When it comes to health and exercise maybe you have this image of you
just munching through tons of salads, nibbling on raw carrot sticks...
and generally eating fairly boring food.
If
that's what you're thinking, I have some good news: Eating raw foods
does NOT have to be boring. All you need is a little creativity and some
special kitchen appliances to create some pretty amazing dishes. Read
on...
Blender: If you're drinking whey
protein shakes, you may already be using a blender. You can use this
blender to make your protein shakes more interesting, such as by adding
oatmeal or bananas to the shake. Or you can make fruit smoothies (for
breakfast or anytime). For example, make a strawberry-banana smoothie.
You can add flax, oatmeal or just about anything else to the smoothie
for extra taste, texture and nutrients.
Juicer:
If you recall from back in the nutrition lessons, I mentioned that you
should avoid any juices that have added sugars or other ingredients.
That means you should avoid most juices, because most of them are
processed. And sometimes it's hard to find fresh juice.
Here's
your solution: Get a juicer. Not only can you make your own fresh orange
juice, grapefruit juice and other fruit juices, you can also make
vegetable juices (like carrot juice) and seaweed juices. You can even
combine different fruits and vegetables. For example, you can use a
juicer to create carrot-orange juice or strawberry-grapefruit juice.
Food Processor:
Yes, you can do everything with a set of kitchen knives that you can do
with a food processor. But the thing is, you can do it much faster with
the food processor. In other words, a good food processor can save you a
lot of time on cooking day.
Now, obviously, if you're making just
one meal, then it doesn't make sense to haul out the food processor.
That's because you need to take into consideration the amount of time it
takes to clean the machine when you're finished. For a small amount of
food (a meal or two), any time savings you create over using a knife is
lost in the time it takes to properly clean the machine.
Point is,
it's a great time saver... but only if you're using it on those days
when you're doing some bulk cooking. Food Dehydrator: While cooking
nuts, seeds, fruits and veggies using high heat will rob the food of its
beneficial enzymes and some of its nutrients, you can "cook" the food
using low heat. In other words, you can dehydrate your food (preferably
using a food dehydrator, since your oven probably doesn't have a low
enough temperature setting).
Snack idea: You can dehydrate fruits
to make fruit chips, like apple chips or banana chips. Then mix your
dried fruits with nuts and seeds for a delicious, nutritious snack.
That's it for this time. Next time you'll find out what to do when you want to get more muscle...
Looking forward to talking to you again.
