Experience easy, flavorful recipes that include cooking once & serve a few more times, making it easier to cook for just one or 2 people.
Our topic today is cooking for one or two um which is week five of the being well series here at Living Well um we have this series is for um nutrition during survivorship which is anytime after diagnosis and if you um take like week five and week six this time you can
Take weeks one through four next time or which if you miss one you can take some the next time so we just keep these Series going so um we’re excited to have you all right turn I switched um you plan this out who gets which slide and
Then I pull for my other and I so I start looks at me like anyhow we we’ll get it together oh well um yes so this is cooking for one or two and this topic came up prior to covid we were doing a nutrition class and someone wrote on the
Evaluation they’d love to see a cooking for one or two because that’s how a lot of people their households have gotten to be we thought what a great idea so we kind of went with that and then next uh week will be culinary completion which is a handson cooking class so you guys
Will be doing some cooking so it’s fun because then you can talk while you’re doing your preparation and then taste it um so the Mediterranean plant-based diet is what we recommend um it’s very healthy um people with diabetes heart disease Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s um follow this way of eating really
Everybody should and it focuses on using Fresh Foods rather than and getting away from processed foods so whole vegetables like we have here whole grains using olive oil extra virgin olive oil um and then also getting your activity in too like that’s um really big component it’s eating healthy but also exercising they
Go hand in hand for weight control so it’s this um plantbased diet but also Al includes um some chicken and even a little bit of bread meat um but incorporating more plants and more fruits and vegetables is recommended by the American Cancer Society the American Institute for
Cancer research and also the Academy of nutrition and dietetics which is our National Organization it’s based on evidence from years of research studying the Mediterranean way of life um including activity as Nancy mentioned and there are a lot of protective properties of these plant foods and they have those
Vitamins the minerals the antioxidants the phytochemicals all those words we hear about um online and so that these are the tenants that we base our recipes on here um so just a shout out about the recipes on the Living Well website it’s a good idea to check that out we always
Have people saying I need some recipes we have me many many recipes on The Culinary nutrition section of um The Living Well website so just feel free to check those out they’re all Mediterranean and we’ve been cooking with those yeah um so cooking for one or two we like this topic because sometimes
It’s hard to cook for just one person and we have um patients that have just one person in the household I know um in our household we had have three boys but they’re grown now and so my husband and I are still cooking for um when they
Make a pot of chili it’s lasting us four nights because we can’t remember that there’re only two people in our house so um so we’re going to just talk about that a little bit and um one concept is cook once serve twice so um we’re going
To talk a little bit more but that means kind of doubling the recipe so you have maybe not quadrupling it like we’ve been doing sometimes but um doubling it so the next night you have you can use leftovers or maybe you’re baking a big chicken and one night you’re going to
Make chicken tacos and the next night you’ll have um you know just plain chicken with potatoes and carrots or whatever you’re having sometimes you can repurpose those leftovers into a soup even you know just add some broth and turn into a soup so you get creative
Yeah so yeah so hopefully we’ll give you some tips on how to cook things um and use them for additional meals all right so continuing on with cooking for one or two say you buy some chicken you know you don’t have to cook that whole package you can divide it up
Put it in a freezer bag put in the freezer I would always label it and date it just sometimes food takes on a different look when it’s in the freezer um but then you can also so if you did have chicken you can think of like five
Different recipes for it so if you want to use like about a half a pound of recipe um and then there’s some on the website some things like cherry or chicken berry salad which is just like a lettuce salad with cooked chicken and then some fresh berries like raspberries
And blueberries with a vinegarette or you can make brown rice like a stir fry and add chicken to it you can make fajitas um and then we have a recipe it’s really good on the website lemon chicken with orzo um and so you know and you don’t have to you could like cook
Say a couple chicken breasts and then use those for the next couple meals or you could cook it and then put it in that freezer bag already cooked and cut up so that you could take it out put it in the refrigerator let it th overnight
And throw it into a salad then like you’re doing some shortcuts so you’re not cooking from raw all the time um and then also like a cooking for one or two vegetarian um you can utilize canned beans um Pinto black beans uh chickpeas all those and if you’re using the caned
