Food Balance Your Body Type Archives - Page 24 of 32

Kitchen Food Pantry + Healthy Cinnamon Roll Recipe

Kitchen food pantry is a must whether it’s shelves or bins if you want to maintain a healthy eating lifestyle and not have to run out to the grocery store every time you need an ingredient 🤔

And if you want to make a recipe like cinnamon rolls below, your ingredients are cupboard and pantry ready or can be subsituted.

my kitchen food pantry in 2020. — The 2020 Pantry that started it all. It wasn’t all healthy, but then gradually as the world became more social healthy so did my kitchen.

It’s smart these days to have a running house kitchen food pantry, especially with all the grocery store shortages and shipping dilemmas.

What you store in your kitchen food pantry ends up being part of your diet (the same concept as: what you bring home from the grocery store or delivered ends up on your plate).

So, I started a household kitchen food pantry at the start of 2020 because I’m a planner and that makes food conveniently available in real-time.

Real food is a basic need, and no metaverse can change that (zero taste would never last on our planet 😊).

Plus, having a personal kitchen food pantry lets you bypass the panic buy waves that seem to run rampant.

And you can find yourself cooking and baking more, just in case you’re looking for homemade-cooking inspiration.

But even if you’re not a planner, the checklist below can help remind you of healthy pantry food items to stock up on when you’re running low.

kitchen food pantry cinnamon bun ingredients. — Cinnamon bun recipe below 🍥 👇

One recent item I found interesting that made the trending grocery shortage list along with chicken is cinnamon buns.

They are easy to bake (I think) and I have a delicious and fast recipe bake below

🥮 that’s gonna keep you smiling and healthy. It all starts with having cinnamon spice on hand (and one of my #1 go-to sources for adding a little sweet to bakes, foods, and drinks). Cinnamon I think I sweet, and no heat, but if you’re not used to it, can kinda feel that way.

Ceylon cinnamon is the kind you want to add to your healthy beverages. The regular or traditional cinnamon is Cassia cinnamon that’s often used in baking.

So, anyway… Here’s a kitchen food pantry idea list that can come in handy (from my pantry to yours maybe?):

✔️ Nuts, Seeds, and Dried Fruits (ex: raisins, craisins, dates, papaya, almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, flax seeds) come in handy as snack fillers between meals. You can make a trail mix or use them to bake with.

They’re dry ingredients so they water down baking, that’s working to dry what’s baking in the oven. If you have temperature-sensitive nuts like macadamia or Brazil nuts, you can keep them in the fridge to give them a longer life.

✔️ Canned Beans and Other Legumes (ex: white beans, black beans, peas, edamame, chickpea-garbanzo beans) you can use for every meal or straight out of the can.

You can run water inside the open cans to rinse out some of the preserving salts/sodium, or you can use the can liquid for soups and dips. You can even use the chickpea aquafaba liquid as an egg white substitute. There are no rules. But once cans are opened, it’s smart to refrigerate and use ’em within a few days.

✔️ Packaged Fruit (or what I call pantry shelf fruit, ex: unsweetened applesauce, cherries, pineapple) come in handy for baking.

Btw, I try to buy the unsweetened (or unsalted) versions if there’s a choice for all food goods ready-to-eat or for baking. ‘Cause then you can choose what sweets or salts to add back in, and control how much. And that’s part of the benefits making your own bakes and dishes.

✔️ Canned Proteins (ex: tuna, sardines, clams) make great snacks and lunch meat. You can add to almost any carb meal.

✔️ Shelf-ready Non-dairy milks (ex: almond milk) are good to keep around, plus a can of coconut milk and evaporated milk for easy baking or soups. Best expiration dates are usually over a year out.

✔️ Comfort Food Boxed Pasta make a pantry shelf look organized (that probably wasn’t your first thought, lol). There seems to be a new pasta shape out every year and in panic-buy shortages, the whole aisle empties fast (and ends up in pantries!).

So it’s good to have a couple of uniform boxes with different pasta shapes on hand. Larger pasta surfaces like shells will hold onto sauces better when you’re deciding what shapes and types to go with (ex: traditional spaghetti, macaroni, whole wheat).

Veggie pasta doesn’t need a fancy sauce and can taste light and elegant with the right EVOO.

✔️ Canned Tomatoes or Tomato Sauce go hand and hand in your pantry for a weekly Italian meal. But the cheese doesn’t belong there and I agree with the Italians that parmesan (America’s cheese) is not high quality once you get a taste of the better stuff.

You can opt to store nutritional yeast as a dry, cheesy alternative. It’s called “nutritional” because it’s full of nutrition (vitamins and minerals).

✔️ Slow Cooking or Old-Fashioned Oats and Grits. Good for breakfast but they can be substituted instead of flour for some bakes, and if you want to do gluten-free.

✔️ Other Whole Grains: (ex: brown rice, quinoa, barley, farro). Just look for “whole” in front of grains.

✔️ Drinks: (ex: unsweetened cocoa for baking and hot cocoa and ground coffee.) Even if you don’t drink these often they come in handy for occasions. You can always make healthy cold brew coffee if you don’t have a coffee machine.

The best drink for your body (water) isn’t in the pantry.

✔️ High Bran/Whole Grain Cereal: Processed cereals (including fortified ones) have gotten a bad rap. Some you may have heard we grew up with are even linked to having traces of weedkiller.

But if you find the right fortified cereal, that can be a good daily fiber source and a possible better sweet substitute.

✔️ Chocolate chip morsels: You can always find some chocolaty-way to bake them in or enjoy in a no-bake trail mix.

