Health for Life Cooking to Start the New Year

Happy New Year! What a great time to recommit to excellent health! Commit to high nutrient plant based meals that will add health to your life. Let Health for Life cooking teach you how.

The menu for January classes will include:

Chick Pea Noodle Soup

A delicious alternative to traditional Chicken Noodle Soup that is loaded with fiber and micro-nutrients from chick peas and a lot of veggies. It is also gluten free because the noodles are made from zucchini! I'm really excited about his one! The strips of zucchini , when cooked just right, take on a soft texture that make perfect noodles. The broth is flavored with a chicken style seasoning that gives it a chicken noodle soup flavor. It's hot and satisfying on a cold winter night.

Chick Pea Rice & Broccoli Casserole

One of my favorite dishes as a kid was my grandma's chicken and rice casserole. If you can make chicken noodle soup with chick peas, why couldn't you make chicken and rice casserole with chick peas? Well, you can! I was very excited when this dish came together quite nicely and my husband announced, "I like this stuff!" That's pretty good coming from him without me even asking "What do you think?" With a creamy white sauce that is dairy, soy and gluten free, this dish is at the top of my comfort food list. It's also high in nutrients with GOMBS: greens, onions, mushrooms, beans, and seeds. GOMBS are Dr. Furhmans top 5 super foods. He says that they "fight cancer with every bite!" If you get all of them in one meal, I consider it a 5 star meal.

Purple Power Smoothie

One of the best ways to get a lot of nutrients from green vegetables into a quick and easy meal is with a green smoothie. In other words, a fruit smoothie that includes green leafy vegetables.

Blending greens, as oppose to eating a salad, breaks down the plant fibers so small that you dramatically increase the amount of nutrients that get absorbed into your cells. When I started drinking daily smoothies in 2006, my nails and teeth got stronger, my hair didn't come out as much, and they just tasted and felt so good to me. It felt lke my cells were soaking up thousands of powerful disease protective nutrients. Green smoothies are also a great way to help clean out the holiday gunk!

And there you have it! Health for Life cooking to start the new year. Class dates are Tuesday January 10 and Wednesday January 18. Hope to see you in class!

To register, contact April at health4life07@yahoo.com.

My Holiday Challenge - Be Sugar Free!

There is just something about the sight of a tin of chocolates or a plate of home baked cookies during the holidays that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. They look so appealing and taste so delicious! But unfortunately, after I've eaten 5 or 6 (or even just one for that matter) I don't feel so well. A headache quickly comes on, and if I've eaten too many, my back starts to ache. Oh yes, and the instant sugar buzz! Then the voices in my head start saying "you really shouldn't have eaten that." I begin to think about what all that sugar is doing to my body including weakened immune system, calcium depletion, increased acid, and oh my poor pancreas has to work overtime to get that sugar out of my blood stream and into the cells which eventually give me too much energy.....and it's usually at 2 am. Funny how all those things didn't matter BEFORE I partook of the forbidden goodies!

So is all of that really worth the 30 seconds of pleasure? Absolutely not! That is why this year I'm committing to staying processed sugar free through out the holidays, until 2012! I'm also including all so-called "healthy" sugars including agave, maple syrup, honey, and any type of granulated sugar. Click here to find out why.

As the years have gone by and my diet has gotten healthier, I've lost the desire for sugary foods for the most part. It's just this time of year, when well meaning neighbors bring treats and the front desk at work is cluttered with an assortment of cookies and chocolates, that I feel this little tug and a voice inside me that says "It's the holidays! Have a little fun!" Well, I have plenty of fun through out the holidays eating great food, feeling great and enjoying some of my healthy whole food date/nut candies and cookies that don't make me feel horrible and keep me up all night.

This past week I committed to both my Health for Life class and my Bosch class and now I'm telling the world! I would love to have some company! Feel free to post your commitment. To help you out, I've posted a great recipes for Christmas Truffles here.

Happy Holidays and best of health to all in 2012!

April