Pack a Snack!

Good morning!  I attended a wonderful dinner club yesterday evening and I am so thankful for the opportunity afforded to me by my dear friends and I am appreciative of the new relationships that I get to have because of last night's introduction!  Thank you so much to my friends.

While we were preparing to dine we learned that a snack is in fact an essential meal along with breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It's curious to me that over the years we have associated snacks with junk food and in an effort to live well and be healthy we have all but eliminated snacking from our meal options.  When I think of snacks I do not immediately always think of fruit, yogurt or something healthy.  Because of marketing and advertising I think of the snack that smiles back . . .

Inspired by our informative dinner club discussion, I decided to make an effort to bring back the snack attack in a positive way.  Here are three ways to assure that we have healthy snacks at snack time.

1.  Start with the shopping list switch.  When planning our grocery shopping lists, lets refuse to give in to the heavily advertised snacks, which are usually processed foods with little or no nutritional value.  Snacks should have value and be on purpose and planned.  We should make good snack decisions based upon our activities, our desire for variety and our family's needs.

2.  Keep it close.  One of my friends shared about a gentleman who frequently eats fruit and veggies during meetings.  At first that may seem odd, but we must take care of our bodies and give our bodies what they need when they need it.  If I give my body water, fruit and veggies when it says it is ready for a snack then perhaps I can avoid the craving for unhealthy snack options.  Let's keep some bite sized fruit and veggies or a nice whole piece of fruit on hand or maybe even some raisins, nuts and yogurt close by so that when we are ready to snack we can satisfy that meal time.

3.  Share!  I find that people are open to make changes in their own best interest sometimes we just need inspiration!  Since I'm snacking anyway perhaps I can share my healthier snacks with others so that I have a buddy and maybe I can help someone else spark a change!

Hopefully these three choices will lead to good snacking and to us assuring that we respect our snack time as an important meal time.

Three Easy Tips for Avoiding the Fast Food Trap

I imagine that when the McDonald brothers first envisioned their burger place they did not see it as replacing family meals around the dinner table.  As with any great idea, they wanted to serve a need.  But also as with many great ideas sometimes there are unforeseen consequences.  So much of our society has now been McDonaldized.  We want it and we want it NOW!!!

When I was a little girl a trip to McDonald's was special.  We didn't go weekly or even monthly.  It was a rare treat.  Today I'd hazard a guess to say that one more more of our meals has been replaced with fast food weekly if not daily for far to many of us.  The consequences of this are readily apparent.  We are suffering from completely preventable diseases.  The solutions are simple and easy for us to apply.  Hopefully all we really need is a gentle reminder that fast food should not be a part of our regular diet.  The more we incorporate fast food into our lives the more we teach our children that fast food is the way to live and this just isn't true so here are three tips to use to avoid the fast food trap and to show our children a better example.

1.  Avoid the void by bagging it up.  As busy working parents we often find ourselves picking up our children after school or after sporting events and remembering Oh no!  I didn't take anything out for dinner!  We begin to think through our refrigerator inventory and ask ourselves if we have left overs or something easy to prepare for dinner.  If we don't then our mind says No worries.  Pick up a pizza.  The problem here is that there was a void and fast food volunteered to fill it.  Try this instead.  Buy some crock pot bags.  These are the bags that you put into your crock pot to avoid having to clean up a nasty mess.  Fill the bags with some of your favorites like root veggies and chicken or a pork roast (actually the combinations are endless!).  Store these in the freezer inside the crock pot bag and in the morning before work put the entire bag into the crock pot and boom!  Void avoided!  Dinner is ready when you get home!

2.  Avoid the snack attack.  When my daughter was in elementary school each day when I would pick her up from school she would begin the dramatic begging for snacks and tell me things like her stomach was touching her spine etc.  I learned to dodge the fast food temptation by packing snacks for her like peanut butter and celery, fruit and juice.  Today as a teenager, she packs her own snacks before she goes anywhere.  That is amazing.  I only hope that these small habits will prove beneficial to her over the course of her life.