You want to rinse and drain them um and then you can also get low sodium canned beans which I try to get as best I can because that’s part of the Mediterranean is cutting down on salt using more things like garlic onion and fresh herbs to give flavor or dried herbs and then
Have ass sorted vegetabl so you might make like a vegetarian stuff Peppers where you have like brown rice with some cut up vegetables and some black beans and fill a pepper with that and then bake it you put a little cheese on if you want or a stuffed sweet potato with
Vegetables um or make a bowl with different vegetables um and some grains um or vegetable fried rice is really nice or vegetable kiche um but that’s what I was meaning with uh turn into soup like I love making the vegetable fried rice like I might check the you
Know produce drawers like oh I’ve got broccoli cauliflower carrots onion and I sauté it lightly and then turn into like a stir fry but then I’m like okay I have stir fry again so I might add broth to it and turn into a soup just to use it
Up and it works this I might using that um leftover meat too if you have like let’s say a little pork tenderloin or part of your frozen chicken in the freezer you can take that small amount of meat and toss it in um a stir fry or
A salad or soup um where you don’t have like a full meal that you can just eat the meat and the potatoes so um so I like using those for the bowls are a good idea too because you can kind of use a variety of foods have like rice or
Noodles or even cauliflower rice at the bottom and then chicken and vegetables yeah and like a for tender line is really good for a slow cooker um and you know you may not want to use all that meat at one sitting so maybe do some tacos with the shredded pork and like
Mary said then another meal could be making the bowl with the rice the beans the fresh vegetables and then your pork tenderloin so yeah well that leads us right into this crockpot um crock poot black beans that I like to make so um this is like a 16 ooun package of black
Beans and it’s dried and now because I just saw another article that said food prices are going up 25% in some categories so we know that the food is a little bit more expensive these days and so how much was a bag of beans so a bag
Of beans is like I feel like a not even yeah it’s like a do25 depending on where you’re getting it like canned is for convenience you know if you’re like needed in your pantry for quick things but if you have the time and think about
It you can make the dried beans so a recipe that we use a lot at my house is a crock poot recipe where you you’ll rinse the black beans in a colander and then you dump them in with an onion um chopped up and a tablespoon of garlic
For example and then you put in eight cups of like a vegetable broth and um just so it’s covered and then you can just cover it and Let It Go For You Can Let It Go overnight if you need it for the next day or you can start it in the
Morning and have it for your evening meal but it is so delicious and it’s just really taking beans out of a bag so I love that that you can use it and then you can use it for so many things so we do ours with tacos a lot but you can
Also make a bowl or you can put it on a taco salad where you have black beans and left over chicken so one time when I was making those I did it for maybe four hours and then I stirred and that was fine but if I did it too long they stick
To the bottom so I don’t know about the overnight you’ve done it overnight yeah well it depends on how long you’re sleeping but we do have this recipe online on the um if you want to follow it exactly but I would say it depends on your crockpot too yeah so I would say
Usually it’s about you know six hours four to six hours but it’s okay halfway through to give it a stir and just spring it up from the bottom to be sure that it’s all cooking nicely it smells good too when they do it here it smells incredible and they’re so glossy like
Black beans are so glossy it’s like wow I know think about just beans and you could if you wanted you could put a little bit of your extra meat in there if you wanted um but you don’t have to you can just do the black beans another
Thing that you can try is um cooking uh fish so you could do there’s a lot of good options for frozen fish these days where you don’t have to have just fish sticks um they have a lot of um frozen fish that is easy to pull out of the
Freezer and use in one or two servings so that’s a good idea tilapia salmon fillets frozen shrimp um and they’re frozen individually right like some of them you get like Costco or something they’re packaged individually which is so awesome exactly they won’t get the freezer burn and stuff so you can kind
Of decide on your recipes and you can cook the salmon for a meal for examp example and then maybe the next day you have salmon topped on a salad where you’re getting some good protein usually say to aim for like two to three ounces um at each lunch or dinner um some
People may need a little bit more than that but if you’re having salmon for dinner and then you have a little bit left over you could add that to your salad and maybe add some nuts or some beans and then that’ll kind of get some plant-based protein in there as well as
Rounding out your protein so Mary if you do fish one day and you’re going to use it again the next day and say there’s still some left what’s your recommendation for how long you can use it yeah we usually recommend three days for leftovers especially fish though you
Feel like I’m kind of thinking two days for fish but I guess you have to see what it yeah your own judgment yeah the guidelines are about three days but yeah for cook you don’t want to go too long with fish yeah um I like shrimp too um I
