Recipe Archives - GoodFitFam

Help Kitchen Visual Guides

March 26, 2018 by Chris Leave a Comment

Help Kitchen Visual Guides

Fire up the color printer because we have 16 of our favorite kitchen diagrams. We need these because we never have all the ingredients, always wonder if that’s still good to eat, and what is the best wine to pair with string cheese. In all seriousness, tape some of these up on the inside of your cabinets for a fast answer to simple kitchen questions.

1. Easy Soups

Hold up, you may not need to run to the store to pick up dinner. Here are 10 soups you can make combining an odd can of beans, the last veggies in your fridge and seasonings that may have expired.

2. Spice Pairings

Did you know you can use Caraway with Cottage cheese?

3. A Guide to Cooking and Baking Substitutions

This one is super useful. We have made entire recipes using only substitutions.

4. Cooking Methods

Disappointed the torch method can’t be used for Grilled Cheese.

5. Guide to Flavoring with Spices

Another spicy visualization.

6. Conversion Chart

For when you find a recipe on a British Blog… Or when you’re anywhere else in the world and need to know what the American’s are talking about.

7. Kitchen Volume Conversion Aid

When you need to turn the volume up in the kitchen…

8. Healthy Oil Cooking Guide

If you watch Food Network, you may not know you can’t use Olive Oil for everything.

9. The Onion Breakdown

This is helpful in some dishes but I normally ignore everything except the Red Onion bit.

10. Egg Substitutions

If I don’t have eggs, I normally have bananas. The PB substitution is mind-blowing.

11. How Much to Serve at a Party

Cupcake ratio seems a bit low.

12. Veggie Cooking Cheat Sheet

You can’t throw in all veggies at the same time and expect it to taste good.

13. Perfect Cookie

All look good to me, but 7,3,6,5,4,8,2,1

14. How to Store Your Groceries

Have you stored a peeled banana more than a day? I’d like to hear the story behind that.

15. Real Good Cheap Easy Food

Lots of good recipes and note the shopping list on the sides.

16. Wine & Cheese Pairing

Everyone knows Boursin and Gruner Veltliner pair well, but you may not know cheddar and merlot are BFF’s

Eggs – It’s What’s for Dinner

January 19, 2018 by Chris Leave a Comment

Dinner Eggs Recipes

Most families have pizza night or taco night, but no body has egg night. Recently I was at a farm to table restaurant and saw they have an Omelette of the day on the lunch menu. That day it was made with potatoes and chorizo and it looked beautiful. I make omelets everyday by 6 am but omelets would even be better at 6pm. The image of that beautiful omelet inspired me.

Eggs are cheap, easy and filling. They are digested slower than most foods you normally eat at night so you may make it to bed without pangs of hunger. Best of all it feels like you’re eating carbs

In the morning I tend to go with a simple, four-ingredient omelet with 5 whites and 2 whole; it takes all of 7 minutes and there’s no cleanup. At night when your taste buds are searching for more flavor, you can spice it up, dump some leftovers or go veggie crazy. There are no wrong answers.

Here are five eggcellent recipes to eggspire you. The best part is eggs will love you no matter how you vary the recipe.

All you need for survival is peppers and eggs.
C Dinner Eggs Recipes reamy Scrambled Egg Stuffed Bell Pepper with Veggies -Via FitMenCook

Easy Mediterranean Style Egg Casserole Recipe – via The Mediterranean Dish Egg Casserole Recipe for Brunch

Meal planning is a cinch. These taste decent cold so you can eat them on the go.

Mini Quiche with Sweet Potato Crust via Eating Well.

Mini Quiches with Sweet Potato Crust

This one is not as healthy as the others but your taste buds will thank you.

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Has – via Tasty

Tolkien said the most beautiful sounding phrase is cellar door, but I think it’s Huevos Rancheros. Via Serious Eats Quick and Easy Huevos Rancheros With Tomato-Chili Salsa Recipe

The Chemistry of Cookies – Ted Ed

December 21, 2017 by Chris Leave a Comment

The Chemistry of Cookies

‘Tis the season. Cookies are everywhere. They become a form of currency this time of the year. But why are they so good? There’s science behind what makes cookies so delectable and Ted Ed does a good job illustrating it.

8 Lo-Cal Snacks for your Netflix and Chill Nights

February 15, 2016 by Karen Leave a Comment

Healthy Home Snacks: The temperature may not be single digits where you live but the sun goes down early this time of year. Netflix and football tend to rule everybody’s viewing habits, especially on those cold days. Everyone tells you to not drink your calories or eat in front of the tv, but if there are 40 inches of snow outside and ten episodes of Narcos waiting, you need a plan.

Unless your trainer has you on an offseason bulking plan (lucky you) or putting on weight for a film role, you’re less active in winter and so you’ll need to choose your snacks wisely.