3.  Make it special.  Here's the thing.  It's okay to eat out once in a while.  The lesson here is not to ever eat out.  The lesson is to teach our children that eating out is a planned family time together.  It's not what we do because we forgot to cook or because we are too busy.  We are never too busy to protect our children's health!  Eating out should be a planned time where you make sure that you've budgeted enough to eat out and to tip properly!  Our daily structured routine should be to spend time with each other and to eat at our own dinner tables together.  Clean the bills and papers off your dinner table and serve up food at home.  Make your own home made pizzas and tacos because it's fun and it's time with your children well spent.  Save the fast food opportunities for a once a month or so outing with the family.

Let's teach our children well.

3 Neat Ways to Start the Habit of More Water Intake

Hello there.  So those who know me know I'm all about the baby steps when it comes to changing habits.  We know that we need to drink more water, but if we are not already in the habit of drinking our due share for each day, we may have difficulties getting enough water in especially during winter months.

Well, not to fret!  There are a few tips and tricks to get yourself to get more water in and they go a little something like this:

1.  Flavor your water with fruit.  Fruit flavored water is the in thing now and it's fun!  I serve infused water or club soda at most of the catering functions that I do.  My goal is to introduce people to it gently and slowly.  I want folks to notice that it tastes pretty refreshing and maybe just maybe they will go home and give it a try.  The best thing is that you can use almost any fruit that you enjoy.  Just toss it in some water wait a few hours and then gulp it all down.  Yummy!

2.  Flavor your ice with fruit!  Similar to # 1 we can create fruit ice and when we want to cool off our water, we can toss a couple of fruit cubes in.  It's so tasty and fun.  Kids can make these too and if they do we are increasing the likelihood that they will use them and drink more water!!!

3.  Use a straw.  I heard this a long time ago and thought, Really?  That's all?  Just use a straw??!!!  Yep.  I have personally found that I tend to drink more water when I have a cup with a straw.  Don't know why it works just know that it works.  Give it a try and see if it works for you too!!

Clean Eating is easy as 1-2-3

Welcome to Quintilla's Kitchen blog!  My name is Shannon and I started my business based upon Christian beliefs and the simple principle of clean eating.  A mentor and friend told me to have a foundation scripture and to always contemplate it when cooking; being careful to always remember that God graced me with this gift and it is He that gets the glory!  

My foundation scripture is 2 Kings 4.  As the story goes, there is a widow who has a creditor coming to take her sons to work as indentured servants to pay off some debt.  The Prophet Elisha asks the widow what she has in her house.  Her initial reply was that she had nothing, but then she remembers that she has a small amount of oil (anointing!).  The Prophet advises the widow to bring the oil and as many vessels as she can gather.  He tells her to pour the oil.  The widow begins to pour and she keeps pouring and pouring until there are no more vessels to fill.  At the end of her pouring she finds that not only does she have enough oil to sell to pay off her debt, but she now has enough oil to sell to sustain herself and her sons.  I believe that God has graced us all with gifts so that we may be debt free and so that we may be sustained.

Today I want to talk about clean eating.  I'm going to keep it simple because well . . . simple just makes sense to me.  Here are a few ways to ease into eating clean.

Step 1:  Know the source of your food.  When you know that your food was grown locally; meaning, you can easily go to the place where it came out of the ground, then you're a step closer to clean eating!  Knowing the source of your food means that your food hasn't passed through a lot of hands or been shipped all around the world.  There's less likelihood that there are undesirable pesticides or other harmful chemicals, and you'll be eating the foods that are in season for your region.

Step 2:  Eat foods that you recognize.  When I was a little girl my Big Mama would grow lentils, peas, okra, and other veggies in her garden, cook them up and freeze them.  During some of the lean times of my childhood I remember Big Mama going into the deep freezer and pulling out those vegetables for us to have a yummy soup.  The point is that those veggies although frozen remained in tact.  I could still recognize them for what they were when they were cooked and frozen.  Today we have so many options in our grocery stores.  Corn may start out as corn or a soy bean starts out as a simple bean, but both get transformed into so many other things through processing.  That processing often removes vital nutrients and adds unwanted chemicals.  If your body can't recognize it then it's probably not good for you.

Step 3:  Take baby steps.  You don't have to throw away everything in your house and start over.  Begin to incorporate fresh foods a little bit at a time.  Visit your local farmers market(s).  Pick up a fruit or a veggie that you may not normally eat.  Google some recipes and have fun with it.  Get the whole family involved!  Take your fresh foods and make some of the families' favorites like pizza or soup.  Your body will thank you!