Know a Trader Joe they have these um I think they’re Australian red shrimp and they look like they’re cooked already but they’re not but they’re very tender and very easy to cook so you don’t feel like you have they get tough really easily they’re easy to cook so you know
Try to figure out which works for you and look at um some of the package instructions and see um which things are are best for you are those in the frozen section okay yeah they’re really good yeah a question about cooking fish because I I love love fish I’m trying to
Eat more and more of it but I have a um we have a very small kitchen so I have an air fryer we have the oven George for Grill use the air fryer the air fryer fast because I’m not I I’m not a gourmet cook and it’s like I don’t you don’t
Have to be salmon in the air fryer it’s perfect I do it all the time now are you using it frozen or solid it’s better uh like half like not all the way f but pretty and then it’s still so maintains that moisture and it’s still cooking all
The way through what’s the temp for fish do you know off the do I I usually do Sal at 400 but right it’s about 400 right you were almost like you were boiling it but it’s are you putting any olive oil on that at all just so it
Doesn’t dry yeah just like a blush nothing crazy are you taking the skin off if there’s skin on it leave on the bottom um yep yeah the dietician but that’s how I do it at my house you can also SP it too like you’re when you’re
Getting ready say hey Alexa tell me how to cook salmon you know and you’ll have it right there for those of you at home if you didn’t hear everything they’re asking kind of how to cook fish and so we saying sometimes air fryer sometimes
Um you can uh cook it in the oven um we use a lot of salmon where we put it in um tin foil packets where you you just put a little bit of oil on the tin foil and fold it so it’s covered with maybe one of these guys lemon um so yeah
Sliced up yeah yeah so so those are some good way we have some recipes online too that explain how to do how to make fish we have a great salmon with a soy sauce recipe that um our participant last session said you started making it every
Week and I was like it was being well one yeah I’m gonna I’m gonna print that out um asley so great keeping us all organized and sending you things in the chat online and printing things for people here so thank you Ashley um the other thing is um just white fish and
You know think about different sides you know one night you might have um a side of a sweet potato like we have here um or maybe you’ll have a side of vegetable so just kind of try to vary it up remember that rainbow if we’re eating from the rainbow we’re getting more
Nutrition the variety of colors is leading to a variety of nutrients from your vegetables fruit yeah yeah all right well then now we move on to meat um and so we do try to minimize our intake of red meat um people who with colon or reptile cancer um GI cancers
Really should limit it more to like three times a month is a general rule people with breast cancer um you can have it twice a week if you want these aren’t like hard fast rules but you can incorporate it um but when I do have rad
Meat you know beef is so expensive now so you know when I’m shopping for it I get little packages is you know like a fillet and they’re small but I might use that and do like a shish kebab where I’m incorporating vegetables on the skewer
With some meat and then we cook it on the grill in nice weather or you could put it in the oven or I’ll make a stir fry where I just cut into little pieces and then M majority of that meal is vegetables so I’ll cook those first and
I’ll just use like cauliflower broccoli red pepper onion snow peas even some brussels sprouts are good in there cook that up and then I’ll just um cook the meat separate and then I just take a bowl with some brown rice put the vegetables and the little bit of steak
In there and it’s sufficient um I like that steak on salads too where you just have yeah a little a smaller amount you don’t have to have a big plate of steak and also like last class we made these little tacos using ground turkey so you can use that for making
Your own meatballs or if you did a combination of meats or if you did do ground beef um I would use like a little one tablespoon scoop so they’re smaller and then serve that with a pasta dish if you want um but also you can if you’re
Making chili use less the amount of ground beef or ground turkey and add beans to round out the protein and you start getting used to it and actually your food bill is going to appreciate it it’ll be less costly and then with any leftover meat you know throw it into a
Soup or a stew um but but that’s what you want you want half your plate to be the vegetables and meat is more of a accent piece you know and then eggs also add a lot of protein um so you know some people will make cook up a bunch of like
Maybe six eggs um make hardboiled eggs and then you want to use them up in three days but that way they’re already cooked and you could add one to a salad you know to get a little extra protein or make a little egg salad sandwich um
And then um um also you can make an omelette I love making a kiche and there’s a recipe on the website of spinach kiche you can also combine that kiche with even chopped up cauliflower spinach you can have kiche breakfast lunch or dinner it doesn’t matter um and then there’s little breakfast egg
