Asian-Inspired Grainy Salad

Inevitably, when I discuss meals and healthy eating with clients, at least a handful of them ask me what I eat. The same is true when I meet new people in my personal life. People always ask, "do you always eat healthy?", or on the flip side, "do you ever eat chocolate or junk food??".

The truth is that I don't even know anymore. I think I eat " normally," but my husband tells me I eat healthfully all the time (or most of the time). Irregardless, I am happy with how I eat, my health is good, and so are my energy levels. Best you can ask for, wouldn't you say?

So what do I eat? Well, maybe it's time I get back to sharing some of our favorite recipes (and some new ones we've been trying).

This Asian-inspired salad is based on a recipe from this cookbook, but tweaked to the point of being quite different. It's a great grainy salad, perfect for lunches and packs a satisfying load of protein and fibre. It's got some crunch to it with a soy-ginger flavour scheme and hints of sweetness from dried cranberries. Oh - and it looks way better than it does in this photo.

Ingredients
1.5 cups cooked rice, bulgur, quinoa, or any combination of cooked grains
Raw sugar snap peas
1 sweet green bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup lightly toasted raw, unsalted peanuts
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 can rinsed chickpeas
1 small can sliced water chestnuts
1 lb extra firm tofu
3 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Dash hot pepper flakes
Fresh parsley (optional)
Fresh cilantro (optional)

How to:
1. Open and drain tofu. Chop into cubes (roughly the size of dice). Place in dish and combine with 1 tbsp of the soya sauce as well as all of the garlic and ginger. Cover and refrigerate while the remainder of the salad is assembled.

2. In a large bowl, combine cooked grain with chickpeas, pepper, water chestnuts, and cranberries.

3. Toast peanuts in dry non-stick frying pan on stovetop over medium heat. Toast until just fragrant. Add to salad.

4. Wash sugars snap peas and peel strings (as best you can without spending too much time on it). Add to salad.

5. Add marinated tofu to salad and toss to combine.

6. In small dish or jar, combine remaining 2 tbsp soya sauce with honey, cider vinegar and pepper flakes. Drizzle over salad and toss to combine. Garnish with freshly chopped cilantro and or parsley. A

Great served on a bed of baby spinach leaves.

Makes about 8 servings.

Years to Remember

Remember school yearbooks? How expensive they seemed to a high school student? But how incredible they were when you finally got them? So shiny and new and starring you and all your best friends? And then there was signing them! Nothing made you feel more proud and popular than having the inside covers inked up with messages from your friends, crushes, acquaintances, as well as the odd note from some random person you barely knew.

Well, in our home, yearbooks have recently taken on a whole new meaning. After realizing that I had a billion digital photos with which I was doing nothing, I decided it was time to make a photobook. Sure, I'd tried scrapbooking in the past, but it's tedious and reminds me of why I wasn't an art major.

My (incredibly artistic and gifted) sister-in-law was always creating fabulous photobooks documenting her travels and adventures. I loved looking at them, as well as the idea of ACTUALLY using the photos she had taken.

2010 was a pretty big year for us, with the birth of our Bean, as well as some very sad losses. I had taken photos regularly throughout the year since my husband and given me a DSLR as a graduation gift that January. So, what better year to start!

That first year, I used Photolab. They had a deal on and it seemed easy enough, so I gave it a whirl. It turned out decently, but I'm even happier with the way the 2011 yearbook turned out from MyPublisher.

This year I intended to use MyPublisher again because I was happy with their product and they always have deals on. When I was about to check out, having made a 2012 yearbook in the same style as the 2011 edition, I realized I could save a whole bunch of money by upgrading the cover and paper. OKAY!

The fancier cover and paper are awesome. We're super happy with the finished product! So happy, in fact, that I rushed to meet the sale deadline to order a photobook from our trip to Sao Miguel last winter.

If you're thinking about making a 2013 yearbook, start now by following these steps to save you time next January:

1. Take photos regularly and upload them to your computer or web album.

2. Colour correct, crop, edit as you go. I always skip this step, so when you look at my photobooks up close, it is blatantly obvious that I work in nutrition, NOT graphic design!

3. Organize your photos by date. I like to separate by month.

4. If you want to keep track of important dates, do so electronically or use ONE calendar/agenda to do so. It's no fun hunting around for a date in a year's time.

Oh, and I'm so proud to say that I started doing these yearbooks before I ever saw the idea on Pinterest or anywhere else!

Ears make everything cuter

That's my philosophy when it comes to baby and toddler clothes and it seems like that's a popular opinion when you look in stores such as Carter's.

I always love to knit hats for friends that are having babies. There's something about making a little knitted hat for a wee little head that is just so much fun.

I really love making rolled brim hats because it makes the size adjustable and it's easier for kids to put them on. Bean loves her hats, so she's regularly pulling them on by herself (and taking them off).

Over the past couple of years, I've made Bean at least 10 hats of this style. Some have pom-poms, some have flowers, some look like pumpkins, and she even has a Santa hat and a bumblebee hat.

This Christmas, a friend of my husband became a father to a pair of teeny tiny twin girls. (He already had a daughter roughly Bean's age, so the poor man is pretty outnumbered around his place!) As soon as I heard that the girls had been born, I rushed to the store (ok, I waited till the day after Boxing Day) to buy some wool to set to work on some hats. I decided to make one pink, one purple, and to make a striped pink and purple hat for their big sister.

