i added celery and  fresh chops saying age but it puts the most amazing aroma into your house that has dried cranberries in it what do you think so far do you like it so again it's a that does is it reduces your risk for damage to your cells and to your d n a and it's an extremely high in potassium and the cranberries are an excellent source of vitamin c and the drying the recipe is right in your packet yet and it's really really great and i mean you can garnish it with additional dried cranberries that you can chop it with just some fresh sage but it had fresh stage in the cooking too and it makes it feel like thanksgiving all over again right it's got a wonderful aroma so thank you for helping with the samples so the next thing i'm going to make is a meal on the go when you have you have all these recipes in your packet so what i love about this meal on the go green smoothie is that it has healthy fats and proteins it's a good meal replacement if you're in a hurry  water and then draining them so it's one cup of nuts two three cups of water and then you you know process it in the blender and then i go on to this website in vermont it's called vermont fiddleheads and i order what they call a not bag and you can you can go on and google it you'll find lots of places sell them now i think even amazon carries them but i like the quality of the nut bags at at vermont fiddleheads and then you take a new poor route after you've blended all the nuts and water together you blend it you put it through the knot bag and squeeze it out like you're milking a cow and out comes the school laureus milk and it is ten times better than what you buy in the box that lasts for about three days in the fridge and it makes a fair amount of almond milk so if you're interested in doing that just buy some raw again one cup of aman's to three cups of water you just soak it overnight i'm sorry one cup of it with water and then drain it and then when you put it in the blender it's one cup of those three cups of water so so in this particular thing up by the way i've walked every watched everything that's and it's clear and shall continue because i once did a cooking demo and even those these triple washed someone was wouldn't eat the food because i hadn't washed it so the containers been washed all of the kalos been washed and what i'm going to do now is just put the kale in and i'm using baby kale and if you're starting out if you've never done  and you're just starting out i recommend starting with baby spinach and baby kale they're much milder greens and they're much easier so especially if you're trying to get kids to eat them for the first time it's really important to do that so ok so we've got the kale and we've got the almond milk and then we're going to put in some blueberries this is a vitamin x it's the best thing i've ever bought for myself i'm going to take a little o if someone said to me starting out in the kitchen what could they buy for themselves i would say of item ics a really good stock pot a really good saute pan a really good chef's knife like this  you know those are some of the basics you don't need a lot of gadgets or so now i'm putting in some mixed fruit so it's black berries blueberries strawberries there's blueberries so there's two cups of fruit i basically have this is a recipe that would make enough for two people so if you want to make this for yourself the cut the recipe in half or you can put it in the refrigerator and save it for later but i think it off today it oxygenates to quickly so i always recommend doing a fresh movie but if you're on your way to work you could certainly take it in a shakeup in enjoyed in the car ok so we have the berries in we're going to put a banana in and people asked me about bananas all the time and when the bananas the brown or the skin is the more sugar accumulates in the banana so if you buy bananas and you think they're starting to turn just peel them all got them in half put them in a ziploc bag in the freezer and then you'll have them ready and they'll be cold and though they're great to jars on one shelf and i have everything handy so it's really easy to do so what makes this a meal is we're adding a quarter of a cup of rolled oats to th you can see how powerful that is so i mean if you take those big kale leaves with the stamps it totally just disintegrate not disintegrates but you know what i knew breaks it all up and you're still getting all the fiber it just makes it more digestible so i think it's easier to pour from here i think it's fine so this is not a sweet and overly sweet drink and if you wanted to put something if you wanted to put some dates in it i would recommend dates or a little bit of maple syrup i wouldn't recommend  necessarily stevia are aspartame or any of those sweeteners but i would recommend just adding some dates you could do that so here's the tray for this thank you for doing that and i think we don't we don't need all these cuts right so you could just ask those thank you ladies ok so that's the smoothie the meal on a go and what i love about this is it's great for our breakfast it's great for pre workout post workout drink if you have kids that are doing athletics they come home in the afternoon and they want they really are hungry and you don't want them eating a lot of junk if you get them involved with creating their own smoothies it's really great so again you keep all that frozen fruit in their freezer and you have it all handy i recommend no more than a one cup of frozen fruit person movie i think it's too much sugar to put in more than one cup so the next