Muffins on the website too which you make in a muffin pan but you can add vegetables to that with your egg and cheese um you can make an avocado toast top with a over like if you’re out of treatment you can have um sunny side up
Egg if you’d like or a lot of people will do over easy um but if you’re active in treatment then maybe have a hard-boiled egg or scrambled eggs on your avocado toast and it’s not real terribly filling it could be a meal but you don’t feel overly stuffed after
Having it and then there’s a dish called shakshuka did I say it right shakshuka yeah and that’s really popular too and I think we have a recipe on the website yeah it’s really cool you make it on the cook toop um and it’s got tomatoes and
Peppers and onion and then eggs um in there you just make a little divot in the Tomato almost like a a well yeah like a little well and then you crack the egg in there and then you cover it and the eggs cook right in the Tomato so
It’s basically tomatoes and eggs and it’s it’s very low carb too and that would be a meatless meal because we do recommend try to have more poultry fish red meat on occasion and have a meatless meal you know on the weekly basis and that would be a meatless meal um you
Know so good yeah just Mary things so um we want to make sure for um that we keep in mind food safety tips as we’re cooking more at home and and um uh you know just keeping everything safe so that no one has any food born illness concerns especially during treatment so
We would say make sure that you’re refrigerating Foods soon we talked about three days for leftovers um you want to make sure a lot of times people don’t realize when you’re making a pot of soup now if you’re making it for one or two it might be a smaller pot um but if
You’re making a pot of soup the inside of that um pot isn’t cooling down as quickly so you need to take it out and put it in Shallow containers and let it cool down and then you can put it in the refrigerator or the freezer but if you
Put a big pot that’s still hot in there the inside isn’t going to cool down quick enough but then don’t stack those containers because now you’ve just allowed the heat not to escape so you put it on a single Shelf with your low shallow containers so they cool down
Once they’re cold then you could stack them in the refrigerator for space but they have to be cold cool down first I do like um you know once they are cooled down too I do like these heavy duty um Ziploc bags too because um you can store
Those your freezer nice and easily um but make sure you label it because even if you think for sure you’re going to know in about a month you’ll look at it and say what was this again and there’s a little spot to label it too yeah how
Sharpie and I think that is really helpful to put the what it is and the date that you put it in there because you don’t want to keep it in there for too long um so just make sure that you’re being a little bit more careful
About leftovers and then when you do go to use that you can either put that packet in your refrigerator to Tha overnight we just don’t want you to thaw it on the countertop you know exactly that’s what I was to say sorry um that’s okay um yeah just Tha thrwing you want
To make sure a lot of times um I don’t know my mom used to put it in the sink or on the counter and a pan and you know that was how you but um we’ve since found out that that’s not a great method and um there could be a growth of
Bacteria so just make sure you thought it out in the refrigerator um you can um you know keep it in a shallow dish if you can you know have the meat apart so it’s not a really big thick that thick Mount then it’ll um thow out more quickly too um for those
That it says yeah use up your Foods in three days like we mentioned um four or five days is okay if not immune compromise but we usually say four days and we don’t want food left out more than 2 hours hours so um during treatment that’s why a lot of times
We’ll say if someone’s bringing you food and it doesn’t look good or you’re at some kind of group dinner where food’s been sitting out for a long time we would recommend avoiding that because that’s probably been out too long so two hours is the big rule of thumb um if you
Have people that you’re serving dinner in someone’s lay just keep that twoh hour rule in mind because that’s really important so then we’ll move on to poultry um I like to use chicken breasts you know cook up put a few in a pan bake them that way and then have it for
Dinner that night and then the others you can cut up and use for another night within that three day span I know that the rotisserie chickens are really popular where it’s already cooked for you so you bring it home you know just be careful when you’re selecting a
Rotisserie chicken they usually put the time on it that it came out and so get the one on that’s shortest time that’s been sitting out in that little warmer area um and then when you do bring it home I think it’s best to carve it like
Take the meat off and then you can refrigerate that meat rather than putting the whole carcus in the fridge because even with turkeys we don’t recommend putting that whole turkey with the meat on it right in the fridge it just takes too long to cool down and
That way you’ve done the work and then don’t throw out the carcass if you want you could make soup with it where you would just take put broth in a pot put the carcass in and boil it for about 15 minutes you’re getting some of the meat
