Plum Surprise!
Jack Horner was on to something; plums are delicious any way you eat them, and are especially good for your bones, blood sugars, waist size, cronic disease risk, and even your memory.
A New Look at Labels
Have you noticed any food label changes yet? Exciting things are coming with the new FDA food label requirements!
The Real Fruit Truth
I’m challenging you this month to replace processed sugar and sweet treats with fruit! Many people equate fruit with white sugar, claiming it to be just as bad. THIS ISN'T TRUE! I'm regularly told, "I'm skipping fruit and sugar as part of my diet plan," as if it's the same thing. If you are someone who thinks this, please keep reading!
Pass the Honey, Honey
This month's healthy challenge is SWEET! I'm challenging you to replace processed sugars with whole foods. Whole foods like fruit and raw honey are great alternatives to processed sugars! Honey is truly a gift from nature, and we have our friends the bees to thank. A honey bee will only make about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey IN ITS LIFETIME. Talk about a precious gift. But there is a big difference between commercial honey and raw honey!I'm inviting you to join me in adopting the 12-Fix Lean Life Plan in my book, Lean Body Smart Life! Start with Fix #1 and replace sugar, sweet treats, refined flour, and processed foods with whole foods like fruit and raw honey this month! Then add a new Fix each month. I'll be helping you every week on my Foods With Judes Facebook Live and various posts to adopt the 12-Fix Plan to your life. Let's do this together!
Make Your Salads Healthier!
My challenge this month is to eat leafy greens every day. Even though this month is almost over, don't stop eating those greens! Make it a habit for life to help decrease cognitive decline as you age, boost your health, and keep body fat off.To help with this challenge, this week's Tuesday Tip addressed some tricks for making salads more nutritious. Here are the tips in a nutshell:
Salt Box Lunch Date
Salt Box is the place! It's one of Durham, North Carolina's golden restaurant finds. Using paper over plastic dish-ware and over-the-counter service, this low-budget restaurant delivers high end, gourmet quality seafood. It's fast, inexpensive, and delicious! Served with a side of delicious lemony vinaigrette-based slaw salad, the grilled fish and grilled shrimp are to-die-for.
Brain's Fountain of Youth
It turns out that vegetables contain a range of nutrients and bioactive compounds like vitamin E and K, lutein, beta-carotene, and folate that help protect the brain. So not only are vegetables essential to keep us slim and disease free but also to keep our minds and memory sharp! Find out how many leafy greens you need to eat to possibly have thinking skills and memory 11 years younger as you age!
Preparing Great Grains
I've spent so much time this month presenting to groups about the importance of whole and ancient grains that I think it's time to post a new healthy challenge to eat more whole grains! Don’t be afraid to prepare whole grains. Most of them can simply be boiled like rice until they’re tender.
Key To Keeping New Year's Resolutions
It is time to make your goals stick, so they positively affect your life rather than make you feel like a failure!
Oyster October
"Les Poisson, les poisson, 'ow I looove les poisson!" That Little Mermaid song is dang funny even if it is somewhat macabre... October is National Seafood Month! If you're new to Foods with Judes, you will soon find out I have a great love for our underwater friends, both to protect and to eat! Seafood has extremely positive effects on our health and brain function. You can learn more about why this is true, in addition to other clarifying mercury tidbits in a previous article, "Seafood Newsflash." I could go on for days about health benefits of different kinds of seafood, but this month's healthy challenge will focus particularly on oysters. Don't worry - you don't have to eat them raw.
15-Minute Roasted Mexican Soup
I can't get enough of this 15-minute soup. It tastes like it been roasting for hours and it has, but by Trader Joe's and not by you! It’s quick and sooo good. You might be able to find these roasted veggies at other stores, but you will for sure find all the ingredients at Trader Joe's. It's a soup-er healthy, zippy, meal hack.This soup can be left chunky or blended smooth, either way it taste soup-perb. The blended version is perfect for those picky eaters who don't appreciate onions, bell peppers or black beans. Shhhh, they'll never know if you don't tell them. Top it with cheese, cilantro, avocados and/or tortilla chips or don’t add a thing to it. It’s a flexible meal using frozen ingredients that you can keep on hand and made on the spot.
Fairytale Eggplants
I'm enchanted by the beautiful baby eggplants I found at the farmer's market in downtown Durham a couple of days ago. In addition to being the most adorable things ever, they are called "fairytale eggplants!" Whoever magically shrunk them did us all a favor. They have tender skins and only a few seeds. They're sweet and firm without the mushiness and bitterness found in the mama-sized eggplants. So for all of you who love eggplant and even those who don't, these ethereal fruits are for you.
Pecorino Romano Cheese
My favorite food staple is Pecorino Romano cheese. It makes food sing! Just a sprinkle of freshly grated Romano cheese on veggies, grains, and lentils takes these foods to a new level of deliciousness. With so much flavor, this cheese feels like an indulgence. Made from sheep's milk, Romano is good for your health and often works for people with other dairy intolerances.
Bare Organic Apple Chips
I found a new healthy product that I love and want to share with you! I'm very selective, so you know it's good if I feature it in my new blog series: "Judes' Market Highlights."