Feel Good Foods + Preparing Your Pantry For Fall
Posted September 27th, 2010 by noelle | View Comments
In your busy world, feel good foods that are easy, quick and efficient to prepare rule. The key to success on that front is being organized. As we head into fall, here are a few things I’ve found helpful to have on hand when it comes to making easy, quick and delicious feel good meals a reality on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s the little things that help you keep it together.
Fall Basics For The Pantry
In the fall, as the cooler days of the season take hold, feel good foods on this rejuvenating lifestyle gravitate toward warming (yet still cleansing) dishes. I enjoy trays of roasted vegetables, sweet potoates, squash and soups (lentil, vegetable, etc) along with quality, lean meats and tasty bean salads. If you haven’t had a great tray of roasted vegetables in a while (or like ever) I strongly encourage you to check out this roasted broccoli recipe from Ina Garten it’s one of my all time favorites. It’s full of wonderful toasty broccoli florets, with lemon, lemon zest and parmesan. You’ll be surprised how this hits the spot after a long day.
In general in the fall, I always like to have a few staples on hand in my pantry to help me make feel-good food including:
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Skip the heated, over processed junk and invest in a good olive oil. You can’t go wrong with pretty much any brand, as long as it’s extra virgin. Extra virgin olive oils are the best, highest quality olive oils and all extra virgin olive oils are “cold pressed” (extracted without heat).
- Sea Salt: is salt – pure and natural. In this form it still contains traces of other minerals, including iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, manganese, zinc and iodine. It is very different from table salt, which is uber refined and in the end doesn’t contain much more than sodium!
- Fresh black pepper corns: That pre-ground pepper fails miserably in comparison to the freshly ground goodness. Re-introduce yourself to good taste!
- Quinoa noodles: These whole-grain, gluten-free noodles taste just like the spaghetti you remember mom making…but it’s much more nutritious. They are great for a last minute healthy meal option with a few sauteed vegetables.
- Jar of tomato sauce: Easy and delicious. Always ready in a pinch. Try and keep the sugar content under 6-8 grams if you can.
- A good salsa: Great for raw vegetable sticks as a spread on top of brown rice tortilla toasts and a scoop also tastes great on top of crunchy salads.
