Upcoming Event - "Beauty from the Inside Out"

Next Thursday, February 3rd, I'll be speaking at an Image Impact Workshop hosted by Dr. Kurtis Martin. I'll be talking about my ideas for how to draw beauty from the inside out through the practice of eating well, and then personal trainer TJ Bizzarri will be doing a mini workout demo and Dr. Martin will talk about his practice and his commitment to the holistic health of his patients. If you live in Cincinnati and can join us (or know someone who would like to), here are the details:

Image Impact Workshop

Sponsored by Kurtis W. Martin, M.D.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

6355 E. Kemper Road, Cincinnati, OH

7-9PM

Reserve your spot by calling 513-469-0300

I really do believe that beauty begins within. On one hand, you can lose weight by eating fewer calories, no matter where those calories come from. But there is a vibrancy and vitality that is called forth only by eating really good quality food that provides a wide range of nutrients. A low-calorie diet comprised of junk food may take off some pounds, but it simply will never produce that healthy glow we all seek. Do you notice when someone appears to be lit from within? That's the magic of really high quality food. It proves that the old adage "you are what you eat" is true after all.

What do I have in common with a celebrity chef?

Media personality Amy Tobin

Believe me, I'm fully aware that I have very little in common with big-time celebrity food personalities like Cat Cora, Paula Deen, Sara Moulton and Ming Tsai. Nonetheless, I learned this week that we do, in fact, all have one thing in common...

We've all been guests on Amy Tobin's weekly radio show, Amy's Table!

One week ago, I had the fun experience of sitting down with Amy in the Q102 studio here in Cincinnati to tape a segment for her show which aired on Sunday morning. It was a blast and I can't imagine a more gracious host than Amy!

Amy is a food and lifestyle consultant, a well known media personality, author of Amy's Table: Food for Families & Friends, host of Amy's Table on Q102, and Culinary Director at EQ, the culinary school at the Party Source in Northern Kentucky.

We talked about Nourish and the various services we offer, including Nourish@Home. Amy was particularly intrigued by the kitchen makeover service in which we go into a client's kitchen and spend about a half-day reorganizing the pantry and refrigerator to support her goals for eating well. We make choices about which foods stay, and which ones need to go. Then we organize all the keepers in ways that make it easier to find what they need to make healthful meals and snacks. 

After the show, Amy asked if I'd do a guest blog post for her called "A Healthy Meal from a Madeover Pantry" - and so I did. Here's a link.

If you'd like to hear the two-part interview, here's a link to the page with the .mp3 recording. It's posted under January 24th and there are two separate links with my name  - just click each one to listen.

And in case you'd rather hear from some REAL celebrities, here are links to the interviews with the chefs I mentioned above:

Cat Cora
Paula Deen
Sara Moulton
Ming Tsai

Enjoy!

Announcing Nourish@Home

I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! After months of planning and preparation, we're officially launching Nourish@Home, our newest service offering designed to help you thrive.

I love the time I spend teaching people how rewarding it can be to cook for themselves and to enjoy delicious healthful food every day...and we'll still be doing plenty of that around here! But I'm delighted to announce that we can now support your quest to eat well in another very tangible way.

Nourish@Home is an in-home meal prep service designed to fill your fridge with a week's worth of healthful food, so you can enjoy more peaceful evenings!  

 

We'll plan, shop for, and prepare a week's worth of decadently healthful food in your kitchen. 

Experience the peace of mind that comes with knowing dinner is taken care of. I've included all the details about it, as well as a special introductory offer below. I hope you'll give it a spin.

Are you ready to be Nourished??

The Details
The Menu, FAQs, and Pricing

Check out our menu:With items like Thyme Scented Salmon, Pan-Roasted Broccoli with Lemon Thyme Browned Butter, and Scalloped White and Sweet Potatoes on the menu, you'll have no trouble finding delicious food that meets your family's needs. Have a special request? Just ask! Click here to view our fall/winter menu.

Get the answers you need:
Click here to have a look at our FAQs. If you don't find the answer to your question there, just email us and we'd be glad to answer it for you.

Review our Pricing:
The service is priced at $249/week*  but you'll enjoy special introductory pricing of just $199* the first time you try it!
* plus cost of groceries

Book Your Cook Date
Get ready to be Nourished!

Book your date to be Nourished!

 

When you're ready to schedule your first cook date, just email us your contact information and the date you'd like us to come and we'll get back to you to finalize the details! Once your first cook date is scheduled, you'll make your menu selections & complete a short online form providing some background information about your food preferences and your kitchen.

 

 

After that, you can pour yourself a cup of coffee and relax, because dinner's taken care of!

