All posts filed under: Blog Entries

Sausage, Bean and Kale Soup

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We are all doing a lot more home cooking, and that is such a good thing! Eating healthy is important always, but especially now. You can actually boost immunity by providing your body with vitamins and minerals. This soup is easy and spicy sausage, kale and white beans make a hearty, filling and nutritionally packed entree for the chilly nights and days of spring. This soup is GF, DF and slow carb. Prep time 25minsCook time 25minsServes 4-8 depending on entree or side dish Ingredients 1 tablespoon olive oil or avocado oil1 medium yellow onion, chopped4 medium garlic cloves, minced¾ -1 lb spicy chorizo sausage or hot Italian sausage3 carrots, peeled and diced small¾ C mushrooms, chopped2 celery stalks, finely chopped1 tsp aleppo pepper, optional½ C dry white wine4 C chicken broth plus 1 tsp. “better than bouillon” extract, chicken flavor2 (15 ounce) cans white beans, drained and rinsed1 bunch kale, chopped small, stems removedsalt, to tasteBlack pepper, ground, to tasteParmesan, optional, for serving Directions: Heat oil over medium in a large soup pot. (not …

Thriving with Kids at Home During Uncertain Times

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I posted this on my personal Facebook page last week and it has taken off, so I am sharing it here, and I have expanded it. If you are a parent, grandparent or aunt/uncle, here are things to help ease our anxiety in this time of social isolation. I will also be posting more recipes soon. Things to do with your kids: Ask them what they want to do. My granddaughter started a word document and listed some very academic goals! Kids will surprise you! They love the Prodigy game site for math. It works with parents to create challenges and our g-kids already had accounts from school. Cook with your kids. Teach them how to make REAL food. Don’t just make sweet things. Show them how to make soup. When they cook something they are proud and much more likely to eat it! Vitamins boost immunity. Ditch the junk food. Here’s a recipe. Use stay at home resources. There is even a Faceook Group Amazing Educational Resources that has a list of a TON …

How to protect yourself from coronavirus and flu.

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Updated 1.2022Now that COVID-19 is part of our reality — when I first wrote this in early March, there were less than 10,000 total US cases. Now, we’re over 60M MILLION infected, (worldwide 300M), with over 5.4 million deaths worldwide as of January 2022. There are things you can do to protect yourself. Experts say that it’s inevitable that 60 to 70% of us will experience this virus in one variant or another. The one thing within your power is to bolster your immune system and prepare for it. NOW. Not when you get sick. My advice is to be in the best shape possible. Most people who have died are elderly AND have what healthcare calls “co-morbid” conditions: meaning they have a chronic illness AND they have come down with COVID-19. One example is research is beginning to demonstrate very low D3 levels = increased severity of illness. See article here for more. Here are ways to boost immunity. Keep in mind this is an ever evolving list but I am updating it with …

The truth about pain meds, even the mild ones…

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Dr. Terry Wahls is an award winning pioneer in dealing with progressive neurological diseases. She should know. She has relapsing remitting MS. She went from a wheelchair to completing bike races by taking the principles of Functional Medicine and applying it to her life. Reprinted it with permission from Dr. Wahls. See the link at end of the article to learn more about pain and diet and how to manage them safely. “American adults take painkillers like candy. The use of Vicodin alone, the most popular pain relief drug in the country, has grown dramatically from 112 million doses prescribed in 2006, to 131 million in the U.S, according to ABC News. While taking pain medication is widespread, it’s not normal. Humans did not evolve to be in so much chronic pain. So what should people in pain do? As someone who used to suffer from chronic pain, and as a medical professional, I knew these pills are dangerous. But I didn’t know exactly how much until I began researching more and understanding the complexities. …

How prepared food is sabotaging our health…

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I was in the store recently in a large city. It was a very nice grocery store, and most people who go there think highly of their merchandise. I do a lot of flipping packages around and REALLY looking at nutrition information. Because most of the time it just makes my blood boil. THE PREPARED FOOD INDUSTRY IS KILLING US!! Here’s a perfect example! Frozen Entree, ready to eat, just warm it up. Says “Clean Planet” on the label. Can’t be all bad, right? WRONG. So, let’s break this down. 17 g of fat isn’t a big deal, but it depends on what oil source it is coming from. Looking at the ingredients, I have trouble figuring out where the saturated fat comes from since Chicken breast, Olive Oil and seasonings don’t have much. So that is perplexing. Next is the carbs, and that is where they get you. 71 carbs in one 12 oz. serving, including 21 grams of added sugars? Woah! For comparison, A SNICKERS BAR has 33 gm of carbs… (and no, …

Snack “not so well”…

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This is going to be a short post. I’ve written before about processed food. And we continue to get hood-winked into thinking processed food is ok, EVEN HEALTHY. It hardly EVER is. Let’s take Snackwell Cookies. Or as I call them “diet sabotage” cookies. First, they STILL are selling these. You can’t find them a lot, but they are out there. And let’s examine the nutrition. They used to have zero fat, but now they have 2.5 G of saturated fat, but 3 total Gm fat. Where’s the other .5 G? Read my ingredient evaluation below. And please, don’t buy them. So, what jumps out? There is minimal fat. Fat gives you satiety. What happens when you eat these? Your blood sugar goes up >>>your insulin levels rise to use the sugar>>>and you stay hungry because there is NO fat or protein to offset and slow the digestion. You’ve just eaten a “healthy” cookie with nothing but an immediate sugar load. No whole food has this. Because it is BAD for your body. Not to …