I learned in my Doubletree catering experience that chocolate chips will get you far! You can see my easy one bowl chocolate chip oatmeal cookie and cool-star design chocolate oatmeal soft recipe

✔️ Salts: (ex: kosher, coarser sea salt, regular sea salt). Kosher is good for some bakes while coarser salts are a great finishing touch for veggies (almost like a salt garnish).

They allow you to appreciate your foods better at the moment when they activate on your tongue ...remember the different taste regions on the tongue?

Coarse salt on Brussels sprouts can change your opinion of the healthy veg.

✔️ Vinegars/Condiments: (ex: apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, Worcestershire, and soy sauces).

These are versatile ingredients you can use to dress up your dishes, dressings, and sauces.

✔️ EVOO: keep a medium and a lighter version for cooking vs. baking (if you like the scent and taste, chances are you’ll love it in your dishes).

✔️ Flours: all-purpose, whole wheat, bread, corn, gluten-free (ex: almond, coconut, and buckwheat can be used in baking). Gluten-free flours are better preserved in the fridge than in a pantry.

✔️ Baking agents: cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda-the orange box in your fridge not to be confused with slightly different baking powder in baking, yeast packets for breads, sugars sparingly used for baking (ex: powdered sugar, monkfruit sugar, and brown sugar). You can learn to add less sugar and crave less.

✔️ Soup: before 2020, I used to buy canned low-sodium soups, and learned to cut down the sodium even more by making soups from fresh and my kitchen food pantry ingredients.

With fresh and root veggies, you can almost make any kind of warm soup you want. Same concept with fresh fruits where you can make any no-added low-sugar cool juice you want.

✔️ Variety of anti-inflammatory herbs and spices: for every day you want to have a variety of spice such as: oregano, turmeric, cayenne, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, you want to take a look at your spice options, and add spices such as thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, anise, allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger if those aren’t fresh.

✔️ Loose leaf and tea bags: from an herbal list, peppermint is always good to have on hand for aches.

Floral and fruity tea is also favorable. Black (ex: cinnamon, Earl Grey, chai), green, and red/rooibos are antioxidant wonders.

✔️ Breads: Where is the best place to preserve bread longer… pantry, fridge, or freezer?

It’s the freezer. The fridge hardens and dries out your bread, but a freezer will keep it from undesirable changing properties after 2-3 days at room temperature.

You’ll know when freezer bread has eventually turned stale as it has a freezer-burn, cardboard-like but that doesn’t usually happen for months or longer.

If you’re wanting to freeze bread, slice it up at room temperature first before freezing, so you can pull out the slices you need without de-thawing the entire loaf. Pop frozen toast in your toaster, and it’s just as fresh.

And here is the no-refined sugar but refined cinnamon buns 😊bread recipe:

Jump to Recipe

Low-Sugar Delicious Cinnamon Rolls

For sweetness, I recommend adding honey in the dough and as a final glaze. Also, add a load of Ceylon cinnamon spice in-between for the sweet. Of course.

You can add sugar or monk fruit sugar if you wish and if you have a younger eating audience that’ll appreciate the sugar. Your older guests (and maybe you) can appreciate your sugar in moderation healthy baking gestures.

Healthy fat is used in this recipe. Keep in mind: if you use a healthy fat like light EVOO, it won’t be like the bakery and store-bought cinnamon buns you’re used to.

These cinnamon buns’ bite will be moist, and a little different than a flaky butter finish, but still uber-delicious.

Flour: Bread flour (or a mix with whole wheat flour) does the best for cinnamon buns in my opinion, but you can definitely substitute with crumbly gluten-free “healthy” flours and add natural xantham gum or other binders.

But I like no-fuss or muss, so this bread prep can be done in 5 minutes by hand mixing 5 ingredients: warm water, flour, yeast, plain yogurt (or condensed milk if you want to use kitchen food pantry only ingredeints), and salt. Plus, honey for sweetness. And no proof waiting time.

The enriched dough rests for a few minutes, and then you can roll the buns and watch the magical oven work while pursuing other hobbies 😊 …that’s how I Cinna-roll in this delicious-on recipe.

Print Recipe

Healthy Cinnamon Rolls

Course Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine American, swedish

Servings 8 rolls

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

2-1/2 cups total flour (you can mix bread flour, whole wheat, gluten-free bread)
1/2 tsp instant yeast (if you use active yeast add to warm water to activate first)
1/2 tbsp sea salt
1/2 tbsp raw honey
1/2 cup plain yogurt (Greek yogurt recommended) or a can of evaporated or condensed milk, or coconut cream
3/4 cup warm water (+ more)
cinnamon spice (to taste)

Instructions

Make bread by mixing flour, water, salt, yeast.
Let proof for at least 1-2 hours.
Roll into a log.
Cut into even slices with cooking thread.
Set on baking tray and bake on 350°F until golden brown. Optional shine: Add egg wash when almost done baking (or glaze after baking and cooling).

Cinna(MON)-Roll Bread Buns

Ingredients (for 8 rolls):

8”x 4” (or 9”x5”) pan

2-1/2 cups total flour (you can mix bread flour, whole wheat, gluten-free bread)

1/2 tsp yeast (if active yeast add to warm water to activate first)

1/2 Tbsp sea salt

1/2 Tbsp raw honey

1/2 cup plain yogurt (Greek yogurt recommended)

¾ cup warm water + more

Directions:

Mix ingredients in a bowl adding just enough warm water until all the flour is incorporated. Some of the dough will be stringy dough pieces or crumbs, and not a smooth dough (not like a baby’s bottom 👶).