Beef Daube (because everything sounds better in French)

If the words "beef stew" make you think of an unhealthy concoction in a can, you're missing the boat! The French have long known that the cure for the winter blahs involves a bubbling pot of beef, slow cooking with vegetables, red wine, and stock. Pair this version of their traditional "Boeuf Daube" with a loaf of crusty bread and a bright green salad (one made with spinach, sliced oranges, and toasted walnuts in a citrus vinaigrette sounds about right) and you have the perfect dinner to warm you from the inside out. God bless the French.

Beef Daube
adapted from Cooking Light 2004 

serves 6

Ingredients 
1 Tbsp. olive oil
3-4  garlic cloves, crushed
1  (2 lb.) boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 2-inch cubes
1  tsp. kosher  salt
1/2  tsp.  freshly ground black pepper
1  c.  red wine
2  c. chopped carrot
1 1/2  c.  chopped sweet onion
1  c.  beef stock or beef broth
1  Tbsp.  tomato paste 
1 tsp.   chopped fresh rosemary
1  tsp.  chopped fresh thyme
1  (14.5-oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained
1  bay leaf 

3 c.   hot cooked whole wheat  noodles

Directions 

1. Preheat oven to 300°.

2. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over low heat. Add garlic; cook 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove garlic with a slotted spoon; set aside. 

3. Increase heat to medium-high and add beef to pan. Cook 5 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove beef from pan. Add wine to pan, and bring to a boil, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add garlic, beef, salt, pepper, carrot, and next 7 ingredients (through bay leaf); bring to a boil.

4. Cover and bake at 300° for 2 1/2 hours or until beef is tender. Discard bay leaf. Serve over noodles.

Note: You can also make this in a slow cooker/crockpot. Simply complete steps 1-3 and transfer mixture to the slow cooker. Cover and cook on HIGH for about 5 hours.

Give yourself the gift of time

I started this new year off with a bang! At least in my head I did. I was so ready for January 1st to arrive so things could be swept clean, organized, and returned to normalcy after the blessed craziness of the holidays. I'm one of those people who loves (LOVES) to put up the Christmas decorations the first weekend of December while humming carols and sipping hot cocoa...but I also love taking them DOWN and restoring order to our home. There's something so naturally invigorating about starting off the year that it motivates me to do all sorts of organizing projects. (Apparently I'm not alone - have you noticed all the organizing materials on display in the stores this month?)

Throughout the holidays I could feel myself making a mental list of all the things I wanted to do. In my head I'd be doing them "on January 1st." My mental list got longer, and longer, and longer until it was painfully clear there was no human way to accomplish all of it in one day. No problem, I thought. I'll give myself the whole first week of January to get it done. And then the list got longer still. 

At some point, (still in December) I really started to get stressed about how much I wanted to accomplish and how BEHIND I already felt, before I'd even started. I could feel myself brimming with anxiety and so I tried to explain how I was feeling to my husband, the best listener on earth. 

He looked at me, took a deep breath, and calmly asked me why everything on my list had to be done the first week of January. 

Well! Because it just does...have you looked at this house lately? Seriously. Humph. After ranting around in a fit of exasperation for a few minutes, I finally took a breath and actually processed his question. Why DID it all have to be done the first week of January?

And do you know what? I had absolutely no good reason why.

Right then and there, I gave myself permission to extend my self-imposed deadline for my very long to-do list. I got realistic with myself about when I'd actually find the 2 hours I needed to purge our files, the hour I'd need to clean the refrigerator, the 4 hours I'd need to really go through our closet. I searched my calendar for a few free days to hold my own annual planning retreat for my business and blocked them off. I penciled in dates to sort and store outgrown children's clothes, to research a new software program I need, and to organize the toy closet. You get the idea. I gave myself some time. No one else could do it for me.

Isn't it always like that? We have an idea and want to execute it right now. We want immediate results. But we each get 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. And sometimes, if we can just take a breath and lift our heads up for a moment, we can give ourselves the gift of time to accomplish all that we desire without losing our minds in the process. No matter what you've resolved to do this year, will you give yourself the time you really need to accomplish it? No one else can do it for you.

Snow day = Soup day!

It's a snowy day here...the kind that makes you want to cozy up inside, light a fire, and make something warm and nourishing for dinner using ingredients you have on hand. Soup fits the bill perfectly if you keep a reasonably well-stocked pantry. I always try to keep cans of beans and chicken broth on hand and chicken breasts in the freezer. You could always substitute a different kind of cheese or eliminate an herb or garnish if you don't have it handy. But if you're up for following a recipe,  here's one of my favorites for you to try on your next snow day. I'm off to don my hat and mittens, retrieve my kindergartener from the bus and prepare for an afternoon of snow-themed fun!