thing that i'm going to make just let me just mention a few of the benefits i think it's really important to understand that food is your medicine so i wanted to just mention a couple powerful things about the food that's in this movie kale is really really high in antioxidants and it contains the largest concentration of health promoting sulfur compounds and you might say well who cares about that but what it does is it increases your liver is ability to produce an that neutralized talks to potentially toxic substances that you might be taking into your body so it's a great cleansing i always think of greens of being cleansing and i look at the leaves that you know when you pick up a big kale leaf or you pick up swiss chard and you look at all the veins in the leaves it's life forming it's chlorophyll you know so every day you should be asking yourself the question where were my greens today you really need those greens every single day the other thing that i that i wanted to mention is the berries they really give you a lot of protection a lot of antioxidants and that's what you want you want antioxidants in your thank you so much every day you want those antioxidants in your diet all when going back to the kale two point six grams of fiber and ninety three milligrams of calcium and it's loaded with beta carotene the bananas have a ton of potassium what do you think of the movie do you like it good no sugar except for the naturally occurring sugar found in fruit and i use the unsweetened almond milk so again if you're making it a home and you want it a little sweeter you can make it with the dates and that that vermont fiddleheads i believe that they have instructions on their website and how to make almond milk so it's a really great stress do you know what it is if anyone ever heard that term before so oxidative stress is something that we go through every day when you're eating when you're sleeping when you're working out when you're walking you're sitting here now you're going through  it's just a natural occurrence when we are exposed to toxic substances chemicals when we're flying on an airplane and we're exposed to radiation we're going through oxidative stress so what happens is i like to remember the pac man games i'm really aging myself now pac man little patmos pac man it's on i think of that like every day these free radicals come and attack your cells and it leads to illness and disease and aging so the good news is you can neutralize those free radicals by eating foods that are high in antioxidants and fido nutrients they will nutrients neutralize those bad guys and you can actually help yourself with anti aging prevent cell damage d n a damage by consuming foods that are high in and into yox events and phytochemicals so what what foods that simple and they know how to work together so when you have carrots and when you have a red pepper and you have red cabbage and even when you have this this napa cabbage or the all those possessed the different colors possess different antioxidants and fido nutrients that protect you every single day and this is what's so sophisticated about our bodies in the way we have been created these know what to do when you consume them they know how to work together it's kind of like an army so the more colors you eat the more protection you actually have and i think that's really like good news right because i mean there's so many things that we can't control today in our environment but the good news is if you eat healthy and you eat nutrient dense foods with lots of with a rainbow of colors that you're providing yourself with great amounts of protection the aman's are really the king of knots they're high nutritional value and one point five ounces of most knots per day provide you with a really special benefit so it's a great source of vitamin e they're concentrate it's a concentrated source of monaco and such and saturated fats so it makes it heart healthy how don't know how you're all storing your knocks at home but it's best to store them in the fridge if you have room if you go through them quickly find put them in a cupboard away from sunlight you can even so six months in the fridge a year in the freezer if they smell rancid or they taste funny then they probably are rancid so i like to use these canning jars but i also if in the freezer i use the block bags but again these are in my fridge and they're easy for me to see so i love that but this fork grams of fiber for a quarter of a cup of almond so that's you know really really good so the next thing that i was going to share with you is one of my favorite things it's called euphoria nuggets and you have the recipe for these as well and these are made with sunflower seeds pitted dates maple syrup and you can make them with rock a cow powder i actually may have carob powder tonight and the reason i brought the care of powder is because some kids react there's no caffeine in the in the counting abs but it might affect their nervous system so i i say you know if you've got younger kids you should probably use the carrot powder instead of the counted rock a cow is extremely powerful i happen to love it it's high in magnesium and i do notice the boost of energy that i get when i consume the rock a cow powder that the dates i just want to mention they're really great they're loaded with minerals and vitamins and  nutrients and they're easy to digest you just want to be careful how many dates you're consuming because they are higher in sugar but they're fine in here and putting a few in your smoothie is not going to you know elevate your  sugar