This week I'm playing with the Thai Basil that I am growing in my herb garden. We're going to run a late #testkitchen this week (today rather than yesterday if all goes well!), making Thai salad rolls for dinner tonight and a Vietnamese noodle soup with chicken and vegetables for dinner tomorrow.

But why bother? Why change to a different kind of basil? Why not stick with the old one that is known and loved?

Over the years I've observed there are 2 basic kinds of eaters in the world: people who can eat the same thing all the time and be perfectly content, and people who want to eat different things all the time and rarely eat the same thing twice. I don't think either extreme is healthy or sustainable. In our family, we encourage a bit of both for a few different reasons:

• Variety in diet equals variety in nutrition!
• Variety in diet equals waking up your taste buds!
• Variety in diet means you might find something new!
• Familiar in diet is easier and quicker, and you know it will be loved!
• Familiar in diet brings comfort!
• Familiar in diet builds childhood memories!

By now you all are used to me talking about incorporating a variety of different colours into your food but we don't usually emphasize reasons for different flavours. I'm going to hone in on one reason this morning: "...waking up your taste buds".

Raising a family of picky children with a husband who came pretty picky himself has been a journey for us. At the beginning of parenting small children I was completely unprepared for picky eaters. The idea of it was as foreign to me as living in full darkness half a year. When I was a child, if my mom put food in front of me, I ate it. To be suddenly faced with gagging, vomiting, tears, and the rest was bewildering.

However, I firmly believe food should not be a fight. Ever. We determine what foods go on the table so we fully control what response we will get. We can talk more about this a different day.

Suffice it to say, providing different flavours to ourselves and our families can allow us to enjoy different foods while we are out and about at various times in our lives. Like it or not, most of us enjoy meals at places other than home. We can't always control what's for dinner, and so it makes sense to train our taste buds.

And that is it for today, friends. If you enjoyed this post, share it! Help me grow my business by getting my name and brand known! Tune in tomorrow on Facebook for a discussion on reverse meal planning and if you haven't "liked" my page yet, please do so- I don't want you to miss anything!

All the best!
​Stacy

We're talking about Romaine lettuce this week on my Facebook page, The Meals Maven.

A long, long time ago- before we had kids and were learning how to keep guinea pigs alive- we found out that feeding romaine to guinea pigs was a good idea, and feeding them iceberg lettuce was not.

The reason you start your piggies on romaine when they're young is it's full of nutrition. It turns out that piggies love iceberg lettuce, but there's not enough nutrition in it for them and they will eat it rather than romaine if they develop a taste for it.

This might be true for people too. What do you think?

It isn't that iceberg doesn't have any nutrition, just not as much. Here's a comparison of these 2 types.

On #foodiefriday I will be releasing the recipe I cooked last night for #testkitchentuesday- a ground turkey stirfry that incorporates stir fried romaine as one of the vegetables. It's new for me and something I will continue to do. I really enjoyed eating it as something other than salad.
And to successfully use last week's failed peanut and rosemary combination made the dinner perfect.

As discussed on #marinatingmonday, romaine is wonderfully nutritious and not an energy-dense food. As such, it's tempting to think it's the perfect food to eat a lot of when you are trying to lose weight. I want to encourage you, however, to consider colour as your guide. Eat the rainbow, whether you're trying to lose weight, gain, or maintain. A diet of romaine and not much else will quickly leave you with nutritional holes and diminished health. It may not happen overnight, but it will happen.

I leave you with what I seem to say all the time but can't stress enough: Too much of a good thing is still too much.

All the best today, friends!
Stacy

In the future I hope to see, people are cooking together and eating together.

People eat meals around the kitchen table and invite friends and not-yet friends to enjoy a meal with them.

Parents teach their children and children teach their friends.

Recipes take on a treasured life of their own, cultivated and shared between people to demonstrate love and commitment to the places their history intersects. They are renewed and remade to bring traditions together, and thus different versions of the same recipes make their way across generations and timelines.

In the future I hope to see, food is valued and not wasted. We practice gratefulness and appreciation. We use only what we need and give what we don’t. Food is recognized as a sacred gift that provides us with life and allows us to bless others with it. It is respected and cherished.

In the future I hope to see, the world is a place where people aren’t frantically filling their mouths because they don’t know what else to do. They aren’t eating just because they have to just to stay alive, but because it makes them the best version of themselves. There is enough food to go around no matter where you live, and no one goes hungry.

This future is important to me. I see our health and wellness at a crossroads of incredible significance. The less connected we are to recognizing the importance of the food we eat, the less nourishment we give ourselves.

We are overworked, at times both undernourished and overfed, and our society is suffering with more disease and overall unwellness than ever before.  This, at a time when we know more, understand more, and research more about food than ever before.

It’s my dream to change this, from one person or family at a time to entire groups of people. I see myself speaking this vision and bringing it into fruition, helping people to understand that they can affect this change in their own lives. They are not slaves to commercialization. They can learn how to eat, what to eat, and when to eat. They can begin to view food not only as nourishment for their bodies but also for their souls.

​I believe this is a future that’s possible. When my boys grow up and have families of their own, I believe the seeds of promise will have already been planted. I believe that my generation can stand up and be counted to make a difference not only in their lives but in the lives of their children and the children to come. Will you take the next step with me? Will it begin with you?

For all the years I’ve spent reiterating to my boys to pay attention to their bodies, to listen to the cues that tell them they’re tired, hungry, thirsty, upset, hurt, depressed, anxious, etc- my son told me he thought it was broken and I told him it was fine.
That was a curveball moment I wasn't prepared for.

In my defence, I’m really sick. The horrible bug that kept my boys home from their last week of school finally latched onto me. I’ve been trying to listen to my body too, but life goes on and there are things to do. Yesterday all the “things to do” ended up being way too much. Mike had a lot of work waiting for him because we were gone so much longer than we expected. We had just gotten home and I was letting myself relax into a nap when he came in from a bike ride to tell us he thought it was broken.

We figured dislocated, so Mike popped it back in place. Even after, the kid said “no, something’s wrong”. I groaned, gave him an ice pack and an advil, and said “Let’s wait and see”. Then went back to bed.

It wasn’t a complete mom fail. Instead of napping, I arranged for his grandpa to take him somewhere. After hours care is hard to find in our city, and all the walk-in’s were full to capacity, so grandpa took him to emergency. And after many hours of waiting and an x-ray, it’s confirmed…the growth plate in his thumb is fractured.

The moral of the story? Listen to your body. And if you need something at the expense of someone else, ask for help. No one can do it alone. Life is long and sometimes hard.

​If you missed my email yesterday, I sent out a request for beta testers for my online course, Fabulous and Frugal in the Kitchen. Click here to join my email list.

​"Fabulous and Frugal in the Kitchen" is a web based course arranged in modules you can take at your own speed, though my beta testers need to have it done for me within a day or 2 of starting. Most slides are around 30 seconds in length, and though there are several modules, they are a quick study. And because each video is short, you can pause and come back to it easily. There are supplementary videos, worksheets, and recipes included. It's all about trimming your food budget without trading good food for boring.
 
In exchange for a free run through my course, my testers need to provide me with a review (for my sales page), feedback (what you like, don't like, suggestions for improvement), and comment on pricing. I know what I'd like to charge- I want to see if you all agree.

My newsletter people are the ones who get first dibs, but you are all awesome. I have a spot left for just 1 more person. Interested? Hit reply and let me know, then sign up for my newsletter.

All the best today, friends
Stacy