Low Carb Keto Lamburgers, T2T Original

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One of Mark Hyman’s original cookbooks is still one of my favorites. The Ultra-Metabolism Cookbook (scroll down for link and image) has lots of amazing healthy recipes. I’ve taken the recipe for lamburgers and added my twist, subtracted what I didn’t like and violá! So, let’s get on with it. Keto/Low Carb Lamburgers Ingredients: serves 4-6 | *optional | printable recipe w/o pics here 1 lb. organically fed ground lamb, locally sourced if possible 2 roasted red peppers, skin removed, chopped fine (I use ones that come in a jar) 1 bunch mint, stems removed 1 bunch cilantro*, chopped fine stems okay (see below how I use food processor) 12 leaves basil, stems removed and cleaned 5 stalks fresh parsley, stems removed and cleaned 1-2 large fennel pieces, chopped into quarters 1 large slice red onion (see photo), chopped 1 teaspoon sea salt ½ teaspoon allspice 1 teaspoon cumin, ground 2 teaspoons ground coriander 4-5 “grinds” black pepper, preferably freshly ground 1 tsp aleppo pepper, if you have it (or you can use red pepper …

Cancer saved me… really.

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One of my fellow health coaches posted a TED video today called “What Almost Dying Taught Me About Living” and it got me thinking about the road between perfectly healthy and gravely ill. If you think about it, ALL of us are on that continuum, and some days are much closer to the ill end than others. For me it wasn’t days, it was decades. In 2005 I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. (I’m not sure why I capitalized that, but for me it was a pivotal event in my life). It was a game changer. It stopped me and my family in our tracks. We rallied, but my view of life as I knew it was over. You look at everything differently from that moment forward, and sometimes that is a good thing. And you are never that same Pre-Diagnosis person again. You simply cannot be. Your view on mortality shifts. I was lucky, it had not spread to my lymph nodes, but I still opted to go through both chemo and radiation treatments. …

Vaccine Prep: Protect your child BEFORE vaccinations.

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This very excellent article was posted earlier this month on Dr. Kara Fitzgerald’s blog, who is a Functional Medicine Provider I follow as I believe she researches things very well and this one is particularly timely. In Wisconsin, we are facing an epidemic of measles — and we aren’t alone. Measles Cases in 2019. From January 1 to May 24, 2019, 940** individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 26 states. This is an increase of 60 cases from the previous week. This is the greatest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1994 and since measles was declared eliminated in 2000. CDC/Cases and Outbreaks, updated quarterly As a health coach, I tell clients that I believe the answer to whether to vaccinate, like ANY medical and drug intervention is individual and should be made by the physician and the patient, or in this case the parents. But Dr. Fitzgerald’s staff member Romilly Hodges goes a step further: she makes an excellent case for things we SHOULD be doing to PREPARE our children …

What hunger REALLY means.

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One of the things I teach when I do my Food As Medicine Classes is that hunger doesn’t just mean you’re hungry, it means MUCH more. Your body is giving you a signal it wants MACRO and MICRONUTRIENTS! In fact, I use this slide: An article in a recent Huffington Post was so well written, I’m going to link it below. Please read it. It hopefully will change the way you look at junk food. And it explains why you can eat a large meal of junk and still be hungry! Here’s Why You Don’t Feel Full After Eating Junk Food You can eat an entire sleeve of Oreos or a bag of Hot Cheetos and still not feel satiated. It’s because your body knows things your brain doesn’t. By Katy Severson 03/05/2019 09:25am ET You’ve just eaten 10 Taco Bell tacos and a frozen Mountain Dew and you feel… suspiciously still hungry. You’ve consumed about 1,880 calories, but your body isn’t satisfied. What’s happening? Studies show that satiety, the mechanism that stops us from …

Easy Chicken Soup

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Today we went down to make lunch and we had two chicken breasts that we had baked yesterday. I try and buy the ones with the bone in and the skin on so that they have a bit more flavor than the ubiquitous boneless skinless chicken breast. Which reminds me of the time our middle son, as a toddler, asked me at dinner “Mom, how did they get the bones in this chicken?”  Do you think we’d had boneless skinless too much?  Eeek!  We burst out laughing.  Those were the days when chicken fat was evil. Not any more.  My husband looked at me and said “it’s too cold to have chicken salad” which is our go-to lunch for cooked chicken. He asked if there was anyway we could have soup, and since I love making soup, we gave it a try.  He is my sous chef and chopper, so I am lucky! This recipe literally came out of my head and my fridge but it turned out so good I thought I would post …

Low Carb Confusion

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There is so much confusion about low carb diets. The choice is individual. See how they compare, without the hype.