Coming off and you get some of the extra flavor from the bones and then all you do is just put in a colander and strain it and now you’ve got a really nice rich broth if you don’t want to use it that night you don’t have to you can just let
It cool and then put it in containers and don’t stack them and put in the refrigerator and now you’ve got it but use it again in 3 days or you could freeze it too if you wanted sometimes it’s nice too to use that meat that you take off the rotisserie chicken and put
It in these little bags so that like we talked about in the beginning and then you’ve got chicken or fish or whatever you want so if you’re making it or you’re taking it off the bone just freeze it right away as opposed to letting it sit in there if you know
You’re not going to eat it in the next couple of days and then rice is nice um you know you can buy a package and cook it up or there’s some sneaky ways you can get around it like sometimes I’ve been getting some of these it’s like 90c
Full grain rice and when I look at the ingredients it’s not too bad it says water whole grain parboiled brown rice canola oil so it’s not having a bunch of preservatives at that’s what I’m trying to get away from I think they have some that just say rice also like they freeze
Them and they just have rice this was from alies but sometimes I might start with that if I’m like worked and then got home have to make dinner and then you know I might do that vegetable thing and then add rice like make like a stir
Fry um also you I have some jasmine rice but I do tend to buy more of the brown rice um but this is from a Trader Joe’s and it has three packets in there and so we just use one packet between my husband and I and you just microwave it
For like three minutes and then we divide it into a bowl and then add whatever food we’re putting on like a stir fry or something you can also freeze your own rice like say you did you know make it yourself and you have this pot of rice you can use a freezer
Bag and divide it up and then label it and now you’ve got your own frozen rice um so it’s a nice uh little do ahead we brought some other grains too like Boulder um here’s some wild rice here’s um this is like a quinoa buckwheat blend so you know don’t forget about using
Other grains it kind of helps you vary up your offerings it makes meals a little bit more interesting there’s some different textures but also it gives you some good nutrition so I know we’re love grains but I didn’t want to forget to mention this this is a little um white
Tuna packet um Aldi’s Jewel those places I’ll have it Mary actually is the one who got me started on this she would bring this often to lunch she goes guys don’t worry I’ve got tuna today it’s okay we like it but um it used to be I
Always thought you had to like do your I add a little mayonnaise and celery and relish and yeah it’s a little bit of a production but with this I just bring my salad and then open this packet and throw it in and I might put like a
Little Italian dressing with it so it’s you get some protein with this um got 80 calories and H seven is it 17 yeah yeah I my glasses 17 grams of protein in this little packet this is like one serving and they have other flavors too I just
Get the plain old tuna it’s a little more expensive um to have those packets um instead of the can where you you know can make a larger quantity but for um you know if you’re running and you have to go somewhere and you need something quick it it’s really helpful yeah yeah
The ingredients and even if you just want it at home a lot of times people are just asking us what is a quick easy thing I can have for lunch you just open this up put it on your salad add dress and you’re good to go you could even add
Pickles if you wanted yeah you can Jazz it up if you want all right so um for produce how do you make selections so produce can be used um you know we talked already I’ve talked about like using them for um soups and Bone broths but you want to
Make sure that you know how to store them so a lot of times with fruits and vegetables we’ll recommend okay when you get home you know chop some up and and have them ready to go for snacks for example so that’s an easy thing to do
With carrots um and sometimes I like to do that with lettuce um I’ll as soon as I get home I’ll put it in the um uh crisper what’s it called the um salad spinner and um I will spin it so the water comes off of it and then it stays
In the salad spinner um of course you have to wash it first but once you put it in there it’ll stay in there because the water is not touching it so if you you have um something that you’ve brought home and washed and you want to
Put it in Ziploc bags um put a paper towel or something in the bottom so that it’s not sitting in its own liquid because then it’ll go bad more quickly or you can use there are some pretty um handy containers that have like a little buffer on the bottom kind of like a
Meatloaf pan where there’s a little place where the water will go underneath and it’s not sitting right on top if you have those great but you can use um I use paper towels for my herbs too I wash them and then I put them in I saw Rick
Bis do this on um his cooking videos and he puts them in paper towels and then puts them in a Ziploc bag and they stay very nicely there um so like cilantro or parsley or any of those will stay well doing that so a lot of people who meal
Prep like they might do it Sunday afternoon they’ll do some of that cutting up and have their menu for you know the next few days I don’t really do it that way I’m more of a the on a daily basis then I’ll wash them and then I’ll do my cutting and all