level that much i also like the fact that they move the waste through the colon and what when you have a healthy colon and you're you know eliminating on a regular basis it really helps prevent the buildup of l d l which is the bad cholesterol and it also binds with substances containing cancer causing chemicals so again we want that fiber in our diet every day it's really important for us to have it and dates also have potassium which helps control your heart rate and your blood pressure and there's vitamin b vitamin a i mean it's just tons of benefits of dates what else did i want to mention about the cara powder if you're wondering what that is that i'm going to use today comes from a pot of a tree and it grows along the mediterranean se the pod contains the sweet out of all paul and once it's dried and roasted the pulp is ground into a powder and it's called carib flour kara powder you can find it in whole foods in the baking section it comes in a canister you can also if you've ever used care of chips chocolate chips it's not chocolate but it's made from carob to make cookies with or something like that it's similar to a cocoa powder and in far as color and if you're substituting it for a recipe where you would use cocoa powder it's just one to one so if you're buying the carob powder it's the same ratio and the reason i like it it's naturally sweet it's low in fat it's high in fiber it house calcium and more importantly no caffeine so if your your kids are sensitive to caffeine i think it's really important to be aware of that and to use another alternative and chocolate has been linked to migraines and also to you know caffeine sensitivity so that's the story on that so  what i've done is i ground up some of this earlier because of the mike that i have on so what i have in here right now is shelled sunflower seeds pitted dates  i'm going to add some maple syrup so we've already pre measured this so this is the maple syrup i think i this is a double batch that i'm making and then i'm going to put in the carrot going to put a little bit of cinnamon in a pinch i'm going to use sea salt and i like the salt and the reason i like the salt just because it has a lot of the trace minerals in it so the salt is what i recommend this is called real salt and you can find it at whole foods but any sea salt will work so in a put a little bit of sea salt in so this is a great dessert you know i always feel like if kids want to zurich why not have fruit at the end of the meal and then on the weekends with the days of the week that begin with us saturday or sunday because dessert has two s's in it maybe that's the day you have some kind of a sweet or does art but there's nothing wrong with having a good healthy fruit again to get that fiber and to the kids so i'm not going to talk for a minute just where the step which my plug and in question so far ok here we go when i was packing up everything from home i was wondering if i was going to get something and i forgot an extra spoon so left it there with me ok so this makes quite a substantial snap and i roll these into balls and so what you do basically is here's the fixings and it's pretty concentrated i mean all you really need of this is a one and i think what i love about this is you can take them if you're traveling on an airplane you know it's really hard to get healthy snacks when you're traveling so i usually make a batch of these and i'm might put some in a ziploc bag and take them on the on the plane so the quick and easy way to do these i put the carrot powder in it to really go so this is what i love this would be another thing that i'd buy for the kitchen it's the small one which probably a two spoon you press down washed and that's it and i brought this to parties and people love it i just need to find my towels so we'll come back to this and we can roll some together all right and then the other thing that i like to do as if you want to have unsweetened coconut and you can roll the balls the next thing is the thai salad and this is one of my favorite things to make because it makes a lot and it's really inexpensive it's not an expensive thing to make and you might be thinking well i don't know if my kids will eat these ingredients but if you get them in the kitchen cooking with you and then actually start handling the food and tasting the food you'd be surprised over a period of time that they would actually enjoy some of the vegetables that they've got to prepare so the first thing that i have is the napa cabbage and this is a really good choice for salads it's softer in texture than other varieties and it's really easy to prepare so what you do is you just take your chef's kni and you just go along and the key is to have a sharp knife because if you have a sharp knife you're less apt to cut yourself except when you don't put the knife on the counter and a safe position like i did and knocked on the floor and i had shorts on and it went down into my leg and i had to drive myself to the emergency room so again  safety you know you should put it over here so what i'm going to do first is i'm going to make the dressing and the reason i'm going to make the dressing in the bowl is because i don't have to dirty another bowl so when you're at home why take a little bowl and make the dressing and then have to wash that bowl make the dressing in this bowl and then put all your ingredients on top of it and then when you're ready to serve dinner you toss it all so so i do not buy salad dressing and you do not have to buy salad dressing either ever again who buy salad dressing no shame in that by