White Chicken Chili 
adapted from Cooking Light 2004
 
serves 8

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 c. finely chopped onion
• 2  garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2  tsp. dried oregano
• 1  tsp. ground coriander
• 2  (4.5 oz) cans chopped green chiles, undrained
• 1  c.  water
• 2  (15.5 oz.) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (I like Bush's)
• 1  (14 oz.) can chicken broth or chicken stock
• 1/2  tsp. Tabasco sauce 
• 1  c. (about 4 oz.) shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 1/2  c.  chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/2  c.  chopped green onions

Preparation

Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan; cook 10 minutes or until browned, stirring frequently.

Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add onion to pan; sauté 6 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently. Add garlic; sauté 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in cumin, dried oregano, and coriander; sauté 1 minute. Stir in chiles; reduce heat to low, and cook 10 minutes, partially covered. Add the chicken, water, cannellini beans, and broth; bring to a simmer. 

Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Stir in hot sauce. Ladle 1 cup of chili into each of 8 bowls; sprinkle each serving with 2 tablespoons cheese, 1 tablespoon cilantro, and 1 tablespoon green onions.

KISS-able Meals to Cook at Home

Everywhere I've been this week, people have been abuzz with talk of resolutions. I wrote earlier about how important it is to take it one step (or one bite!) at a time when it comes to tackling those long lists of commitments designed to build the "new you". Taking on too much at once is a recipe for failure. So, we'll tackle just one change at a time.

Even then, if we over-complicate the plan to change that one behavior, we're doomed to fall short.  And when we fall short, we often just abandon the whole idea and go back to our old ways. So, to help you stay on track, I offer you one very important piece of advice.  

KISS - keep it simple, sweetheart.

Let's look at an example. Imagine you've resolved to cook at home more often. Many MANY of my clients begin coaching programs with this goal in mind, and it's one I wholeheartedly support. But here's the thing. Cooking at home does not have to mean Gourmet Tuesday! In fact, I often tell people who are just beginning to cook at home that if it requires a recipe it's probably too complicated for a weeknight! Seriously! K-I-S-S.

Here's what I mean. Let's say you're on Day 2 of your New Year's Resolution and to find inspiration, you're flipping through the January issue of your favorite cooking magazine.  You see a meal that looks terrific. You decide to make it tonight, to begin your first week of "more cooking at home." With side dishes, it involves three recipes, 24 ingredients (18 of which you don't already have on hand), and several hours of prep time. Are you going to do this every night? Are you going to do this even ONCE?


So, how do we KISS this dinner? Like this:


Grilled salmon           (topped with chopped fresh herbs)
Baked sweet potato  (topped with a dollop of  Greek Yogurt)
Steamed broccoli      (drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil)


Now that's a healthy meal you can prepare in about 15 minutes - and by doing the little things in parenthesis, which don't even require a recipe, you can take the whole meal from good to great. You can cook this way routinely and save those delicious but complicated recipes for those days when you have more time to devote to playing in the kitchen.


Try it. Test me. See if you can cook at home more often without even getting out a cookbook. Discover for yourself that simple is better. And when you do? You might just want to kiss me.


 

Bite-sized resolutions

Happy new year! I hope you enjoyed some well-deserved rest amid family and friends during the holidays. (I certainly did, thus the brief hiatus from blogging!) If you're anything like me, now that you're getting back in your usual routine, your mind is full of ideas to make this year the best you've ever had. I've been jotting notes to myself left and right just to keep track of all the goals I have for the year ahead!

If you're like most people, your resolutions for 2011 will include something related to getting healthier. Have you been in any stores this week and seen the floor to ceiling displays of vitamins and "diet aids"?! It's overwhelming!

If you've resolved to improve your health this year, I applaud you! Just one thought. Please don't try to tackle every idea in your head all at once. To preserve your sanity and GREATLY improve your odds of success,  will you commit to first changing just ONE behavior?  Choose ONE thing you know you need to do to be healthier and do it. (Drink water. Eat vegetables, Walk. Get more sleep. Whatever it may be.) Then, put all your focus on only that ONE change for a while. Please don't give up if it's harder than you expected (hint: it WILL be harder than you expected - change is ALWAYS hard.) Keep at it until you've hard-wired that first new behavior into your life, and then take on the second one. Not a moment sooner.

No matter how big your goal, change happens one small bite at a time. So pace yourself - you don't need to change everything in the first week of January! 2011 will be here all year.