That so everyone has their own options what they want to do but I think the important thing is try to include more vegetables in your diet wash the outside of everything um and then use good practice to cut them up and I would use a separate cutting board or I think
You’re exactly right Nancy I mean everybody does things in a different way some people want to get everything done their week is really busy and then they can be ready to go other people like to cook every night um if you’re doing potato since we have the sweet potato
Here um if you’re peeling and chopping those up you want to hold them in water so otherwise they’re going to get brown but you don’t want to keep them in there for very long because they they will um start to Brown and a lot of people with
Young children like they really have to meal bre pretty much just because their lives are so busy and mine’s not like that so I can kind of do my own thing but everyone can do their right used to be a four kids yeah um so the pre-cut
Vegetables may go bad a little bit more quickly so the ones that you think will go bad eat those first in the first part of the week so eat your lettuce your carrots celery things so they don’t get kind of limp and then save your potatoes and your squashes and things like that
For later in the week so that they will you know that they’ll last and they won’t go bad I find that vegetables that higher water content like a zucchini or a cucumber those tend to go bad quicker in the fridge so I try to use those
First I do find things that are root vegetables will last a little bit longer but my goal is to not over buy and use what I can during the week and then make soup or something to use them up so that you’re starting fresh again when you do
Go grocery shopping but yeah with food cost so high you just want to keep tabs on what you’ve got in the fridge well and we we don’t want to forget to right now we don’t have a lot of farmers markets and things but if you can buy
Things that are in season and local that’s going to be helpful too because they’re not going to be um on those trucks for a long time and then the nutrition is decreasing and um they’re not quite as fresh yeah so which one should go in the refrigerator yeah so
Vegetables that should not go in the refrigerator Tomatoes you don’t need to refrigerate those they’re nice on the counter um they have their their nice sweetness um I don’t like a cold tomato onions potatoes sweet potatoes like a butternut squash a spaghetti squash um bananas for Simmons um her Simmons are great parit
Is it an orange fruit it is and they’re so delicious we had them this year at Christmas and I’ve had PMA Jam before but this year we had a really good crop of fresh ones and we used them a salad kind of like apples and they were delicious so Mary’s a good jam
Maker sometimes I benefit but also if you were going to peel potatoes like say you’ve got some event or you’ve got people coming over and you’re trying to do a few things ahead of time if you do peel like a white potato if you put it in a bowl
With water and put a little white vinegar in that’s going to prevent it from going brown and they’ll stay nice um and then you can do what you were going to do with them boil them or whatever the next day um and then some time saving tips like maybe if you’re
Short on time you could use frozen vegetables they’re fine I get the ones that are plain no sauces added um we opt for more if you can do it get more fresh but not everyone is using stuff up as quickly so you don’t want it going bad but fresh vegetables are totally fine
Especially if you’re limited on how often you can go grocery shopping get some Frozen and keep it in your freezer um they’ll be fine that works out great for fruit too A lot of times people say I can’t buy fruit it goes bad too quickly so try to buy um some fresh and
Some frozen maybe so that you have some later in the week yeah yeah so then also some grocery stores have pre-cut vegetables um like or some are done on site people in treatment we don’t want you get the kind of vegetables that are cut up on site but like I say a Trader
Joe’s will have pre-cut butternut squash that comes sealed in a bag or they might have a broccoli cauliflower combination the only thing to be careful with that is it goes bad quicker because it was exposed to air when they were cutting all that up and it’s oxidation and
Things go bad quicker so it is better if you don’t mind doing it is get the whole vegetable and then you’ll have more time with it in your refrigerator because broccoli and cauliflower lasts a little bit longer it seems um but see what your purpose is if you’re going to use that
Butternut squash squash the next day it’s fine to get the pre-cut it’s just if you had thoughts of waiting a week to use it it might not be so Good by the time you use it um okay so we’re we’re going to get ready to do some cooking
For you but just a couple of reminders um when we’re cooking we we always wash our hands and we make sure that we are getting them soapy and using that 22nd rule um when you’re cooking uh so that’s like singing happy birthday or ABCs or something and then rinse and then once
You do that we um we put on gloves yeah and then if you’re using meat or um something where you need to change your gloves feel free to do that um but they’re not actually cooking today yeah not not today but just so that you have
Some of the um food safety tips at home we’ll repeat it for next time when you do cook yeah yeah you often wash uh a lot of my vegetables and even some of my fruits with soap on oh no no what do you think about no because the vegetables and fruit are