the way so you know the thing that's wonderful about making your own is you know what's in it right so really you know it's my diamond ring that's causing me a problem i can't put the gloves on so the first thing is sesame oil this is a really great oil but you need to keep it in the fridge because it will go r d so you want to keep that in the fridge oh i'm so sorry thank you oh yes so take do you want to roll it in coconut all right ok so just take the one that i wrote yeah and there's a napkin right down there yeah thank you for coming so good thank you ok so we're going to put in three tablespoons of sesame oil and it's a really nice labor to this and i happen to like this a brand of the eden brand it's organic and they're really high quality they've received national awards they're one of the best companies food companies that's out there it's made from the plum and there are japanese plums and they actually aid indigestion and it also helps treat liver imbalances and it's highly alkalizing for your blood than honey so i'm putting in a little bit of maple syrup and then i have the juice of a line so half a line and then it has a little bit of red pepper flakes and then you just combine it really really easy to do right i can hear you want this is for they wrought ties salad so that's the salad we're ok and i'm going to put this right here can everyone still see can you see all right so we're going to be using peapods so all you have to do is you know take the string off this is another thing the kids can learn how to do right and i always have a garbage pole on the counter so we just you know pick off the these are all done but there's just two of them here very very easy to do so i'm going to start throwing in all the salad ingredients in here and i just stack them up like i'm going to roll a cigar and put them face down obviously you want to be careful of your fingers and always move along this doesn't take that long to make and i find that when i'm in the kitchen cooking and i'm touching things that come from nature i feel really grounded and relaxed when you're making your own food you will feel more grounded and relaxed especially when you're dealing with root vegetables in the winter if you're feeling like unsettled and stressed just start going in the kitchen and cooking with group that doubles and you will not believe the difference it's pretty amazing so i love roasting root vegetables in the winter and then come spring i don't want to eat another root vegetable then i'm all into greens and all the spring vegetables asparagus and fiddleheads and the other thing that i didn't mention is how important it is to eat seasonally and when you eat seasonally what's in season you'll be more satisfied and you'll have less cravings so if you're eating strawberries in the winter guess what you know they're fine and smoothies but to buy a fresh strawberry does taste like a strawberry right does anybody find not and also the produce is cheaper when you buy seasonally by the way this is grown locally isn't it beautiful it's really beautiful i found this in whole foods and sometimes in the winter when you can't get a local napa cabbage what happens is it's like the leaves are yellow it's not even attractive but this is beautiful so you can see how quickly this goes so a lot of times you know i'll just like this morning i just prepped all the vegetables and they were all ready for me to work with so sometimes like on sunday when i go and buy a lot of things to prep a lot of my foods and cut up a lot of carrots and celery put them into jars have them ready for snaps this is red cabbage that's the next ingredient i think i actually want to go and again it just really pays to have a shocking knife and then you just i think of all the color in the antioxidants right well these different colors it's just so beautiful it's really great the nice thing about the salad to is if you make this for dinner at night it's still going to be good the next day because of the cabbage and the flavors from the dressing are just going to permeate the cabbage and make it taste even good the next day ok so here we are and we mix all these colors isn't this great so carrots to absorb the nutrients they're good shredded and they're also good steamed dante that's the best way to  carrots it's kind of interesting isn't it so ca we've got red pepper thing that's interesting about red pepper by the way this is the other best tool to have in the kitchen this really makes it easy to clean or if you're transferring things to a stock pot so a red pepper has more vitamin c then an orange that's pretty amazing so that's why i'm saying you know again your your your food can be your pharmacy and you don't need a lot of one thing so i heard people to eat a variety you know only need a little of everything you don't have to have like kale every day so what i'm doing now is just cutting thin strips of the pepper and this is all been washed this is the reason i buy something that's organic if you go on to the environmental working group they recommend that you know they have the dirty dozen list and they recommend that you buy organic in those twelve plus vegetables fruits vegetables because they test the highest in pesticides and then they also have the clean fifteen which tests the lowest so if you can't afford to buy organic all the time you could just follow the dirty dozen list and then buy everything else conventional but again i tell my clients i would rather see them eating vegetables the not eating them because they couldn't afford organic so it depends on your food budget