Stocking a Natural Kitchen
Stocking a natural kitchen is more than just a fleeting fad. It's a step toward bringing health and wellness into the very center of your home — right to the very heart of it. For many of us, the kitchen is where most of the action takes place in the daily routine of life. So when this important nerve center is loaded with natural foods and snacks, fruits, veggies, and healthy whole grains, your entire home will reflect the change in a positive way. Stocking a natural kitchen is at the very foundation of a healthy lifestyle.
So how do you start giving your kitchen a natural makeover? Obviously, purchasing more organic fruits and vegetables, free-range meats and poultry, and whole grains is an important part of the equation. But where do you go from there? The next steps are about slowly changing some key eating and purchasing habits.
Swapping out the snack foods
Let's face it. For most people, snacks often compromise healthy eating habits. Those little between-meal morsels play a critical role in the well-stocked natural kitchen. Think about swapping out the chips and sweets for tasty, crunchy natural snacks like baby carrot sticks, sweet red grapes, and healthy dips and spreads for celery and other veggies. The ideas and food possibilities are endless. What's difficult is forming the habit of purchasing and using these healthy snacks. Since snacking is about grabbing something quickly and easily, consider some ways in which you can make your healthy snack foods easier to access:
- Keep a bowl of mixed nuts and dried fruits (raisins, cranberries, currants) within easy reach. You'll be more likely to grab a handful of this mixture if it's out in the open.
- Make sure your celery, carrots, and grapes are already washed and ready to eat — so you can simply pull them from the refrigerator and munch on them.
- Have both salty and sweet options available because you never know in which direction your snacking mood will go on any given day.
- Trade industrialized condiments and sauces (which are high in sodium and often contain artificial additives) for homemade versions using fresh tomatoes, olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and spices.
Stocking healthy oils
Another cornerstone of the natural kitchen is oil. Ensure your oils are "monounsaturated" and "polyunsaturated" rather than "saturated" or "trans." Cooking oils to avoid include palm oil, shortening, and palm kernel oil. Focus on stocking your kitchen with oils like sesame, olive, walnut, and flaxseed. Choose canola oil if you wish to cook foods at very high temperatures as it has a higher smoke point.
Try using sesame and flaxseed oils for your salads. Sesame oil is rich in beta carotene, while flaxseed oil is an excellent source of omega-3 essential fatty acids. Remember that flaxseed oil should be kept refrigerated. You might even consider making up a batch of your own salad dressing using a combination of flaxseed oil, sesame oil, lemon juice, sea salt, and pepper.
Your natural medicine cabinet
As you collect your own natural health remedies, herbal teas, vitamins, and supplements, you'll naturally be building a kind of herbal medicine cabinet. Try keeping this within reach of your other foods and supplies, so you can easily include a healthy tea with your food choices. Foods such as pure cocoa, the spices turmeric and cayenne, and herbs like garlic, oregano, and thyme do double duty as anti-inflammatories, antifungals, and blood pressure regulators. Remember that your refrigerator is actually part of your natural medicine cabinet.
Coconut Oil is a wonderful oil to cook with and is thought to increase metabolism. It should be organic.
It is possible to cook foods at higher temperatures using Olive Oil. However, use the olive oil grade “olive Oil” because it has a higher smoke point (410 F)than “virgin” or “extra virgin”.
Homemade salad dressing made with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, eggs, salt and pepper is very delicious and has a lot less calories and fat than a regular cesar dressing. Hmmm! Very healthy!
a great snack is grand crakers lowfat vinnala yougurt with bannnas and fresh squeezed orange juice mmmmmmmmmmmmm
One of my favorite healthy lunches: I cook 2/3 cups of whole wheat noodles, add fresh vegetables (or cooked frozen vegetables), toss those with about 1-1/2 teasponns of olive oil, and add any spice I’m in the mood for!
My fav meal is brown rice or kashi pilaf topped with fresh tomatoes and avocado
I love eggplant lasagna. All I do is substitute the meat with chopped whole eggplant (peel included), and part skin Roccota cheese. Don’t forget the olive oil. My family loves it!
Excellent Suggestions Folks, I’ve Graduated With Bachelors Degree Working as Night Manager And Am ALways Looking For Ways To Increase My Appearance And Health. I Study Cellular Biology And A Professor Recommended Their Trail Mix For My Extensive Skiing and Camping/Hiking Expeditions With My Unit.
I’m new at establishing a healthy way of eating. Like MMwallace, I really like avaocado,tomatoes,red onions with a mixture of balsamic vinegar,olive oil and lemon or lime.
Another healthy oil with a high smoke point is grape seed oil. I use it to saute, put in sauces, baking, and making popcorn.
Carlaverbsky, do you cook the eggs when you are making the dressing?
The above article and your tips and comments are some of the best advice I have seen.
Wher do you get Coconut or Grape seed oil?
My doctor tells me that eggs have allot of cholesterol, and the egg substitutes have allot of sodium. Any suggestions on what else to use in the salad dressing?
I took part in the survey for the test taster panel. They had a list of many Kashi products. Most of them I have never found in my area. Anyone else with this problem? I’m on the east coast mid atlantic region.
I am not sure where to start. My husband is a buger munchin, twinkie lovin man. Any way to “sneak” healthy in? I’m going to try the eegplant lasagna, but we are in our 40’s and need to lose the junk food!!
I just received a cookbook called “The Sneaky Chef – How to Cheat on Your Man (In the Kitchen).” It is all about hiding healthy foods (veggies, grains, etc) in guy foods. Most of the recipes use veggie purees, along with other hidden ingredients. I’ve tried a few of the recipes, and they are really good! (We just had the “Manly-cotti” two nights ago, and my husband likes the breakfast cookies and the biscotti.) She also wrote a book for hiding healthy foods in foods kids like, but I haven’t read that one yet.
I find it very disheartening when I heard that some kashi products are made with palm kernel oil. In the article above, it says “Cooking oils to avoid include palm oil, shortening, and palm kernel oil” and yet your company obviously supports these products which are impossible to make by any organic standards imagineable since the oil must be extracted from the pit with a gasoline-like hydrocarbon solvent. Its almost as bad as a saturated fat!
Kashi Peanut Butter TLC Bars’ ingredients: Ingredients: Peanut Flour, Evaporated Cane Juice Syrup, Brown Rice Syrup, Kashi Seven Whole Grains and Sesame® Cereal [Corn, Wheat Bran, Evaporated Cane Juice, Corn Bran, Oat Fiber, Kashi Flour (Stone Ground Whole: Oats, Long Grain Brown Rice, Rye, Hard Red Winter Wheat, Triticale, Buckwheat, Barley, Sesame Seeds), Soy Protein Concentrate, Salt, Annatto, Evaporated Cane Juice, Soy Protein Isolate, Nonfat Dry Milk, Honey, Barley Malt Syrup, Whey Protein Isolate, Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil, Chicory Root Fiber, Oat Fiber, Rolled Oats, Cocoa, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Natural Flavors.
nanette0269 – Thanks for your comment. I understand how the info provided in this article on oils to avoid may seem to contradict some of our products. However, our article is discussing cooking oils and we’re recommending choosing oils with less saturated fat when it comes to cooking.
We do use mechanically Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil when necessary in some of our pre-packaged foods—often to keep the product coating from melting. It’s one of the best minimally processed, natural options we have instead of using a trans fat like partially hydrogenated oil.
You may also be interested to know that we take sustainable sourcing very seriously when it comes to palm oil. Our palm oil suppliers are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a group working to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil. If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Thanks again – Kelly, Kashi Marketing & Food Developer