May Your Weekends be Delicious!

Instead of taking weekends off, I've decided to dedicate weekends to recipes.  I find that instead of having to prepare two meals, on the weekends I have six meals to assemble.  So, in five paragraphs or less I can assemble meals here for all of us to feast our eyes upon.  It may give you simple fixes, gap fillers, or inspiration for next weekends feast~  Monday through Friday I will keep picking apart our body systems and defining health though its building blocks:  food, water, vitamins, and germs!

Breakfast~  Most important meal of the day.  Eating within two hours of waking up causes a chain reaction that turns on the metabolism, exchanges fluids, and regulates hormones.  So, after a liter of wonderful water, try this on for size:

 Slice an apple, add some old, hard cheese (high in protein, low in lactose) and throw in some granola crunches for fiber and fullness.    You can make your own (dozens of recipes) otherwise it's cheap and easy to find in the grocery store~  Great snack too, if you are more of the eggs for breakfast type...

For Lunch~  Balance out the raw and the cooked foods. When we eat raw foods out bodies immediately assign the appropriate enzymes.  When we cook it, it takes a minute or 30, for the enzymes to access the foods because of the chemical changes that occur during the cooking process.  Lunch is the perfect time to eat raw foods with a hot accompaniment.  Yesterday we had roasted chicken breast, skin included because it is...  wait for it... good for you.  I found some great fresh lettuce, some fantastically ripe tomatoes, and a serious looking bell pepper.  No carbs on this one...  Just a great pile of raw veg and a breast!!!

Dinner~  Sunday is a great day for pasta in the Burrill House.  I make a big sauce, a big bowl of pasta, a dozen links of italian sausage, some broccoli and some bread.  I know.  Not exactly 'healthy', right?  Sausage is not a low-fat lean meat, tomato sauce looses many of its nutrients because of the cooking process, and white pasta has very little nutritional value.  Then we cook the broccoli (steam) and we toss white bread in the mix.  You are correct....  the foods we choose to put in our bodies matter.  This love I have for pasta and sausage, though?  I can't really find anything wrong with the joy, the smell, the flavor, the taste, the fulfillment of this weekly indulgence.  Can you?

And don't forget to snack.  Eating often is important for keeping your blood sugar level steady and your metabolism burning.  On weekends its too easy to gorge on one meal and skip the next; to drink too much coffee and skip breakfast; to anticipate a big dinner so lunch is eliminated.  If you eat a little all day long you won't over eat because you will get and feel full~  Drink water with everything, fortify with vitamins (because we cook our food) and wash your hands before you eat.  May your weekend be delicious!

Anna~