just enjoy it so it's kind of interesting to darker you know that the dark fruits and vegetables to just have they're so high in antioxidants even black beans they're the highest and antioxidants of all the beings black beans so it's really great right so here's a red  sometimes when you get an onion you might have a little bit of green stuff growing in the middle it's just easy to pull it out it's just started to sprout a little it's hard to know when you go to the grocery store sometimes you can eat it some people prefer not to so i just pick it out but i would eat it at home and it's still like it's almost like a scallion when you think about it so this is just so you can see that the salad would serve an army right so on the peapods what you can do with those issues stack them up and you just cut them thin like this so if you've ever had those ties salads where the people odds are so beautiful you can just stack them up again just like you're stacking up the cabbage when you cut it and it's easier to control and they really come out great anybody have any questions why i'm doing this so the most nutritious pea is the garden peas but the peapods they're really really good they have a really high concentration of vitamin c and they're very low in calories there's a great book that you can get if you're really interested in knowing more about the nutrition of your fruits and vegetables it's the world's healthiest foods by george matt matalin and i don't know how to spell his last name but if you go the world's healthiest foods i believe he even has a website that you can go to it's really great and you can learn more about how to store your fruits and vegetables how to pick them at the store the best way to just serve them the best way to prepare them to get the most health benefits it's a really great book and you don't have to learn all the stuff overnight i didn't learn it overnight it's a gradual process but once you're interested in it it really it really begins to happen you know you're noticing articles in the newspaper you're getting books at the library you're watching good films if you go on  there's ted talks on food which are really really good and interesting and thought provoking provocative i should say  has a ted talk that's very interesting jamie oliver chef dan barber who is a chef in new york in the hudson river valley he's really knowledgeable and interesting ok i think that's everything let's see if we get everything in there is anyone allergic to peanuts now ok so the two the two best tools in the kitchen are your hands just so you know so i talk about all those things you can buy for your kitchen but honestly that the best tools in the kitchen are your hands when you're when you're preparing swiss chard and kale you can wash it and then just take your hand and pull it right down the stem and all the leaves will come off you don't have to stand there with a knife trying to get it off  and kids can do it husbands can do it partners you know you don't need and you can smell the sesame oil that i'm putting into this if you want to make a kale salad and you're not so sure that you'd like a rock ale if you buy the dinosaur kale that's the best one it like i did this and then you massage the dressing into it it breaks down the kale and makes it really palatable so so this is the salad when you say this is a rainbow tyler i mean this is amazing ok so that's the raw thai salad so we'll put that on a plate in a minute i'm sure i'll find it when we're packing up so the last recipe that i have for you tonight is a spinach pear salad and i really like this for the winter it's really great i did a workshop for whole foods and we did winter salads and there's so many salads can make in the winter that are just more satisfying than the typical salad that you would make in the summer and so you have spinach in it which is a really rich source of fido nutrients and also pear which again has square citizen and fido nutrients as well all these all of these things are really good for heart health one cup of spinach has four point three grams of fiber and i would recommend that you buy organic kale the other thing too that i think is important as human beings is that we understand how food makes us feel so i always try to encourage people to pay attention after you have a meal how do you feel afterwards are you tired i used to lethargic do you have a headache do you feel bloated you know how is your digestion it's really important that we also ask our children to be in touch with how they've food makes them feel how are you thinking you know like it does you have brain fog after a particular meal or are you having a hard time concentrating so i think you know sometimes we're again moving so fast that we're not realizing that we might be eating a food that doesn't make us feel so great on the same sheet as the king last salad i mean they came up peel off this is for cooking light and again i like it because you can even change it up and make it even more nutritionally  dense so what i'm going to do with i'm going to make the dressing first and then i'll put the spinach in it and then we can try everything together that we've made so we can do some of the euphoria and i guess we can try the thai salad and we can also try the spinach salad at the end and i'll be open to any questions that you might have so this is really easy to make so it has a little bit of water and again this is the eden brand that i love so much the the red wine vinegar it's really good to one and a half teaspoon and then i have some all of oil all of the oil should be