healthy eating Archives - Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Microgreens Are Growing Healthy

Microgreens have been around longer than our modern culture.

It was a way of food survival during the winter months of the oldest civilizations on our planet… a lot like how modern squirrels have preserved the foraging acorn traditions.

Baby arugula microgreens are tasty for a salad. — Baby arugula microgreens are tasty additions to a salad 🥗

Which btw… is outdoor entertaining to watch Rocky the flying squirrel in his purposeful scurrying meal prep moves. 🐿️

How they actually feel about their work we’ll never know, but it has kept their species around.

…And to keep ours going, modern food planning is something we do.

In human life, that’s how it can look with us daily running around in our busy lives… and for me, that’s how it sometimes looked behind-the-scenes as a food service professional in organized chaos prepping and planning weekly catered event challenges in hotel ballrooms and for restaurant parties celebrating Mediterranean food styles.

And even with all the variety of food available to our planet we can be bored with our food sourcing options. 🥬

Daily, we open the fridge and pantry cupboards thinking: “what’s for dinner?” or “what can I have for a little snack?”…sometimes coming up short for a good answer. 🤔

Microgreens can be part of the answer as a healthy and tasty choice.

Here are 5 points that make microgreens a smart choice:

Point #1: Microgreens are food like-able and tasty good.

…Because if they weren’t, why bother?

Children seem to love them as some of the pickiest green eaters on earth.

Many microgreens are smaller, cute kid-size bits and bites like baby arugula, so it’s easier to get a handful of the finger foods than the adult version.

The young greens also add interest, taste, and texture to any plate.

…And why they’re not more commonly known today is unknown. Maybe like their shape-forms, they still have a wild-like reputation… 🌿

Like, I remember alfalfa sprout microgreens from a school age where I once saw the jungle wild-looking tangly-fine weeds in a friend’s lunch box that made me curious…

And now as an adult, thinking it’s a good idea. 🎉

You grow into new perspectives and healthy ways and today is a great way to spruce up 😋 and vertically beef up a light protein mustardy salad sandwich or the like (…einkorn finger sandwich idea below 🧡). Or to garnish a bowl of beets…

Point # 2: Microgreens are less bitter.

Microgreens have the reputation of being less bitter that is good news for some people’s tongues who avoid the taste.

That reminds me of green tea…

If you don’t love bitter green tea tastes that can grow stronger if brewed too hot or you picked the wrong flavor for you, then you probably don’t lean toward preferring many bitter tasting superfood veggies and plant greens.

And that’s why certain veggies 🥦🥬 don’t end up on the plate (like green tea in cups)… or in a diet despite their healthy goodness.

…Green teas 🍵 come from the same Camellia Sinensis plant as common black, white, and oolong teas but differ in process where they’re not oxidized like common black teas.

And what makes the difference for microgreens (and similar to green teas) is the process from the same plant.

Microgreens are harvested early, coming from the same plants as the adult version we see mostly on shelf space in grocery stores. 🌱

So they’re fresh and have different tastes worth trying, often more mild tasting and welcoming to all.

Point #3: Young greens are replenishable, sustainable, and abundant.

…Just like other foods from the soil, nature provides and delivers over and over again..

When we think “fresh” we immediately think of the produce aisle in a supermarket, farmers market, or our backyard garden that produces fastly perishable foods that the soil can replenish.

If you’re a green thumb growing your own mini-market, you can have microgreens planted, harvested, and eatable within foreseeable weeks (and not months or seasons that is the time most produce take). 🧑‍🌾

That makes microgreens more productive… and where you can have more than what you know what to do with! A good problem to have. ✔️

That would be too easy for getting a meal on the table.

And that ideal IS microgreens.

When you choose the micro-world of microgreens, you too help our community and local farmers.

…Those are baby plant little steps that you can take for your health and to support the world. 🪴

Point #4 – Microgreens are often organic without pesticides.

So much of our plant-based foods are exterior sprayed with pesticides to deter mostly bugs, and that offsets the healthy goodness of the healthiest skin parts of the food.

We throw away the skin that could have been healthy edible parts.

And today, reusable composting ways are not yet available for the common household.

So then we end up creating more waste that adds more plastic bag waste that also attracts unwanted critter nuisances to our community. But what if composting machines were as common as house dishwashing machines? 💭

But that not being today’s standards, with organic microgreens we can eat those problems away as the end consumer. And our bodies are healthier for our choice.

Point #5 – Microgreens are low calories and high in nutrition.

There are few (if any) green plant-based foods 🌱 that aren’t low in calories compared to plant-based (as in factory) foods. 🏭

Fresh microgreens from nature come packed with vitamins and minerals, along with some eat-from-the-rainbow 🌈 polyphenols that make you excited to color your plate and palette with anti-inflammatory food ideas! 🎨

And, mighty microgreens can have 4x (and up to 40x!) more nutrients than their full-grown version.

🎯 Final Points:

Microgreens fit in our consumer micro cultures where we are becoming more customizable specific in food diet preferences that impact food growing ways, and where our farming culture impacts our world.

