Nutritious choices made simple ®
The holiday season can be difficult for anyone who follows a special diet or manages a diet-related health issue like diabetes. Decadent dishes, shifts in meal times, and lack of control over the menu can be stressful for friends who worry that a brief moment at a buffet or dinner table may mean many moments of discomfort or elevated blood sugar later.
When you’re the dietitian, you’re often asked for nutritious dishes, suitable for feeding a crowd at a potluck, which taste great and cost little. And when you’re the dietitian, you appreciate the question and want to provide recipe suggestions that both the home cook and crowd they’ll be feeding will be excited about. Since party season is upon us, it’s a good time to create a go-to list of perfect pot-luck menu ideas so that I’m ready the next time I’m asked.
While a table of richly colored autumn dishes is a good thing, it often lacks variety in texture. This is where my pick for your holiday table comes in. In my opinion, no holiday table is complete without something crunchy and green because while I love sweet potatoes just as much as anyone else, our Thanksgiving table needs a bright boost. With this in mind, I’m choosing Apple Walnut Tossed Salad for my Thanksgiving pick. With fresh, crisp, greens, apples and walnuts, this seasonal salad is what your table needs to round it out perfectly.
My daughter loves to be in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes and practicing fun cake decorations. She looks forward to the arrival of her food magazine, endlessly searches Pinterest, then supplies me with shopping lists to replicate the perfect pictures she sees. Of course, this leads to the next thing she is also all about, which is parties and using them as an opportunity to showcase her latest kitchen adventures. Over the past few years, this has meant an annual Halloween party.
Despite your best efforts, cold and flu symptoms sometimes may get the best of you. When they do, we have a few options to naturally and healthfully treat symptoms, as well as comforting recipes that are just what you’re looking for. So, push those sugary lozenges aside, pass on the salty soup, and try some of these options instead.
I’m a meal planner. After all, is there any other way to feed a family of four that’s going in different directions every day, leaving me with little time to make dinner? I also hate to waste food. With both attributes in mind, I offer you this menu that will take your busy household from Sunday to Saturday with more home-cooked meals, less time in the kitchen, and likely less waste too. Scroll all the way down for a shopping list.
The Food Marketing Institute promotes September as Family Meals Month and uses it to remind us of the importance of gathering family around the table to connect, chat and enjoy a nutritious meal. But, let’s be honest, September is also all about busy evenings, trying to grasp a new, demanding school schedule, and realizing that you only thought you were done back-to-school shopping. So how can we manage all that and still get dinner on the table every night? It starts with choosing a protein that will carry you through for a few meals. It ends with you not cooking every day.
A vegetarian middle schooler? An adolescent who only wants to eat “natural foods.” Neither is rare. Both can be frustrating for caregivers who want to be supportive, but see their adolescent’s food choices as limiting, inconvenient, or sometimes unnecessary. While a young person’s desire to control their diet may seem out “of the blue,” it’s quite common and not always a bad thing. Done correctly, a shift in food preference gives an adolescent an opportunity to consume a balanced diet, understand where their food comes from, and possibly learn a bit about the food industry. There may even be a chance that the rest of the household can learn from their young family member.