stored in the cupboard away from the light you know you shouldn't keep a clear bottle out on the counter i buy my this is just for me to use for demo's it's an old cocoa bottle but to make hot chocolate but what i do is i use this for traveling but i all my olive oil is in dark green bottles so you want it to be stored that way away from the heat away from the light so putting in some olive oil and then i have some local honey i got this at the the new boston public market  so if you cannot have a salad dressings with vinegar in them there are lots of recipes on line if you google salad dressing without vinegar and i know i owe you some recipes janet  that they are available you can make it with t he needs with ground you know the ground sesame seeds you can make it with teeny you can use yogurt there are lots of alternatives to making other salad dressings without using vinegar i've learned to put the lids on so i don't knock something ok so where do we leave off black pepper so i just want to show you how easy it is like when you put the mustard in it just kind of a mild dressing so again you don't have to buy the bottled dressing it just transforms it in this is just addressing that we just made for the salad so again i'm getting ready for company i have the saw made in the bowl i'm going to put in my salad ingredients on top and then i'll toss it just before dinner when we're ready to sit down and have dinner spinach this is all been washed and the baby spinach again if you're trying to get people to eat spinach you're better off trying to use the baby spinach so i have two ingredients that i need to  so i didn't bring my wooden cutting board with me but i will give you a little secret if you have a wooden cutting board at home and you want to make sure it's disinfectant you can use a white vinegar on it just take it and put it on a paper towel or a clean cloth and wipe down the board with white vinegar and also there's something about wooden cutting boards they they also disinfect themselves so you just want to you know keep them clean and treat them well and you'll have them for years they're really great so we're putting in a little bit of red onion in here this is just a red onion that's been peeled and cut in half and what i recommend i don't know if you all know how to cut an onion but you want to cut it down in half and you want to keep this and here and that holds it together so if you're if you're dicing it you cut through this part here once and then you go down this way and then you go this way and this will hold it all together all right so that and it gives you a stable foundation so you don't want to be cutting this way i've seen people do that you again you want everything to be stable and and safe so here's a red onion and you know how you you do onions and they just get they cause you to cry and sometimes it's stinging when i was doing the the king what today i was using white onions and it was this is a bust pair this has been washed and this is what we're going to be putting into the salad and what you can do with the paris in the winter if you want a warm salad you can take the pears and slice them really thin and saute them in a in a pan with a little bit of butter in olive oil and caramelize them and put them on the top of your salad so tell me about some other things that you might come up with that you could add to the salad that i'm making now yeah you could what other if that's a you kept spinach what else could you put in here with pear with red onion and this dressing can you think that some other things ginger yeah you could put some ginger in the dressing yeah absolutely so you know this is just a base of a recipe but i think what i want to do is just encourage people to like you know follow your senses and really listen to yourself what do i feel like having in your packet are some ideas for healthy snacks and their cat and they're in different categories there is crunchy salty creamy again we get out of touch with what we really want and we find ourselves and lastly eating because we didn't do a gut check you know we didn't check in the other thing too that i try to encourage my clients to do is they really hungry you know ask yourself the question before you go to the fridge or the sna another type of food we need nourishment from a friend or where we're just bored or we're just really lonely so how often does that happen  would like to ask you some questions what are the things that you struggle with and in taking care of yourself what is things that are difficult for you to put yourself first or to eat food or to prepare and what are the ages of your children five nine eleven thirteen so one of the things that i would recommend and i gave you some of those recipes in your packet today is to make kid friendly food so you know like sometimes people think that because i'm a health coach that they have to be perfect with their food and i just look at them and say if you're around the table and you've cooked your food that's a really good thing so maybe you have a night where they each get to choose one thing that they really like you know maybe it's a mac and cheese i've given you a recipe for a healthy mac and cheese do you eat a particular way at home like  mediators so there is a great recipe in there for a healthy mac and cheese a healthier version that's made with pureed but a nut squash and they won't even know that the squashes in there they'll just assume it's orange because you used powder they won't even know and you don't need to tell them right you just make it and serve it to them if they like