Sustainable food and young microgreens are sprouting interest in our fast climate changing world searching for longevity answers where eating anti-inflammatory foods fit.

One way you can be part of the anti-inflammatory solution is by growing your own portable microgreen micro garden that can be indoors (good for those with outdoor allergies or without garden space).

Plus, so many viable options to bring in more microgreens from dream to life… yasss!

…That’s something to be excited about today. If this resonates with you, could you PLEASE HELP share this message with others so they can join the MICROGREEN movement that’s healthy here to stay.🎉

Go micro GREEN 🌱

🎉🎉 Discover and support local microgreen farms for fresher produce and healthier living.

Oh, and heres’s an easy whole wheat or einkorn (ancient wheat) sandwich in a modern recipe you can use to make finger sandwiches that was an idea I grew up with in the catering party world… and you can use for lunch, brunch, or an afternoon party.

To gain smiles, simply add delicious microgreens like baby lettuce, cucumber, radishes, carrot, and tarragon.

And for dessert 🍥, some sweet herbs and spices are microgreens like anise that you can add to a creme anglaise for pancakes or sweet brunch waffles.

Einkorn Sandwiches with Microgreens

I have fond memories of tea sandwiches from catering menus, and that are part of English afternoon tea events and traditions. Tea sandwiches are usually bite-size and made of spongey-soft bread where the crust is cut off. And flat crunchy bread like these add plate variety. They work well to celebrate the sandwich ingredients in the middle that can be light and/or all veggies.

Course Breakfast, brunch

Cuisine American, british

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

einkorn flour, salt, and water for the sandwich bread.
cottage cheese
cucumber
scallions
carrots
beets or radishes
lettuce
asparagus or favorite veggies
spices: dill, tarragon, black pepper

Instructions

Prepare the sandwich bread. You can make the bread in advance. Let dough proof: develop air pockets and double in size for for at least 2 hours. Then bake dough in oven in a small sheet pan about 1/4" thick until toasted. Tip: Einkorn wheat flour is not a high gluten (rise) flour, so it won't rise much and will lay more like a flat bread when baked. You need not knead long and can omit yeast. Let bread cool and slice the toast with a serated or bread knife.
Alternatively if you use regular whole wheat flour, knead a few minutes longer and add about 1/4 tsp of instant yeast (easiest) for a bread that rises. You can cut horizontally into the vertical bread about 3-4 slices to get a similar flat bread effect. Optional: You can turn this into paninis by grilling or baking on a grill pan.
Prepare the raw veggies. Thinly slice into flat or close to flat pieces.
For the sandwich paste, mix cottage cheese, dill, tarragon, and black pepper. You can processor blend the cottage cheese if you would like a smoother paste.
Add paste to the bottom of the sandwich and then layer lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, and others veggies. Add the sandwich bread top. For catering-style zhugh, you can add a toothpicked cucumber slice, or radish and beet and then plate. These easy, new old-fashioned touches show you put in extra detailed care.

Weight Loss Diets for Kapha Body

Weight loss diets are a prime topic for many of us these days. Healthy eating and dieting is front and center especially with age and slower metabolisms that’s common in a natural Kapha body.

This was my Sunday brunch. Recipe on the saffron shrimp white omelet below. 🍤

Let me first start by saying that food is a passionate lifestyle for me where tasty and healthy is a food pairing marriage from heaven.

…I started out as a buttery hotel food catering professional and moved into more healthy olive oil menu event planning in Mediterranean restaurants not too long ago.

Even though I’ve retired from those corporate industries, the experiences live daily in me and is my way of life I live and breathe. And why I’m writing and researching on the topics daily.

…I also do believe you can eat deliciously daily like a healthy foodie and still keep your consistent healthy weight whether you’re a Vata, Pitta, or Kapha.

There are challenges, especially for natural Kapha bodies where a slower metabolism is common.

I have some tips and strategies in this article for changing ways without giving up tastes.

And finding a good sustainable and healthy way of eating is still front and center the best way. That hasn’t changed much.

What has changed is that good weight loss diet plans are constantly changing because research changes that informs us.

The diet meaning here is the little “d” word as in what you eat and not the big “D” diet word of focusing on what not to eat that weight loss diets often focus on.

I like to focus on the positives for healthy change. When you focus on positives, you can more easily move on.

And as we evolve toward the future, we get better researched information that show up as health trends.

So most of what we’ve done in the past is not our fault. We’re fed information we believe that can become obsolete and no longer useful.

People don’t automatically change, but the research changes our behaviors and then that changes our culture and people’s behaviors as a whole.

Then as we evolve, the new information can be contradictory to past examples.

One controversial example today is healthy fats we learn are now good for weight loss diets because they help keep us feeling full.

We know today that it’s not just how many calories in and how many calories out, as all calories are not created equal.

Healthy fats aren’t the lowest calories in the house but healthy fats are healthy macros.

From last week’s blog article, you can listen to my healthy fat journey I had over the decades compared to today’s healthy fat foods list.

Compared to my catering days, we’ve come a long way!