Let rest for a few minutes (or leave overnight covered in the fridge).

Bring the dough out and lay it on top of bench flour (any baking flour will work. I like to stick with the same ones I’m using in the buns or whole wheat flour). Roll out dough (not too thin to about 1/4-1/2″ thick) into a rectangle shape and then cut strips with a pizza wheel cutter (or knife), saving the dough scrap ends.

Roll out the remaining dough and combine with the dough scraps, to make 8 total long pieces about the same size. These will be your buns.

Healthy Version:

Then brush light EVOO (good for sweet baking) or ghee (clarified butter) on each strip. And then layer and fully cover a generous dusting of cinnamon spice (Ceylon cinnamon suggested and the amount based on your preference).

Bake time will vary depending on flour choices, dough thickness, baking pan, and oven. As a guideline, bake until a little darker than golden brown as the outside is browner then the inside that can still be a little moist/unbaked.

Suggested time and temperature: Bake at 350 °F for about 45 minutes. Pull out halfway and brush more EVOO. Then reduce oven heat to 200 F for another 10 minutes. That’s what these in the photos were baked in.

If you find the outside looks too dry, you may want to brush with EVOO again. You could also substitute with an egg wash (about half way through) for a ‘lil moist shine, but I prefer another way after cooled…

Cinna-roll looks pretty cool with the tea bath, huh?

Because the bread dough is pretty dense after cooled, I then add sweet orange zest, and raisins ontop, so it looks a little like a pain aux raisins. Then I pour brewed warm (but not hot) tea over the cinnamon bun, that softens and plumps up the raisins (like you may have heard to add to your Earl Grey tea and that mellows out the brisk taste). Well… the raisins and zest here add sweetness and the tea bath adds the mellow. The fruit-forwardness comes through.🧡

For the pouring tea, I suggest using a black tea: like cinnamon, chai, or Earl Grey. Then when you wanna enjoy it, you’ll have a sweet, warm, and lightly moist bread experience. Yes, please! 😋

Healthy Foods Substituting Ingredients

Healthy foods can substitute processed and other ingredients that your body doesn’t use as nutrition.

The Great British Bake Off does substituting ingredients. But healthy substituting, I’m not so sure about 😊 because that’s not their point.

Getting to love healthy foods can take gradual changes.

And food variety and curiosity can create opportunities.

Eating healthy got me interested in cooking healthy foods and using healthier ingredients later in life post-catering management work days.

Those days, I rarely cooked as I was always around decadent foods from a hotel kitchen.

And then stepping away from party planning and then into the pandemic days, I started to home cook and bake daily.

One ingredient at a time, I exchanged filler and not so great ingredients for healthy ones.

It started with interest and fascination with exchanging a simple ingredient like yeast for eggs, gives you risen bread instead of pasta.

That’s the same sort of small ingredient change that you can make in daily meal planning (even if you don’t cook today), that can make a big difference in your health.

But first, you need to know what to do.

“When you know better, you do better.” -Maya Angelou

Btw, as of today, Maya Angelou is now appearing on minted quarters (so her legacy advice is even more valuable!).

But anyway… long before I learned to cook, I didn’t care so much about the quality of ingredients as I did the final product taste.

And for work, I planned catering events in hotels and restaurants, and I can’t think of a single instance where there was a request for a full-on healthy party menu (over good tasting meals).

That theme never came up in conversations. In throwing successful events, enjoyable and making happy memories in those situations means serving an unforgettable mouthful of delicious.

Once in a while, sprinkled in the mix, there would be a request for healthier alternatives because of food allergies, or for a raw vegetable crudite platter that was considered veg-forward, and to start the party off on a light note.

Or for conference event planning, where the catered food was the main daily food the guests were eating and the host planner wanted healthier energy and “brain food” served. But those were the exceptions.

And that’s partly because eating rich foods for a day or eating out for a few days doesn’t have the same consequences as it does for daily eating that become the routines and habits.

When you have an overall goal to stay healthy or be health-conscious, you care about the overall weekly diet and the ingredients.

And if you’re the one cooking and adding the ingredients, you get to decide how much of this or that you add to meals. That can very rewarding and I share a few tips below whether or not you cook today.

…You just never know what will be a good source of inspo to get you cookin’ and as I found on my journey.

I never say never, but if you live near a city especially, gardening isn’t usually the main source for full-on meals. But many of us cook regularly as we want to learn how to make new dishes and develop cooking skills confidence.

So that’s my first tip for anyone: to try and cook more often even if you don’t think you can boil an egg or make a box of pasta. We all start somewhere!

When you make, cook, or bake your food, you start to think about your foods more than when you’re just eating, heating, or ordering food in.

Then that brings more awareness to eating healthy foods if that’s a goal you have.

And in that case, making everyday recipes that have sticks of butter or shortening just won’t cut it.

At first, you can be feeling at odds following recipes that have a mix of healthy and not-so-healthy ingredients. That’s part of the journey.

I always start with the ingredients.

If I don’t like what’s in it, then I just skip the recipe or food. But when you’re starting out, following a recipe is easier and can be more fruitful… just in case you needed some cooking encouragement to keep trying.

Our olive oil EVOO society has also made it easier. That’s what I call it because EVOO (thank you to the Mediterranean diet) is often used in restaurants over butter, that used to be the standard.