mac and cheese there's also a recipe for a healthier version of shepherd's pie which you can make with grass fed ground beef and fresh peas and chopped up carrots and then instead of mashed potato you use some white potato but you mash an entire head cauliflower and it is so yummy and it makes the house mel so good and i don't know i have served that show a lot of teenagers and they just love it and i cooked  for psychiatrically disabled young adults over in arlington once a month and i used to do these recipes with them and they had no idea i was putting butternut squash into the mac and cheese they had no idea it was called the flour on the topping so there's a lot of things that you can do i know jerry seinfeld is a just because i felt she did that book about you know how to sneak vegetables into your kids food but even like a tomato sauce if you chop up the carrots fine enough and add it to your tomato sauce when you're making a spaghetti sauce they won't even know the carrots are in there there's another recipe in there from allie kreiger and your packet for sloppy joes and so you know there are things that and again i think it it's wise to get them in the kitchen preparing food because then they all of a sudden there seems to be a transition that occurs and they start being more willing to try things but to cook with four kids would be a nightmare so what i recommend to parents is to choose one child to cook with and you have that one on one time and maybe another day you cook with another child or on the weekend when that's less stressful you know when you're not dealing with homework assignments and everything because i know it's demanding but it's really amazing what can happen i have a great core nola recipe on my website that's a fun thing to make in a big bowl in the kitchen and you have everybody is adding to the granola what they like that's a great thing to do too but making kid friendly food maybe you buy chicken tenders and you bake them in the oven you make your own maybe you make your own fish sticks you know that kind of thing but to to make kid friendly food maybe you have a burger night maybe you have a pizza night but you can figure out other ways to make like friday night in our house when my daughter was growing up and now she's thirty five we watched these crazy shows on t v you know full house and family matters and we made our own pizzas and what came out of that is we were using better ingredients than ordering out and it was a relief there was something that she still to this day talks about and she'd have friends over and we'd make pizzas in the kitchen would be a mess but it was really great bonding time so i would encourage you to think about that and look at the healthy snack lists that i've given you today and see if there's anything on there but start to get your kids to think about what is it that i really that i really want to eat and you know what they want the cheetos and they want all these things i mean i think again it's you have to pick and choose your battles so ninety percent of the time i say to people if you can eat healthy eat healthy but there are certain foods that i'm just not willing to bring into the house and if they get it somewhere else well so be it so they hey have it when they go over to sally's house or whatever or heather sauce but you know just try to eventually change the mindset that you know you really want to be a good athlete and if you really want to be a good athlete then you need to put the right things into your body teenage girls love to talk about their skin and how they look so i try to you know find something that is going to resonate with them that they're going to want to they're going to want to look at foods differently chopping up vegetables and having them ready in the fridge that they think can have their own crew to taste so to speak when they come home maybe put out a container of you know things like that that they can whip up their own their own creations with been bought or can put out dates and raisins and knots and they can stuff the dates with peanut butter almond butter and add things to that you know just to try and get them to eat differently but it's not going to be anything that you're going to change overnight the other thing that i say to people who are cooking for their families is to not be what you call it short order cook you know you key you're going to run yourself ragged if you're trying to prepare a meal for all the different tastes and likes in your family you know the rule should be and i'm a little rigid on this but this is what i've cook tonight and if you don't like it then maybe you can take the whole grain bread and make yourself a peanut butter sandwich but that's the only other alternative and eventually i think things will change it just takes and sometimes it takes seventeen to twenty introductions of a food before a child will actually eat it and that's a lot of introductions so just take a bite and go make your sandwich yeah it could be seven to twenty to seventeen to twenty years also so any other questions about other things do you struggle with i hope that's helpful yes ye i remember not wanting to get up in the morning because i was making lunches and i think you know doing a search on the internet for a healthy lunch options sometimes can inspire you you know sometimes if we just have  new ideas it makes it a lot easier but i find even for my husband and i we a lot of times will make a salad at night for the next day because in the morning we're just so busy but i think you know it's at nighttime when you're low