1. 1. Plain Popcorn. Skip the butter and try a mixture of seasonings and spices or even a hot sauce. If you want to get even more out of it, add some nutritional yeast, flax seed or spring on some PB2. You’ll burn many calories flossing later as well.
  2. Fruit – Berries, Grapes. In the summer frozen grapes are refreshing as well small pieces of frozen mangos.
  3. Veggies – Carrots and broccoli. Yawner, I know, try adding some greek yogurt to a ranch dressing mix to up the protein so you feel full longer.
  4. Roasted Chic Peas. Add everything you would to french fries – olive oil, pepper, Old Bay or salt and put them in the oven at 400 for about 45 minutes and it’s ready by episode 2.
  5. Nori – Hard to find a snack with as many nutrients than Nori and with fewer calories per sheet. Big plus, you can also wrap everything else on this list in it
  6. Sunflower seeds. Eat them plain or roast them; just season them as you would popcorn.
  7. Edamame – Not my favorite but they sell them in every store so someone must be eating them. There are a ton or recipes to help you get the taste right.
  8. Apples and PB – Not the lowest calorie choice, but not invented in a lab either. It helps to get those protein numbers up at the end of a long day. I’m sure they’ll genetically engineer a peanut apple in the future but until then we soldier on.

You heard some of our favorite low-calorie snacks. Do you have any can add to the list?

Address the Social and Emotional Impact of Food for you and your Kids

January 22, 2016 by Karen 2 Comments

What is Food’s Social and Emotional Impact?

Therapists assess a child and family in feeding therapy and address their fundamental needs. The first few weeks of therapy focus on educating the family and collaboratively agreeing on a plan that will lead to success and eventually discharge from services.

Basic SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory developed by Dr. Kay Toomey) feeding protocol is a 12-week program. Most kiddos fly right through not always needing the full 12 weeks. Then there are what I call my curve ball kids. The kids who are not necessary text book cases and end up teaching me just as much as I have taught them. I love these kids, they are so brave.

There are many more components to feeding than just oral motor and sensory. That brings me to the basic things that I was taught as a student. When looking at feeding you look at 3 things.
1. Functional (are they physically able to do it?)
2. Sensory (what aversions are they responding to or avoiding?)
3. Behavioral ( what are the behaviors associated?)
I’d like to add a 4th aspect of feeding to review

Social and Emotional Relationship with food

This 4th aspect of feeding impacts all of us, beginning to form as young as 6 months of age. This is the age when feeding becomes a LEARNED BEHAVIOR. I capped and bolded for all you parents who are picky eaters yourselves; for all the parents who like things neat and tidy and wipe their babies hands and mouths as soon as they get messy. Also, for all the parents who overreact (guilty of this myself) to protective mechanisms such as, gagging and coughing that happens (and you want it to in order to know these protective mechanisms are present and functioning ) when babies are learning to eat solid foods and different textures and consistencies. It is a deeply rooted thing that includes healthy eating, emotional eating, binge eating, poor self-images, traditions, cultural and economical differences.

Our relationship with food is contingent on the first 3 factors listed (functional, sensory, behavior) but it is also highly influenced by our families, peers, culture, and environment. The language surrounding food is critical for both vocabulary and developing perspectives on variable food items. I remember improvising the language with one of the twins favorite picture books by Sandra Boyton. The original image was of a Hippo saying, “Ew, broccoli stew”……in my version the hippo said, “Mmmm, broccoli stew!!”

My boys actually had tantrums when the other drank the “broccoli juice” from the bottom of the broccoli bowl at dinner. They read my version of that book since they were 6 months old. They are listening and learning very early on and developing their relationship with food in many different mediums of learning. They include language (both written and verbal), observation (watching family & peers), environmental (opportunities for mass exposure to a variety of foods) and most importantly, experience (being active participants in selection, manipulation/play and tasting); notice I did not mention eating. Eating is at the very top of all the layers of foundation a child has to experience before getting to the last step of eating.

Developing a positive relationship with food means acknowledging all the factors detailed above. We addressed the language piece, be hyper-aware of what you are saying and what others are saying about food in the presence of your children. Observation includes your child watching you willingly trying new foods. Buck up ma and pa, take a bite and keep a smile on your face, it’s called good parenting.

Environment is your pantry, your refrigerator, and your local eateries. Try to provide fresh and healthy choices and keep the snacks you don’t want them to have out of the house. They’ll get ample opportunity to snack when they’re out and about. Home is the place where they are developing their palate the majority of the time. When they are surrounded by fresh and healthy food, their palate develops a preference for those bountiful flavors. Synthetic carbohydrates become blah or overly sweet to their palate. It’s like tasting the notably marked difference between Aunt Jemima pancake syrup and fresh tapped Vermont Maple Syrup.

Experience is everything in terms of forming relationships, keep them positive. Acknowledge Developmental Food Play Skills, they’re messy and an integral piece to forming a positive relationship with food. Include your kid’s input, thoughts, and ideas regarding what everyone should eat as a family. When kids are included in the planning aspect for meals, it provides them with the control they need to feel safe with new foods. Kids love to be in “control”, allowing them to assume the control role in the initial stages prevents them from asserting their control at the final stage (eating) by saying, “no, I don’t like that“.

A good place to start is examining your own relationship with food. It’s a dynamic process, examine the layers and identify the components you feel need attention to develop a positive relationship with food. It’s good for your body, brain, and soul!

GO STRONG!