Healthy fat foods and healthy monounsaturated fat like EVOO (as in EVeryday olive oil + extra virgin) used with a light hand drizzle is going to be a good substitute for your body health.

Just add a few drops and then spread it around the pan with a baton flick of the ninja cooking wrist 😊. Just sayin’ too much of a good thing is too much.

But a little bit benefits your cooking too. Besides food flavor and a glisten, this keeps your food and pans from cooking heat burns.

The biggest goes to body health of course. So, my second tip is to substitute butter with healthier ingredients like applesauce or yogurt for baking, and ghee or EVOO for cooking when you can.

Traditional Christmas Cookies are the sweet recipe exception I have found that isn’t the same without the buttery taste-texture.

But even in that context, I still think (and from my own baking experiments) know that butter can be substituted, and still be just as delicious and enjoyable.

You may just have to get a ‘lil more creative with the cookie decorating.

…I made these (above photo) bak-love-a layers with light EVOO (that’s great for sweet and savory baking). I only used butter to add on the top layer glaze to please my younger self.🤷🏻‍♀️

Just an example that balanced moderation can be effectively added into recipes where it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

I find hard and fast rules can fall flat and in the category elimination diet that I tend to stay away from.

I think eating diverse, mostly plant-based, and moderation for most everything else is the way to go and the way I go. Especially if you have food allergies and sensitivities.

But, this is a healthy leap from when I started my baking journey using ingredients like shortening that you still see in Southern comfort cooking recipes.

Aah… but, when I knew better, I did better. And that could be your journey.

Like I learned butter is made from heavy cream and if you keep whipping, it easily turns to butter.

It’s lessons like this where you can get revelations like I did, that an ingredient’s makeup and consistency is (ex)changeable. And so, ingredients are not fixed as what we know them as. They can be substituted and swapped in recipes.

A good example would be substituting sugar with healthy foods like dried fruits, fruit zest, or honey (that can help allergies too).

These types of little changes make big difference to health, and how you feel in your day. And, maybe the bottom line… or the waistline (yay!).

Or, maybe you’re a natural Vata (or know of some)…that’s me too 🙋🏻‍♀️, where you may have inherited the thinner genes and higher metabolism. You still have to watch the fats.

If you’re a female adult, you wanna make sure you’re not “skinny fat” that’s a good healthy measurement.

You can do this by comparing your waist to hip ratio (where most women can aim for under 80%).

There are no shortcuts to good health as your body has a different opinion on what it needs that’s different than our tastes and wants.

Another healthy substitute is oats and grits for pie crusts, cookies, and brownies mixed with apple sauce or yogurt and honey. When you bake, then you can make these swaps pretty easily, both butter and gluten-free (without flour).

Healthy foods like grits can be used as the pie base.

But when you shop from grocery shelves that’s a different story as pie shells look harmless, despite not-so healthy ingredients. And healthy foods don’t jump off the shelves either.

You can just as easily add Greek yogurt and jam or fresh fruit to your gritty pie shell.. that’ll hold up beautifully!

That’s how I started, not really paying attention to nutrition labels and ingredients.

Then along my healthful journey, I decided not to choose Mister Donut of any kind, fresh or not, because I knew and know what’s in them.

Besides taste, very little. And lots of sugar and fat. And I trained myself from awareness to look at them like that, and see the missing-ness through the hole in the middle.

But for others, and you, that could just as easily be another processed food item where the consequence is known and inevitable.

When a tradeoff is determined as individually undesirable, then you beneficially want to give it up (and don’t HAVE to give it up that can cause an internal conflict).

These btw (below) are healthy “donut hole” inspo w-hole bites and balls of energy that anyone can bake and substitute for high-sugar and fat.

Black bean “brownie-inspo” ball of energy bites

When you pause on the processed foods, you can gradually not desire to eat the super-sweet stuff anymore. It can work if you work it. And then you actually like the taste of healthy foods.

Your habits then become your choices.

If you’ve ever fasted, then you probably know the feeling… because after a while you can stop caring or obsessing about eating (like I did in fasting experiences). I’m not a good faster but I’ve attempted fasting sweets.

After a day or so, you can stop craving whatever you’re fasting from because you, your mind, and your body are in agreement that you don’t need those foods (at least not now).

So, then you’re satisfied.

And that’s all you need to care about when it comes to eating enjoyment. Being content to be happy.

…I remember the days when I got teased by friends for eating healthy and selecting healthy food choices. I felt bad they didn’t know what I knew in nutrition, and sadly, that adds aging stress on the body.

Our bodies are tricky and complex and has a different daily systematic agenda that doesn’t necessarily like our unhealthy choices after swallowed or initial taste bud food changes that we choose (that can be unhealthy or healthy foods).

I knew back then (even if it was subconscious) that I wanted to live without eating regrets or damaging the one body we’re given, so I followed my instincts and those became habits.

When you don’t take for granted your body’s resiliency, that can help you to want to be healthier.

Plus, we have so much more food sources and healthy information available to us now that allows us to buy ingredients in person, online, and from global sources.

When your body is used to you eating healthy, another healthy food strategy (and final tip) is to switch up the healthy foods and ingredients regularly. Switching up foods is fun.

It’s an enjoyable game you can play that you’ll never get sick of and is what your body wants for you as it craves good taste and healthy variety.

Plus, if a food is labeled bad or good and that evolves or changes, like nuts used to be deemed bad and now are great healthy fats, then you haven’t put all your eggs in one basket 🥚🥚… you know what I mean, Jelly Bean 😉.

And you can make your own baklava… baking and phyllo dough is as fun as pasta making along with the Great British Baking Show.