energy to to do that so it's just coming up with new ideas there are some snack ideas on the snack list and maybe you might even be able to expand those it's one of the handouts at staple together  but there's a healthy snack list in there and you might be able to expand on that for lunch options and again i think that even these  know like a couple of those in a lunch box might give a child some energy that they really need we're going to try those in a minute it's this big glob that's in here but those are really good in there and sunflower seeds maple syrup cinnamon vanilla a little bit of salt but those are really those are really yummy so here are the peanuts that can go on top of the salad and i'm going to let you come up in just to help yourself with the samples and then before we do that though are there any other things that people struggle with you're all set what about grocery shopping where do you shop trader joe's where do you do your grocery shopping yeah that's great i love that i love those markets all right i think shopping from what i hear from a lot of people is shopping is such a task you know it's one thing to be cooking the meals but to plan the meals to plan the shopping list to bring home the groceries unload them prepped the vegetables you know wash them put them away clean the refrigerator you know all of those things that really adds up with a great deal of time and so you know they don't know how these delivery services to that some people are using they'll make a list and then the grocery store will deliver their vegetables for them but it there's a great deal of planning so i appreciate that i think to you know just having the staples in your house that you know you can pull together a meal and i've given you a handout that's how to cook on a busy schedule by dr mark hyman and he has a very busy man he does a lot of cooking for his own family and just knowing how to whip up a meal and you know twenty five twenty minutes twenty five minutes stir fries are really quick right to make and you know you don't have to use a lot of meat either right for a stir fry so just having those staples in the house i like to have in my house you know jarred tomatoes i like to have canned beans without any b p a in the can liner so again that's why i like the eden brand be and you know some basic staples some gluten free pasta obviously i have all the fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator jars of artichokes all of us in the fridge you know things that i can just quickly grab and throw together a meal a quick meal that's a really good thing to be able to do and like the other night you know i didn't do a gourmet meal i did a piece of cod fish that was on sale a whole foods some broccoli and some honey squash that i had bought at sienna farms was a very simple meal so just thinking about whole grains how you can incorporate those and she your diet and you know whether it's brown rice or keen wa having those healthy fats on your plate but again always asking yourself the question where are the greens so  so where do you go to buy your groceries right so you know once once you buy these clam shell containers and if you open them up and you see that the greens are decaying inside that means that they're creating bacteria so you really want your greens to look really fresh when you open up the container but if they're broadening and you know how you can get that smell that older than you probably should toss it so i find that i don't wash a lot of my greens unless i'm going to use them right away and so the the the right way to store them would be like either in these clam shells but let's say you buy a big head of romaine lettuce than what i would do is wrap that in paper towel and then put it in as the black bag and it will keep it longer so you want  you know the same thing with a big head of kale you want to close that bag up because when the cold hits the greens it'll make them well so you can make things last longer and again that world's healthiest  food book that i was telling you about tells you how to store your fruits and vegetables and it's really really helpful to know how to do you know today when i do kitchen make over so usually give people like oh whole sheet of how to store their fruits and vegetables so use the crisper draws use the plastic bags you know that kind of thing yes do a recipe my card is over there if you want to email me i can send you a recipe for granola bars that are homemade i just i am very mixed feelings about granola bars and protein bars they are good in a pinch you know like if you just there's no other alternative but they're kind of like a glorified candy bar so ioseph try to encourage people to make their own trail mix and then you're not getting all the sugar that's in those so again if you're traveling to a foreign country or you're on a plane or you know my i might grab some be kind bars and my daughter was in thailand she traveled would be kind bars and they were a lifesaver to our so you know those kinds of things just to think about that making your own fan it's another processed and refined food but when you kids are like with a backpack going to school you know you got to find i would just always look at the ingredients and buy a high quality snack bar or protein bar so i also knew i'd be glad to if you in the e mail just put down the wellington school and i'll know to open up the mail but i'd be more than happy to share that so why don't we come and get some bulls i'm going to do these for you and i gets thank you very much for your attention and being such a great