Above and Beyond the 5 Senses
Quote: “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” -Ernestine Ulmer
Calling all Moms, Mr. Moms, caregivers, anyone in crisis with time restraints, or a busy spiritual lifestyle. Read up! Do you wish you had more time to cook healthy meals? If the kitchen is the heart of our home, warmed it with spiritual love, devotion, grace, and good food. Whether you are rich and famous or just making ends meet you have to eat.
Let’s enjoy healthy cooking from a new perspective; easy, speedy and spiritual. Let’s grace our meals.
When crisis management and lack of time take precedence in our lives, everything else must be re-prioritized including family, home, work, and cooking, which often gets pushed to the end of the line. After all you have endured, including a cranky belly from stress, we need a belly-pleaser cooking column that meets our needs, expectations and time restrictions.
Every cooking column should have a purpose and a goal. Mine is to compete and beat the poor nutrition, speed and simplicity of fast-foods by offering an alternative: a multimedia column that incorporates word, video, radio, and spirituality, to show readers how to follow simple recipes that take fifteen minutes or less to prepare from start to finish.
This column will also contain calorie, protein, and nutritional count information for faster, easier and better diets that allow you to meet your individual needs. Nutritional details are an estimate based on meals for two, should only be used as a guide for approximation and are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
My goal is to make it easy and desirable for everyone, including people who think they don’t like to cook, to prepare and eat healthy food: the building block for daily physical and mental health. Remember our bodies are the temple of the Lord.
Remember our bodies are the temple of the Lord. Keep your temple and the temples of your family healthy.
This cooking column is dedicated to anyone in crisis, especially women who are often raising their families alone while undergoing treatment for an array of health issues, yet continue to put their children’s needs first. Not only do they bring home the bacon, they cook it, too. I want to make cooking easier, healthier and quicker for them.
The idea for the cookbook recipes used in this column came about in my breast cancer radiation discussion group concerning food preparation and eating during the time restraints of treatment. As a three-time breast cancer survivor whose dreams diagnosed my illness (see my Soul column), the women in my cancer groups became extended family. We shared a
We shared a fox-hole in the war against cancer. My heart ached for my girlfriend/patients who came in for therapy during work-lunch-breaks and discussed which fast food restaurant drive-through window they should choose for speedy service after collecting their children from school, soccer practice, ballet lessons and piano recitals. Unfortunately, more than half of them were single parents, deserted by their spouses after diagnosis. By the end of the
By the end of the day they were too tired to even sit in their car and wait for food to be handed out through the window, and too nauseous from treatment, stress, depression, and fatigue to eat it when they got home. When I told one mother that none of her fast food choices were good choices for food , she replied with a painful truth that broke my heart.
“I’m alone. My grocery money is very tight now while going through divorce proceedings. At the end of the day, I’m too tired to cook. When I was waiting in the fast-food drive- through last night I fell asleep in the car. Thank God I had it in park because I would have rolled into the back end of the car in front of me. My ten-year-old son shook me awake when motorists behind us started honking. I was so exhausted I didn’t even hear them. I’m trying to keep my children’s lives as normal as possible during this crisis. I pray for help everyday. It’s hard because my kids see my bald head, red burn marks on my chest, and lack of energy. And the fact that they think Daddy doesn’t love us anymore doesn’t help. I have to keep my job for my insurance in order to have treatment, so cooking is not a priority in my life.”
Her answer brought silent nods of understanding from others in the room and tears to my eyes. It also birthed the idea of my Quickie Healthy Cooking for Busy People cookbook which has now become part of the weekly C3TV show Wicked Housewives On Cape Cod Cook .
I’m not a certified nutritionist and I don’t believe you must be one to know healthy food. We are bombarded daily with enough magazine articles, TV commercials and infomercials concerning diet, nutrition and fast-food to get a Ph.D on the subject by osmosis. We know what to do to eat well. Now, I’m going to show you how to do it.
Healthy Cooking Tip of the Day
Did you know that enjoying a small bowl of veggie soup with meals boosts the liver’s ability to break down acids, helping to keep cellular PH more alkaline? One of the reasons patients are given blood tests during treatment is to monitor liver functions because toxins (and chemicals) are filtered through the liver. Imagine how much healthier that little soup appetizer can make your family. Give your liver a break. Eat vegetable soup.
Quickie Healthy Easy Cooking is as easy as 1-2-3.
1.) A yummy slow-cooker-stew thrown over
2.) rice from the rice cooker is a meal fit for a king that the whole family can enjoy again
3.) days later when thrown into the blender for a tasty stewed vegetable soup paired with simple sandwiches or warm crusty whole grain bread. Soup saturated bread is easier to swallow when suffering from mouth sores, and will warm the cockles of your heart.
One last important word of advice before you go grocery shopping; READ LABLES! If you can’t understand the labels, don’t put them in your mouth… put them back on the shelf and keep looking.
You probably wonder what could possibly be better than picking up fast-food for dinner. How about opening your door to the healthy aromas of a fully cooked meal?
You’re tired. Go home. Dinner’s waiting! That’s what I call cookin’ right. And remember to say grace before you eat. Blessing your food brings God into the equation which can right any wrong, even a less than perfect diet. If water can be turned to wine with a prayer, imagine what prayer can do to your meal.
Amen.
CLICK LINK TO LISTEN:Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos 30 Min Cooking Interview on Lori Boyle Radio Show
Picture credit: keijj44 pixabay.com football-team-1529533_1280 CCO Public Domain, ree Commercial Use, No Attribution Required
Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos-three time cancer survivor whose dreams diagnosed her illness, TV/Radio Host/Producer of Wicked Housewives On Cape Cod™ , Kat Kanavos Show , Patheos, Quora, Medium, Internationally Syndicated Columnist, Nautilus Award-winning Author/Lecturer who promotes patient advocacy and inner guidance, and contributing author to Chicken Soup for the Soul. www.KathleenOkeefeKanavos.com
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