Easy Phyllo Dough For Baklava

Make phyllo dough from scratch! It's not as difficult as it sounds... and dare I say fun!

Course Dessert

Cuisine lebanese

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup flour
1 cup water
pinch of salt
honey
chopped nuts
dates, orange, and cinnamon (optional)

Instructions

Making phyllo is a lot like making homemade pasta, but much thinner.
Make a mound and a hole in the middlle where you can add the olive oil and slowly add water. Knead for about 5 minutes and then form a dough disc. Let rest.
Roll out as thin as possible and then you can slip into the pasta maker if you have one, adjusting until you get to the thinnest setting (e.g. 1). It will look opaque but the hope is that there will be no holes.
Cut into strips that you will use as layers for the baklava.
For the baklava, you can brush honey and top with chopped dates and nuts (walnuts or pistachios work well) on every other layer if you make 7 layers ending with the top layer with honey and nuts. Sprinkle each layer with cinnamon and orange zest if you like (good for Ayurvedic Vata balancing!).

Holiday Entertainment Shows + Gluten-Free Carrot Cake Recipe

Holiday entertainment is not a mere plus during the holidays. It’s a must to get through the holidays… full of bittersweet happy and sad moments… filled with illuminating reflections on the past year… finding your way through stressful calendar-marked deadlines ticking like a time bomb.

And before holiday has come and gone, you can enjoy this one-bowl comfort dessert with no guilt as it’s healthy and wildly tasty! It could be your new year dessert. 🎉

It’s gluten-free, carrot vitamin-rich and orange calming for nerves… and great for entertaining mixed emotions.

Healthy Carrot Cake great for holiday entertainment and life. — Gluten-free healthy orange carrot cake (recipe below)

Ahhh.. but light-hearted holiday entertainment shows (like GBBO for this modified healthy baker) and sappy rom-com tearjerker movies can help us lighten our load if we feel stressed.

On that note, I have 3-holiday entertainment mentions below worth checking out

That can be exciting and worth sticking around until the end of the blog article and staying up past midnight on Dec. 31. 😊

…And somewhere in between is December 25 where we can easily forget when we started our holiday. In America, that’s usually Thanksgiving in November where we celebrate gratitude for the things we have in our lives.

In the happy holiday spirit, December and Christmas are opportunities for each of us to grow, dig deep in our shadow, be reflective about our past, and find more appreciation for our joy and happiness’ sake as better humans than before.

Christmas is always an invitation to find hope and peace now. And welcome in happy and healthy intentions for the future. And that can include skipping, baking, and inspiring yoga moves! Why not?

I plan to be in the kitchen (…and maybe you too with your planned festivities whether quiet or action-filled?).

Here’s my illustrative yoga guide for those who will be busy holiday joy baking and wanting to unwind like a pretzel in front of the tube or streaming media 😊:

5 baking yoga stretches: tree pose, pigeon pose, bow pose, bridge pose, and happy baby.

There’s a big buildup to Christmas celebrations that probably started way earlier in the year …like Christmas in July promotions?

This year is probably no different where you’re not hit by deer lights… that’s a certain predictable point to be grateful for. We know it’s coming!

And we can lean into holiday entertainment, decorations, and warm & fuzzy feelings to get us in the mood.

We don’t have to lean into the bitter self-pity. We can feel contentment for what we have in our accumulated wisdom.

Some things we can think of is:

We’re grateful we’re not who we once were. We’re a better version, and getting better every day. It may be two steps forward and one step back, but we’re still improving.

And some places we’re completely transformed and others we completely forgot where we were once hurting in another way.

We’re happy as is because we know it won’t stay this way. We’re wired to have the best life.

Besides things could be worse, but thankfully they’re not. Those (and your) beliefs can help shape your optimistic outlook.

Getting rid of the moods that can hang over like heavy, gray clouds (that can lead to Kapha depression) is freeing. And also changing the anxious-worried symptoms common in active Vata minds.

You could be fighting ego or affected without awareness.

Letting go isn’t always so easy…

In awareness, it can feel like an uphill battle to try and win over an internal fight.

I find that when I have a moment where I feel a little emotional turmoil, laughter never grows old as one of the best medicines.

Healthy cleansing tears from humorous holiday entertainment or heart-felt movies, series, or shows can be just what the doctor ordered.

After from watching, you can feel good again. 📺

What we feel from recently watched holiday entertainment shows can show up in our refreshed thought life.

These are 3 of my holiday entertainment picks (and maybe they’re good for you also)… which btw, I’ve yet to meet a close friend who likes the same quirky shows I do.

I’m not talkin’ about Friends and the popular America’s Got Talent shows that everyone has glimpsed.

So I’m goin’ out on a limb here…

The first one I wanted to mention is actually not a show, but an old classic movie, The Sound of Music. And if that’s not your bread and jam, then think of a show or movie you watched as a kid that you enjoyed and impacted you.

And you can take my Cliff Notes version:

If you’ve never seen or forgotten what this classic movie is about, it starts out with actress Julie Andrews as a young lady in an abbey prepping to be a nun. She soon discovers she’s too independent thinking and not cut out for the job.

Sound a ‘lil familiar? I know it does for me having taken a hairpin turn or two early on. None of the nunnery kind though. 😊

The movie plot is a metaphor for our lives that can change in an instant, a.k.a. a life pivot.

A better plan is out there for us if we’re willing to stay open and hang in there.

Those thoughts can help us get through any bitter holiday moments.