The hats were cute, but I wanted to up the cute factor just a little more, so I knitted up some ears and trimmed them with a crocheted border. The striped one and the purple one are finished - I just have to sew the ears onto the tiny pink hat. I know I'm not quite done, but I just couldn't wait any longer to share them with you!

A Snack Fit for a Toddler

.... Or anyone else who likes to play with their food!

This is one of Bean's favorite snacks: fruity kabobs.

Inspired by the cover of this cookbook, these kabobs are a hit around our house and they're even kinda fun to make.

Plus, if you want to get all educational here, I suppose you can teach patterns with these kabobs.

All you need is a stick - Popsicle sticks work. I used these weird wooden stir sticks that we've had since our Jack & Jill five years ago. They're skinnier than a Popsicle stick, but the ends are blunt, which makes them seem safer than a bamboo kabob skewer. Plus they can be easily snipped with scissors so that I can shorten them to pack them in Bean's lunch (I don't have containers that fit the full-size version well).

The food is the fun part! Melon works really well, as do grapes and strawberries. The cover photo features kiwi slices and pineapple chunks, too. Actually the cookbook calls for a drizzle of melted chocolate to dress up the fruit. However, we haven't taken that step for a couple reasons: 1. It makes the whole task of making them a little more cumbersome. 2. I'm pretty sure Bean would lick the chocolate off and then demand more.

In place of the chocolate drizzle, we've been using mini marshmallows between some of the fruit pieces. They get a little gooey from the fruit, but Bean seems to enjoy peeling them off, and they're a nice change as she eats her way through the kabob.

What will you be skewering on your next fruit kabob?

"Lunch-able" at Home

Around our place, we call "snacky" lunches "lunchables." They're quick to prepare, Bean loves them, and so do we! (I call that a win-win-win!)

Lunch-ables don't have to be pricey boxes of highly-processed food - they can be anything you want them to be!

Red, yellow & orange bell peppers, English cucumber, celery, Cortland apple, canteloupe, Stonemill cranberry pumpkin seed multigrain baguette, cheesey bread sticks, marble low fat mild cheddar cheese, unsalted raw peanuts, raw California almonds.

Our lunchables at home are inspired by the 4 food groups. Here's some basic instructions to get you on the right track:

1) Start with veggies and fruit, and place them on a large plate (or in a large container if you need it to-go).

2) Shoot for the rainbow! Try to incorporate as many colours as possible. More colours = more nutrients and more visual appeal.

3) Dietary restrictions aside, try to hit all 4 food groups ( veg & fruit, grains, milk & alternatives, meat & alternatives).

4) Avoid high-fat and overly sweet or salty snack foods. Try to keep it fresh (mostly) and be generous. That way, you probably won't crave any sweet desserts after (and if you do, you can make it small since your hunger is mostly satisfied).

5) When it comes time to eat your lunchable, try to eat some of each food rather than focusing on one food group, then moving to the next. This will make sure you EAT the variety of food that you prepared. For example, we prepare Bean's plate in front of her, giving her one of each food to give her a little sampler. If she wants more afterward, she can have more of her choosing (in Bean's case, it's always more veg). For us, we start with two of each thing and go from there.

Happy Lunching!

What is the difference between healthy eating and eating healthy?

There's a simple, but subtle difference.

Eating healthy = eating foods that are nutritious and give you good, positive energy.

Healthy eating = a "healthy" relationship with food. It means eating healthy (or healthfully), but also not swearing off foods because some magazine article said it will cause your fat cells to bloat and take over your body. It means eating well-spaced meals/snacks throughout the day, and not overeating (to the point of discomfort). It's about eating food primarily for physiological reasons (i.e.out of hunger), but being able to eat a little extra or some less healthy options occasionally without it being a big deal.

If you ask me, healthy eating is the golden ticket to health and weight management. It is the most common reason people come to me, and it's one of my favorite topics on which to counsel people. It's simple and complex, easy and challenging. One thing it most certainly is is rewarding.

If you want a hand with working on healthy eating, or if you have questions or even requests for future posts, please email me at jacqfruitblog at gmail.com

When you think of healthy eating, what comes to mind?

What about unhealthy eating?

When you think about healthy eating, what do you see? Apples? Salads? Grilled chicken breast? Tofu? Broccoli?

Do you think of bland, flavourless food? Or delicious, fresh food?

And what about unhealthy eating? Do you picture poutine and potato chips? Chocolate and cookies? Lasagna and KD? Chocolate bars and Twinkies?

Do you think of sweet and/or salty foods? High fat foods? Packaged foods?

These are all important questions to ask yourself. In fact, there's even more to these questions. For example, the question wasn't "which foods or types of food are healthy?" The title question is asking about healthy eating. There's much more to it than simply the foods being eaten (as I'm sure you've come to consider since reading the previous posts in this series). We also have to think about the why, when, where, and how much ( not just the what).

But what I really want you to think about is your attitude towards healthy eating and so-called "unhealthy" eating. When you think of healthy eating, do you think of deprivation and boredom? Or do you feel energetic and inspired? And more importantly, how does your body feel when you're eating healthfully versus those times when you aren't? And do you associate uplifting, happy thoughts with healthy eating? (I ask this because many people associate "down" thoughts and feelings with "unhealthy" eating more often than they associate these feelings with healthy eating.)