Porous and they could absorb some of that soap and that’s not good for you we just say running water and then maybe have a vegetable brush where if something has some dirt use that like cause a little friction um but yeah it’s a good question um but we are just
Regular running water is just all you need yeah sometimes I know they look really dirty right so you want to make sure to get all the dirt off and you think it seems like soap would be a good idea but um just the friction will um be
Good enough and a lot of times we get a question about using a vinegar um water and and you don’t need to use that either so just um fresh fresh water and also if you get bagged lettuce which is so popular there’s a lot of salad kits
In all um if you’re active in treatment you should run it under running water in a colander just to give it another washing um but if you’re done with treatment um those salak kits are probably okay I still will wash like the spinach again even though it says triple
Wash it’s just a habit I’ve gotten into or you know different Lett uses so so we’re going to be making a butternut squash risotto and we’re also adding cauliflower to it so um yeah so we’re GNA get ready we get we shout out to Ashley we couldn’t do this without her
She helps us with everything here so yeah she’s amazing so she’s working on getting us um together but we’re starting with the rotto and I wanted to talk a little bit about the butternut squash because I feel like oh there she’s got us I see now you can see that
Butternut squash um this is only a part of the squash we had a giant one today um but a lot of times I feel like people don’t want to use butternut squash or spaghetti squash because it’s intimidating to cut and it’s kind of
Hard to cut so um a trick that I use a lot is um and those of you that were here last week are are already in know of the secret but um you take a fork and you kind of Pierce the skin all the way around the middle um I actually did it
Right here and then you put it in the microwave for one minute and then it’s much easier to cut so um so just think about piercing that or you can even use a knife and kind of score it so that the it gets into the skin and then you microwave for one
Minute and then you’re able to cut it in half and then once you have it cut um just if you can cut the ends off so that you have a flat surface is kind of a tough vegetable but you can see it’s much easier to peel now and I like using
It where you’re taking the peeler and you’re going away from you so it’s on The Cutting Board um and then you’re not bringing it towards you where you might cut yourself um same with a pairing knife so some this is a big one a big butternut squash
If I had a Slimmer one I might even cut slices and then I put them on the baking sheet and just bake them that way and they get soft and then I take a knife and go right around to get that Outer Rim there’s a variety of things
Different ways to make to do it but the important thing is just really focus on what you’re doing so that you don’t slip you know like hold it tight and keep your eyes to what you’re doing that’s right so I cut this section in half so
Now I have smaller bits to manage as well and then what I would do is cut these in half and every time you do it you just make sure you have a flat surface so now that we have this size we can cut off some strips and then once you have those you
Just kind of keep going to the flat surface and you can see that that’s much easier to manage and then you start having these nice little cubes that roast up really nicely yeah so um yeah so thank you here and then are we ready to put it
In or not so now you can see why some stores do sell it preut because it can be a little changy but once you go through that with the butternut squash what I do is um I’ll put it in a bowl with a little olive oil
And then some herbs and today we use the um herb de provance and a little black pepper and olive oil and that’s it did you put and then um and then we did do turmeric um yeah that’s right we put turmeric on both of these because of the high anti-inflammatory properties of
That so um so now it’s got a nice little um crispy Edge to it I can add it are you ready okay and then um do it at 4 bring we love using parchment paper because it keeps your pan so nice and clean you’ll still have to wash it but
You’re not gonna have stuff sticking to it so I’m gonna exp oh sorry so then you just bake it at 400 for probably 30 to 40 minutes and then I just use a Fork to make sure it’s fork tender all the way through but I love the texture that it
Gives to the dish all right I’m going to tell you a little bit about the rice and then we’ll talk about the cauliflower so to make a risoto like this is what we started with this container and it’s really nice because it gives the recipe
Right on the side and so how I do it is I’ll just put a little bit of olive oil in the pan and then um I do like a cup of rice if you want a little bit bigger portion I did a cup and then I add a little splash extra of it
And then um but before I do that I’m sorry I I put the olive oil and then I take a whole onion and chop it up and I sauté that first and then I add a little garlic and then I added the rice just
The rice with it and I let it toast a little so it’s kind of get a little crunchy and you got to keep an eye on it you got to keep stirring and then once it seems like it’s starting to cook then I start adding broth like this is