Julie Andrews’ character is sent as a governess to 7 children for a former widowed Captain and Austrian naval officer.

Fr. Maria, she’s called, brings singing and love into the family and the odd-pairing couple ends up marrying (aww… a love story and musical). I hope I didn’t ruin the happy ending.

So now you’re either caught up or possibly curious to watch the movie (again).

Fun fact: the movie is filmed in Austria and Los Angeles of all places, so maybe that’s one of the reasons why it’s still a Hollywood boom.

In our lives, the parallel is that there’s a lot to look forward to getting to the other side, crossing the hills, and any mountains along our path. We can stop to appreciate the flowers like Edelweiss or roses that remind us of our resilience from our life situations.

Then after you get your fill of that movie, whether you fast-forward to the part where your heart is filled or watch the full movie, afterward you can pause to fill your warm drinking mug, and get ready to laugh (…maybe even belly laugh some) with this next recommend…

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

This modern American Netflix show of several seasons is a good metaphor for not taking life too seriously. Stand-up comedians don’t.

And Actor and Comedian Jerry Seinfeld makes that clear as he takes his guests out for coffee in coffee venues (think Diners, Drive Ins, and Dive places, plus some hole in the walls).

He chauffeurs his guests around with different classic cars to match the comedic intent and their barrel of laughs to come in coffee conversation 🐒.

Once in a while, they’re driving in lemons like an Oh sorry, Ferrari that dies on the road. That’s comical drama we call comedy.

The show is peppered with what you’d expect from comedians… impromptu funny lines about their lives and the world we live in.

Having worked in restaurants, I can find a chuckle or two with the (literally) off-the-wall menu special posters or off-color restaurant jokes…

Like when Jerry orders and asks for 2 eggs and nothing else on a plate, and the server quickly asks if he wants it on the side? The server (or waitress) made an inside funny without knowing it. Good stuff there. 😅

You’ll have to find your own humor points if you end up watching some of the episodes. …and so that brings me to a recent holiday entertainment show…

The Great British Baking Show

The Great British Baking Show has got to be the funniest baking show out there. It’s also interesting to watch the baker techniques and their foibles.

By now in the show’s (just-finishing up their 9^th season), as you’d expect the contestants know what to expect.

If they didn’t, that would be like going under the pressure cooker show as a contestant without baking practice.

.. And that would be like going on the Shark Tank show and not rehearsing… where they’d get eaten alive!

The GBBO contestants (more fitting than calling them competitors because they help each other out in the tent)… want to be sure to make the show fun and take time out to make good bakes while playing along with the tent show elves and laughing at their side jokes.

Tent Sidekick Noel announcing the challenge 😄

As part of the audience, you can feel the contestants are more mellow, less tense, and less serious about winning… and more motivated with staying in the baking tent (sometimes baking hot tent 🎪) for as long as they can.

In case you missed season 9 which is one of my faves (I say that for all of the newest ones), the cherry-on-top Star Baker title went to Giuseppe for his traditional Italian bakes passed down from his family’s baking lineage.

So now you’re all caught up!

The Great British Baking Show also has holiday versions. You can especially enjoy it if you like holiday baking inspiration and while eating sweets…

Healthy Carrot Cake — Gluten-free healthy carrot cake (recipe below)

And on that final note, I have a deliciously, seriously healthy, SWEET gluten-free carrot cake recipe below (that I’ve played around with the ingredients, whipped up, and tested all the crumbs!)… And you can just as easily prepare and enjoy in a square, round or any shape pan you like that you can bring to your screen with whatever holiday entertainment shows you end up watching. 🧡

Healthy (Easy-No Mixer Needed) Gluten-Free Carrot Cake (Bread or Squares) in One Bowl

gluten-free carrot cake

Ingredients:

1 cup grated carrots

2 eggs (room temperature)

1 Tbsp coconut oil (or light EVOO or baking oil)

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

2 tsp lemon juice

1/2 cup (120 grams) almond flour (or other gluten-free flour)

1/4 cup (60 grams) oats

1/2 cup (120 grams) chopped walnuts and raisins combined

Orange zest from a medium-size orange (or add maple syrup to taste, 1-2 tsp suggested for low sugar)

1/2 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

You can mix all the ingredients in one bowl. Add dry ingredients first, then add the liquids (that way you can use some of the same measuring spoons and cups without the dry sticking to the wet in my planner-at-heart mind 😉).

Pour into an 8″ round pan or 4″ x 8″ baking pan.

Bake at 325°F/165°C for 35-40 minutes.

After cooled, “frost” with Greek Yogurt (2% fat or reduced fat suggested) and healthily enjoy. Or you can blend with a low-fat cheese (like neufchatel cream cheese or ricotta cheese) if you prefer or will be serving to others who don’t prefer full-on healthy … but would love to try what you happily sweetly baked.

To Your Merry Happy Holidays! 🎄

3 Easy Healthy Soup Recipes With Low Sodium

I have 3 easy healthy soup recipes below that you can make (with low sodium and sea salt if you like). Before 2020, I never made my own soups. And today, I only keep a backup can in my pantry.

And you can too!… if that’s what you aspire to even if you don’t know how JUST YET.

But with delicious plant-based ingredients, you can make soup broths that you easily turn into clam chowder with a potato soup base. You impress yourself and everyone you make the soup for!

After you learn to make homemade soups in simple steps, you’ll probably not go back to store soup cans as these have delicious natural flavors without all the sodium!

And you’re doing your body healthy good. And probably saving a few dollars if that matters.

