What's for Dinner?There is one question that every single human on earth asks themself every single day. What's for Dinner? We all must eat. Some of us cook for ourselves and others have their food cooked for them (lucky you!) But, we all must eat. Long ago in our evolutionary history, we would walk for MILES every day hunting and foraging for food. It was our job. Some estimates suggest we walked about 10 miles everyday just to eat. That's what I learned in Micheal Easter's book, Scarcity Brain. Easter devotes an entire chapter on food and makes a case for shopping at Costco. At first the case for this modern warehouse devoted to (over) abundance seemed at odds with, well, scarcity. However, Easter maintains that you can make excellent healthy AND financial choices buy purchasing select items (see his shopping list below). The economic value of Costco was explored by the New York Times in an article called “How Costco Became the Anti-Walmart." At Costco, one of Mr. Sinegal's cardinal rules is that no branded item can be marked up by more than 14 percent, and no private-label item by more than 15 percent. In contrast, supermarkets generally mark up merchandise by 25 percent, and department stores by 50 percent or more. I remained skeptical until I read Michael Easter's 2% newsletter which dove a bit deeper into the economics of Costco and specifically the Kirkland brand. Did you know that, "Starbucks roasts Kirkland coffee (two pounds, $10), Bumble Bee produces the Kirkland Signature albacore tuna (eight cans, $13), and Adams does Costco’s organic peanut butter (56 ounces, $10)?" Nope, neither did I! Of course, it's up to you to not overeat all the delicious and abundant food. If we fill our plates with mostly fruits and vegetables and eat 4-6 ounces of lean protein we will getting a fantastic dose of all the daily macro- and micro-nutrients we need. Here's Michael Easter's Costco Shopping list Fruits and Vegetables Now that you have a fridge full of good, cost effective food what's next? FREEZE HALF OF IT! The key to keeping Costco cost effective is to minimize food waste. Kale, spinach, green beans, broccoli can all be frozen. I always freeze two of the packages of chicken breasts. If you're feeling particularly productive, you can meal prep on Sunday and put all of that abundance into to go containers for lunch. Now you're really going to save some bills because you won't need to buy lunch this week. One of my favorite ways to meal prep is to make a few sheet pan meals on Sunday. New York Times Cooking has many sheet pan recipes and all that I've tried have been great. If you don't have a NWT Cooking subscription, there are thousands of food bloggers with easy and tasty sheet pan recipes. Here's one from Pinch of Yum for sheet pan chicken tinga bowls. This is a great recipe to make for next week's lunches! Not only will you save money but it's also one of April's reduce waste challenges.
You can buy everything at Costco. Happy eating!
0 Comments
What's For Dinner?There is one question that every single human on earth asks themself every single day. What's for Dinner? We all must eat. Some of us cook for ourselves and others have their food cooked for them (lucky you!) But, we all must eat. What should we eat? Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. Yep, we need plants. We need fruits and vegetables, in their whole form, not processed into some unrecognizable concoction and sold to you in a plastic container. Eat plants as they were when they came out of the ground, off the stalk, stem or vine. No matter your eating strategy, it's vital that we avoid high and ultra processed foods. Michael Easter explores this important nutrition recommendation in his book, Scarcity Brain. He talked to many subject matter experts and travelled to the Amazon to discover what healthy people eat. He spent a week eating with the a tribe of people who have ZERO heart disease. This is remarkable since heart disease is the NUMBER ONE killer of Americans. Heart disease kills more people than all other diseases COMBINED! Your diet, what you eat, is by far the biggest contributor of increased risk of heart disease, and one type of food in particular is the biggest contributor: high and ultra high-processed foods. What is a high or ultra high processed food? It's something that has more than one other processed ingredient. Here's a nice visual from Stephanie Kay Nutrition: Nearly all food gets processed, e.g. it gets cooked, before we eat it. But the foods that are the real problem are the ones that have multiple other processed ingredients and go through many processing methods before we eat them. Delicious foods like candy, potato chips. hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, tacos, breakfast cereal, yogurt with added fruits, meat nuggets, meat sticks, soft drinks, etc. You get the picture. In Scarcity Brain, Michael Easter found that people who eat mostly single ingredient foods, meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruit, and rice lived the longest and had the lowest risk for heart disease. Michael Pollan, another well-researched food journalist and professor, agrees. We should eat food that looks like food. If it has a face, comes from the ground, grows on a stem, or IS the stem, eat more of that. To help get cooking with all the delicious single ingredient foods we bought last week at Costco, let's cook something delectable from my favorite source for recipes straight from the farm, Dishing up the Dirt. Click on the image below for a fabulous pork and Autumn harvest vegetable stew. It's just the type of delicious cooking we can do to make our hearts happy. What's for Dinner? Muscle Building Protein!
National Public Radio started a special series this year called, How to Thrive as You Age: the Science and Secrets of Longevity. The first episode aired January 29th and focused on a series of tests that can give us insight into our "Healthspan." I wrote about it here.
The most recent episode, Millions of women are 'under-muscled.' These foods help build strength aired on Monday, March 18. In it, Allison Aubrey, takes a deep dive into the importance of protein. She is following up on the episode in which she explores a recent study of 40,000 women that found a causal link between strength training and a 30% reduction in cardiovascular mortality. In that episode, Women Who Do Strength Training Love Longer. How Much is Enough? (and that I wrote about here) she notes that: "women who do strength training exercises two to three days a week are more likely to live longer and have a lower risk of death from heart disease, compared to women who do none."
However, Allison discovered that strength training alone isn't enough, it must be combined with enough protein to SUPPORT the activity. Simply, we must eat to support our training. She discovered that she was under-muscled and started to incorporate more protein into her diet. You can listen to the entire episode below:
She aimed for 90g of protein and found that one way she could easily achieve that by increasing her consumption of beans. Beans are an excellent source of fiber, carbohydrates and protein!
Beans are one of my favorite foods and I cook a big bean recipe every week. This weekend, rather than a big pot of a bean soup or stew I will make a cold bean salad to eat with canned tuna. Tuna is a fantastic source of lean protein and when combined with beans packs a big punch of muscle building protein. Click on the image below for a Rancho Gordo recipe for Italian white bean and tuna salad. I buy the creamy and luxurious Rancho Gordo Royal Corona beans at Fink's Deli. Fink's also carries Rancho Gordo's pink beans, black beans, garbanzo beans and lentils. If you make the recipe this weekend be sure to share a photo on our Facebook page. I'll give a bag of Rancho Gordo Royal Corona beans to the first person who does! Happy eating! It's the final Open workout! Be sure to represent your team today! What's for Dessert?WOOOHOOOOO!!! It's #foodiefriday and it's spring break and St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner. What a great weekend we are going to have! Are you ready for some down time? Take a moment this weekend to talk a walk outside and slow down. Good luck to all the Pub runners and ruckers! We have quite a few people from the gym Running and Rucking to the Pub tomorrow! So many in fact that we have canceled class on Saturday. The workout of the day is to walk, ruck or run a 10K or half marathon. GYM IS CLOSED ON SATURDAYHere's a delicious Irish inspired recipe for the weekend! I don't often share dessert recipes with you, I try to stick with healthy options. However, this one looks just too good not to share. Let me know in the comments if you make it this weekend.
Click on the image for the recipe courtesy of NY Times Cooking |
Special EventsRecord your WOD on Beyond the Whiteboard.
Do you need CrossFit or yoga gear? Click on the links below to buy through our GORUCK, Reebok, Rogue or Affiliate share sale programs. These are affiliate links and our gym will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links.
Check out our Flickr page!
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|