This week, I’m posting collections of my 130+ blogs. I’m collecting them into topics so that they’re easier for readers to locate. Today, it’s nourishment: blogs about nutrition. This is building off of yesterday’s collection of food pictures and recipes.
I’m going back through old blogs to group them, organize them, and make them easier to navigate. Today, I will aggregate a list of recipes (and food inspiration blogs) so that you have them all in one place as a resource. I hope you get some good ideas for healthy, home-cooked meals from this.
2020 is a crazy year. It is a fork in the road and people are going hard one way or the other. Some are going hard in the direction of truth, while others are going hard in the direction of lies.
The truth-tellers are working on their own foundation, building a self, a life, and a world that they can depend on even if everything else falls apart.
The liars are doubling-down on destructive behaviors, fake news, and outrage, and hastening the world’s demise.
It reminds me of the 3 rules of self-defense I teach my sons:
Stay outta trouble
Get away from trouble
Handle trouble
The basic lesson is, if you want to be safe, you have to know how to avoid conflicts, to exit conflicts, and to overcome conflicts.
The truth-tellers are the ones who are managing this act of self-preservation, while the liars are inviting conflicts, embroiling themselves in conflicts, and coming out the worse for it. They are living reactively and in fear.
Chief amongst the liars are politicians and major corporations. They want to make you a liar too. Don’t listen to them. You know better.
Knowledge is justified true belief. You already know that taking care of your self and your foundation is the best thing you can do to take care of the world. Be proactive and unafraid.
This is a revolution, but this is not physical warfare, this is an internal revolution that becomes externalized. This is about practicing your basic human rights in order to build the world you want to live in. We’re saving the world one healthy lifestyle at a time.
It’s time to be your best self, for your self, for others, and for the future.
Go hard in the direction of truth. Join the revolution.
Sometimes, when I don’t want to write, I simply post pictures of food. Everyone loves food, and I hope you get some good ideas from this. Inspiration to cook your own meals at home!
If you Google terms like “yard work injury” or “bad shovel posture”, you will find countless memes and images such as this one. This is evidence of a widespread problem: people do their manual labor with incorrect posture and force mechanics, leading to injury and discomfort. Even worse, many believe that their sloppy yard work counts as ‘exercise’ or a ‘workout’.
This is something I have explained many times to my parents, friends, and clients: work is not exercise. There are similarities, sure. You will become stronger and more enduring through physical work. However, there are major differences in the intention and therefore in the execution.
Physical work is a reactive form of movement. Get this thing done, then this thing, and do it fast. This means that little attention is paid to posture, form, technique, or mechanics. People chop wood swinging from the same side of the body every time and get weird pains. Folks rake or shovel with poor posture and end up all jacked-up.
Intentional exercise or training is a proactive form of movement. You are taking your time to build new movement patterns and physical capacities. Therefore, you pay careful attention to posture, form, technique, and mechanics. People learn to create balance and symmetry in their body through strength training. Folks lift and move with good posture and end up just plain jacked.
Another short and sweet blog today. I hope you get the point. If you stop and reflect on the differences in intentions, execution, and results from labor compared to exercise, I think you will see what I’m getting at.
I wrote a lot of long-winded, heavy blogs recently. So, this week I’m carrying on the previous week’s trend of short & sweet. Instead of recipes, this week it’s just little bits of wisdom.
Masala is Medicine
What is masala? Masala is an Indian word for a mixture of spices used in cooking. Not just found in India, masalas are used throughout South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some places have their own words for what is essentially the exact same thing, but many places just use that same word “masala”. Oh yeah, and I just remembered that curry is the most popular food in England, so they’re using masalas there as well.
Why is it medicine? Each masala (spice mixture) is made up of several, sometimes dozens, of different spices that have been toasted whole, then ground into powder and mixed together. Cinnamon, mace, cumin, peppercorns, coriander, and cardamon are commonly used. Each of these spices has medicinal properties. Put them all together and cook them in your food, it’s kinda like taking your daily multivitamin of herbal preventative medicine.
So, I say use masalas. Cook with masala, drink masala in your chai. Have fun, enjoy the flavor. Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.
I’ve been experimenting with making popsicles for me and the boys to enjoy on these hot sunny days. I refuse to add sugar to them, so it’s been challenging coming up with mixes that actually taste good. 🙂 (Trust me, you don’t want the recipe for the plain Greek yogurt popsicles). These were the tastiest I’ve made yet.
Strawberry Orange Juice Popsicles
Go to the grocery store and buy yourself some popsicle molds. It’s harder, but not impossible, to make popsicles without them. Wash the molds before you use them.
Pour a cup and a half of orange juice in the blender with about 3/4 cups of frozen strawberries. You can play with the balance based on your own taste & judgment. I like a bit less berries than juice so that it remains blend-able and doesn’t just turn straight into a block of ice.
Use the ‘ice crush’ setting if your blender has it, or ‘pulse’, to crush up the berries well, but leave chunks that will taste good in the popsicles.
Pour your orange/strawberry slush into the popsicle molds and stick the handles in. Wipe & wash any excess off the outside of the molds before you freeze them.
Put your popsicles in the freezer. Drink whatever slush you have left. It’s yummy.
After the popsicles have frozen well, maybe later that same night, maybe the next day, you can start eating them. I recommend you run some hot water over the outside of the molds to make it easier to get your popsicles out. I’ve broken some of these things trying to get at my food.
This is a picture of my lunch of baked salmon, cauliflower “rice”, and Kachumbari–a Kenyan salad that is very similar to pico de gallo or innumerable middle eastern and Indian salads. Surprisingly, of all the delicious foods here, I got a request for the salad recipe. So, here it is.
Kachumbari
The first step with this one is to soften the onions. I’ve seen it done with purple onions and white onions, but any onion will do. Without halving or quartering the onions, just slice them paper-thin (as thin as you can get them). Now you’re going to coat them in salt and soak them in warm water.
Clean & prep the other ingredients while the onions are soaking. You’ll need fresh tomatoes (not squishy) along with some hot peppers (Jalapenos will work, but Serranos are better).
I think the best tomatoes for this are small, richly-colored Roma tomatoes. Quarter them and then slice. Different sized slices will make a different salad, so go for the size you prefer to see on the end of your fork.
Chop the hot peppers really small so they do not overpower the dish.
Now rinse your onions. Simply wash the salt off in cold water. Then give them a bit of a chop to make the pieces a little smaller. Big rings of onion are not what this salad calls for. Cutting the circle in quarters or sixths is probably perfect.
Then you mix it all together and add a bit of lime or lemon juice. The basic salad is just onions, tomatoes, and hot peppers. You can also vary this by adding cucumbers, cilantro, or avocado.
Eat it as a condiment with your favorite rice & meat dish! Best eaten with the hands.
SMART, FIT, AND CLEAN 