And these are the 3 easy healthy soup recipes I’m sharing below:

1. Mushroom soup (with old-fashioned but not-out-of-style oats)

2. Carrot soup (with digestive-wonder root, ginger)

3. Clam chowder (New England style that’s my personal favorite made from potato soup)

If you want to skip my introduction here (even though there’s good, healthy information that I’ve wittled down and most recipe sites are longwinded ,but this recipe article is not), you won’t hurt my feelings… and you can head straight down to the easy recipes at the end.

And if you want to learn a few healthy moves, such as Ayurvedic healthy balance acts, then here we go:

Let’s start with some soup ingredients that I’ve incorporated below, were not my faves as a child. And as I grew up, I decided I like ginger when that was not my way. I gave it another try and it stuck.

Like many kids, I like processed, sugary, and salty foods and that didn’t change as I grew into my adult Vata self.

And for any of us, we can modify our choices and influence our healthy change.

You can impact and change your health one flavor (and easy healthy soup) at a time.

Vatas especially (and some Kaphas) cuddle up to comfort food in the cooler months and the soups below will be warming and great for the transition seasons.

When we have a Vata imbalance that any of us can have, we love and crave our sweet and salty balance. One minute you want a sugar fix and the next a crisp snack with salt.

If you want to learn more about what’s going on with your body now (and tips to restore), take the body balance quiz.

Most recipes you see, say “salt to taste” or a pinch of salt. In baking, there’s always a pinch of salt and it really adds to the flavor. A ¼ teaspoon is about 5-6 pinches of salt.

If a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon, I usually use A LOT less. Why? Because health is in moderation.

And as a home baker… I rarely use butter unless it’s for celebrational traditional holiday bakes or Christmas cookies and special cakes that wouldn’t be the same without… but for everyday anti-inflammatory baking, I tweak a lot. I use healthy oils and natural sweet ingredients.

Like these ball of energy bites are homemade of grits where I added oatmeal, chocolate chip, Greek yogurt, whole wheat flour, applesauce, and honey.

And they’re complete yum, and NO-GUILT enjoyment, hitting the spot if you have a sweet tooth (that I’m an expert about). 😋 energy bites

In creating bakes, I dream up healthy recipes from the baking basics 😉 (…btw, lemme know if you would like to know what baking subs I use, and when in general, as I’d be happy to share those if you’re interested).

I’m involved in a beta chef’s cooking healthy eating group collaboration with RDs that provides culinary teaching and recipe input to a healthy strategy program.

I love food, and my background includes working with thousands of party planning events (and started my career in hotel catering that you already know if you’ve been reading some of my previous blog posts).

I’d hardly consider myself a chef-ette, but I have always had an adult culinary arts interest

…after hotels, I left the hospitality industry and went into more traditional Corporate America work, and then came back to the hospitality working world doing Mediterranean-cuisine (Lebanese, Spanish, and Italian) event planning for about a dozen foodie restaurants.

That’s really when my good food (gastronomy) tastes and senses were re-ignited and I had a chance to re-marry with my “food is medicine” approach to life.

…And if you come to my blog every week, you can plan on a lot of healthy inspiration in my upcoming blog posts (and get past those nasty winter blues).

And that’s especially good if you want to stay balanced from comfort stress eating that can get the best of us as we enter cooler months and warm holidays … and as we try to finish up stressful deadlines for the year!.

To bypass any winter mood funks and balance us, start the year with a healthy amount of a prime soup ingredient… salt.

Salt Talk For Your Soups

For soups, I avoid iodized salt. I don’t usually add table salt (like the ones in the packets) unless that’s all that’s available and the food isn’t already salted.

I alway buy “unsalted” ingredients when given an option.

If you eat out or eat prepared foods from groceries and restaurants, then you probably get enough salt. And probably more than enough salt in our highly processed foods.

When I’m cooking, I use sea salt (non-iodized) for everything and everyday use.

And then I use coarser natural sea salts like Celtic sea salt (or Himalayan or fleur de sel) for preparing meats to be baked in the oven, and for certain cooked vegetables.

Celtic sea salt is great for your rubs and on top as a garnish (not so much in mixing). The crystals are larger so they don’t blend as great as smaller salt granules. And I also Himalayan sea salt for additional healthy minerals.

And the gastronomic person in me, says coarser salt is absolutely necessary for the right flavor and texture on veggies like Brussel sprouts and edamame if you want a culinary meal experience (and not a bland one). Salt is as important as the veggie itself.

stuffed pepper — Turkey and rice stuffed bell pepper idea for soups or holiday meals

You can get away without using salt on certain veggies like broccoli or okra that hold their own tastes. If you add them to soups, the salt is usually already added.

So here are the 3 easy healthy soups that’ll help you with your salt cravings…

Easy Healthy Soup Recipes

Easy Healthy Soup #1: Mushroom Oat Soup

Cook mushrooms in a pot until soft, and add slow-cook oats. Mushrooms are immune-boosting and are alkaline. If you want, add a little cooking sherry, truffle oil, and saffron to get culinary fancy.

mushroom soup

Easy Healthy Soup #2: Carrot Ginger Soup

Print Recipe

Carrot Ginger Soup

Course Soup

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

cooked carrots
ginger juice
ginger spice
ginger, chopped
sunflower seeds (optional)
dried parsley (optional)
cumin and Old Bay (optional)

Instructions

Cook carrots on medium heat. When soft, mash carrots.
Add ginger spiced and chopped ginger bits (if you prefer for a more pungent bite good for Kapha). You can also use ginger juice for less chunks, and spices.
Zhugh with sunflower seeds and dried parsley if desired.