Chicken broth and I add about a/4 cup at a time and stir till it absorbs and then keep doing that and I have a little bit left so I’ll continue to add some of that but you get a real nice um creamy rice it’s an Italian rice or boreo rice
Um and it’s it works nice like nicely even in a right pudding or in a soup um but I just like making risotto I think it’s a lot of fun you can do like different combinations like I like to do like cauliflower and Brussels sprouts in the risoto cauliflower takes on like a
Sweeter t it seems and it it’s really picks up nice um you could some people just do like a mushroom risotto or the butternut squash um you know with another vegetable or just that um and it’s it makes for like a main dish if you even want to serve a little chicken
On the side it’s okay yeah it’s delicious so all right so the other thing that we um added tonight was cauliflower and we use turmeric on the cauliflower too I actually love doing turmeric on roasted to vegetables um and broccoli and cauliflower make a really good combination uh and then if you do
Have a big pan of those you can use them on sandwiches or in soups or um casseroles uh salads so I like to batch do roasted vegetables and then have them um as I need them so with cauliflower the I have part of it here just to show
You you want to make sure that you’re um one thing about the texture is that you want to just start chopping from the end you want to kind of chop from the middle and chop off that that um side part the the core because we don’t really need
That and then when you have these little pieces you want to start from the stock so that you still have a nice little texture of your cauliflower left um if you start cutting from the outside you’re starting to get into the little um uh florettes and then then it’s not
Going to be um as pretty and give you the the nice texture that you want so you can use the the stump part too if you want and just chop it up small but um so you kind of start in the middle and then sometimes even if you want you
Can break it apart so you still get the fettes we like using cauliflower or broccoli or Russel Sprouts in our cooking because those are cruciferous vegetables and they are anti-inflammatory and they’re really um Rec recommended and they just work real well in combination with a variety of
Vegetables so you want to do them in about 1 in pieces so that they all cook uniformly and same with a butternut squash about the same thickness so that they all cook together um very nicely so um I do love uh cauliflower in that way
And now it looks nice and tender you can kind of see and it’s got the um you need when you put it in a bowl for the olive oil you need just a little bit more more olive oil for cauliflower because it soaks it up a little bit but um I think
It looks beautiful and it’s got a nice crispy texture and if you were cooking a dinner and you wanted to serve cauliflower you could just take it to this step and serve it as your side dish you know yeah and and it’s nice now we’re going to add it to the risoto but
It’s really good this way so let’s do the same thing we did before okay you hold that and I’ll dip it in I don’t okay I like the tablecloth trip we go so it’s nice to have different colors and textures in your meals as well um
And I think that’s why we like the the cauliflower and the butternut squat because it gives it a variety of colors and there’s a variety of nutrients so there’s some things in the um cauliflower is really high in fiber butternut squash is really high in vitamin A which helps with your night
Vision so the more of a variety of vegetables you’re getting the better off you’re going to be nutrition wise it’s starting to look really good yeah so we’re going to add parmesan cheese I actually prefer to use fresh um parmesan cheese for that this was um you know the
Graded type um that you might put on Spaghetti but it’s fine it’s still parmesan cheese so we’ll add some of this um and then I love that we have the turmeric in here because I tend to add turmeric to more of our oranger vegetables um when you’re first starting
Out so people aren’t like what is that you know and it’s good on salmon too but it works really well with this dish here a lot of times we like to use the herb de pance as well um herb de pance is like an Italian seasoning but it also
Has lavender added to it so it gives things a little bit of a different flavor and I think a little bit more flavor because I’m kind of partial to it but um it’s really good in eggs you can use it in egg salad like we talked about
Um but it does give a lot of good flavor to a lot of different dishes so we didn’t use any salt in this recipe we didn’t add any we love using pepper um and then you know we have fresh garlic and fresh onion in here and then our
Vegetables which have their own flavor we did add a little Rosemary if it were summer we would used fresh but we’re in the winter still even though it doesn’t seem like it and then the turmeric and then her de perant is in here so it should be flavorful um yeah it looks
Really tasty and then we’ll just top it with some fresh parsley because that’s pretty much widely available so any questions you might have does it look good to you all right all right well we’re going to be sampling this recipe um here for people that are um with us in person and
We um thank you so much for those of you that are online hopefully next time we’ll see you here in person so you can try out some of our recipes um but thanks again for joining us and uh we’ll see you next time um don’t forget if you have any nutrition question