Cook carrots in water until soft, then mash and grate or squeeze ginger juices in the soup. You can finish off with alt-milk for a creamy-effect or just leave as is. That’s probably the way a.k.a. without ginger I would’ve preferred as a child 🧒🏻).

healthy soup recipes

Easy Potato Soup or New England Clam Chowder

This is easier to make than you may think! You can make delicious chowder from a simple potato soup base.

Peel and cook common Russet potatoes in a pot with water. You would do the same step if you were making mashed potatoes.

Then decide if you want a creamy soup. And if you do, pour out some of the water and then mash potatoes in the same stovetop pot. Still with the stove heat on, add in your ready-to-eat clams (3 large potatoes to about 5 ounces of clams you can cook or use a can).

I like to zhugh up with aromatic herbs, either fresh or with ground herb spices like cilantro, parsley, oregano, and/or basil.

If you’re not sure if you should add any herbs into your soup (if you’re feeding others), then parsley and thyme spices are less strong (more universally likable) and can be added in of left to individual tastes.

potato healthy soup recipes — Potato base soup

If you’re looking for a few easy-to-make snack ideas to go along with your healthy soup recipes or just to eat on their own, you can try…

Baked kale chips…

Or, homemade baked crackers – zesty za’atar crackers…

Or, popcorn…

Another different twist and take on changing up tastes, is this idea… instead of adding salt, you could add a ‘lil vinegar to your potato snacks and soup.

I like to add ACV vinegar but you could also try malt, red, or white vinegar… they’re healthier and also give the food a bit of a tangy bite.

I like to also add my daily spices (turmeric, black or white pepper once in awhile). I skip needing any salt after all those changes 😉.

So hopefully you are soup-er excited to make your comfort homemade and easy healthy soup recipes, and maybe you even choose to change up a way that you snack.

Tears of Joy and Breathing for Ayurvedic Living

When you get tears of joy (😂), your body is set in joy motion. You feel something and that can get you to move and take good action.

You get to experience freeing moments like you’re on top of the world, and your mind is joyfully elevated. This helps your mental health and outlook. And when your mind is happy, your body feels the connection. That’s Ayurveda in a nutshell.

Well… except it’s not that cut and dry (…I don’t think anything is these days). I wrote some personal notes below at the end of this post, from over a decade of intentional-balanced and healthy-minded living

I think it’s safe to say, we all have different body goals. One of mine is to stay looking young for as long as nature will let me. I can’t stop gray hairs from coming, but I can avoid the stressful grays that started in my mid-20s.

And our preferences are different, like in music…

For me and maybe for you, that can be in listening to a song that strikes a chord inside, like Adele’s emotional songs or the empowering words from a Lauren Daigle song.

Lyrics matter to me more now than they used to when I’d hum along to anything that had an upbeat vibe. It’s a good idea to be choosier about what we put in our minds (and body) if we want certain results.

And in modern Ayurvedic living, you choose as it’s not rules-based but certain practices work because the body is intuitive.

In other happy moments, seeing someone else happy can leave us smiling. Or when they have tears of joy, we do too.

And in another moment, that could be laughing out loud (does anyone even use LOL anymore…besides me? 😊).

And btw, I get a good laugh in watching The Great British Baking Show. I’ll spare you the witty, but clean jokes swirling in my head. But, that’s what sets it apart from every other baking competition. It’s standup (filmed) comedy or silly, tongue-in-cheek banter… oh, and beautiful bakes too.🍥

And it’s easy to love and relate to all the friendly contestants (and be glad you’re not under the pressure!). Read-dy?…Now Bake.

Just kidding. (I can’t say lol since I just called myself out on it).

But, anyway… in life, you’re usually witnessing your life from and with other people even if it’s through a computer or television. Even if we feel like we live in a bubble, our energy permeates through social media and our connections made. It doesn’t take a plane ride… it takes nanoseconds for our energy and atoms to travel.

And that’s the relational power we have in this life. Along with our connecting breath.

Next time you think about it, pair your tears of joy (or routinely adding daily eye drops) with a special breathing exercise called Pranayama, that’s a controlled way of breathing.

Here’s how you do Pranayama breath. Blow out all your air through your mouth. And then inhale breathe in a big gasp of air through your nose. Hold your breath for about 6-8 seconds. And then let out a big exhale through your mouth as you had started with. You can feel a burst of concentration/clarity in your mind. The mind fog is lifted (even if it’s temporary) and it can feel like you just had a shot of espresso or strong matcha tea.

In doing the breathing exercise, you’ve just relaxed and massaged your body from the diaphragm muscles to your vital nerves that impact your brain, breathing, and the body parts that regulate your stress. Sounds like a big deal… it is.

But we forget. And living in purpose is everything to intentional balanced living.

You get to feel alive! And that may be the that’s-what -I’m talkin’-about prescription you need, especially if you have constant stress in your life. You can try to find areas of life where you can shed tears of joy.

You can practice breathing purposeful daily wherever you are, so remember to do this regularly or when you next feel anxiety or a breather moment.

This can be another purposeful move where you step outside where you spend most of your day. Like when you’re out and see a work of art that moves your heart and stirs your soul. That can be from nature or something that is living and breathing like a baby-making cooing sounds or a dog with a wagging tail you see walking outside.

If you’re cooped up inside and have no errands to run (lucky you!), here are some outside ideas to get out of your nest: Continue reading “Tears of Joy and Breathing for Ayurvedic Living”