Oh, and then there are the developing research areas. One evolving research example is that some foods that cause our bodies issues are high glycemic load carbs that spike insulin.

This one I embraced in the Inflammation-Free Diet book that I picked up decades ago. Since then, research in those areas has evolved and happy gut health has exploded.

Those were pre-mind-body balance days.

And so often it’s a mindset change choice we get to make with certain types of foods as we have built relationships with our foods that are hard to shake off.

Changing food mindsets not because of taste changes preferences, but because of wanting to live healthier lives is a good healthy push start.

When I started out as an adult, low fat foods were hailed for weight loss diets and healthy benefits. All fats were considered fats and bad.

So one college summer I ate all low fat foods as what I learned from the research at the time for weight loss Diets (with a big “D”).

I moved to the beach and worked at nearby ocean seafood restaurants.

Being a care-free summer when most of us want to eat lighter anyway in Pitta season, I thought that would be a good opportunity to get super slim.

I was skinny fat in today’s standards. I’m naturally a Vata body, but we all have our relative sizes in our one-and-only-body we get to live in and make decisions for.

My strategy then was avoiding all high fats (including healthy fats that we didn’t know about). I was scanning nutrition facts on labels for fat content.

Pasta was and is one of my fave foods that passed the test.

So, I went on a mostly pasta diet.

I ate pasta and a certain low-fat cookie in a green box that was popular at the time. I don’t see them around today.

It took just a few weeks for me to see that I had gained weight I never had before.

Most of us know those yo-yo diets where you gain all the weight back and then some more. That’s what happened to me.

So using percentages I had gained about 10% when I was trying to lose about 5%.

The principle is the same for anyone in their body so there’s no healthy comparing between people. The healthy way is to choose for your body.

And weight cycling can happen easily when you start to crave all the foods you’ve known to love, but aren’t eating. 🥲

I was a newbie at weight loss plans. So I didn’t have any experience with food willpower.

I just loved all foods and they loved me back without question. It was unconditional love that I didn’t feel in other areas of my life.

…and once I got a taste back into the real world of tastes again, I couldn’t stop.

And that’s how it is for most of us where certain foods are addictive.

These days, we can use low-carb, healthy fats and healthy proteins to point us in the better direction.

I’m following along with this better directed macros plan. And not my former macaroni plan. 🍝

I’ve seen the improved results as compared to decades ago where I learned that calorie counting is hard work.

No More Hardwork Calorie Counting

Calorie counting is hard work and exercising to burn calories is even harder work.

Today we know it doesn’t pay off consistently in the long run like eating healthy regularly that can be very enjoyable.

So saving ourselves the trouble from learning better information is a better weight loss plan.

What helps the most is giving your body what your natural body wants.

Some healthy foods are universally healthy to most bodies and some are unique often told by the story of our individual body’s tastes and preferences.

Ayurvedic food categories for our balances and imbalances are more predictable, where we crave certain tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, or salty) that are found in healthy foods.

We can make the natural switch to following our Ayurvedic preferences.

I compare it to getting off an alarm clock that’s like processed foods. An alarm is not when your body naturally wants to get up or do the activity you’ve set the alarm to.

If you naturally follow your body’s time instincts, you become naturally attuned to time changes and circadian rhythm that’s like the eating healthy balanced way.

Finding your subset healthy food list is a healthy balance. Many of the foods are also anti-inflammatory grocery list foods.

And if weight loss is a goal of yours, also focusing on keeping veggie fiber carbs balanced at the top of the list helps.

If you’re a balanced Kapha body, then also lean into bitter tasting and astringent foods for weight loss diets (again the little “d” diet for what you do eat).

If off-balance, that’s where we can get into trouble until you restore balance. It’s easy to tell if you’re off balance with clues around you and a simple body balance quiz.

Healthy Weight Loss Diets

If you eat mostly healthy foods, you also slowly turn your taste buds to healthier choices.

You desire the healthy foods and crave less of the bad. It’s your lifestyle choice that makes your healthy intentions and changes your tastes.

…Like sugar habits that you can transform starting with plant-based breakfasts (I’m living proof 😊). I’m all about low-sugar baking that pleases the Vata sweet tooth.

Healthy ingredient and food substitution is a good weight loss strategy, that also develops creativity skills as a side benefit.

And when you prep, cook, and make your own goods you have more control over what you put in your body. You’re rewarded for the time and effort you put in. 🎉

…Cooking and baking daily, I’m in better shape today than I was last year, definitely from college years, and anytime in between…

I’m feeling nostalgic today because I wrote this Un-Diet Guide twenty plus years ago that I found.

I wasn’t blogging or writing anything else back then. So coming up with a 73-page manual with recipes was interesting at the very least (…maybe even strangely prophetic for my interests today).

Un-Diet Guide for weight loss diets.

Today my evolved manual would include sustainable healthy living meal prep habits and fasting once a week (but no yo-yo fasting habits).

When you stay consistent and keep your favorite celebrational food habit in moderation, you don’t yo-yo or go overboard one day when the stress situation arises or willpower gives in.

Then there’s no obsessing and making our binge food dreams happen. I learned that the hard way (and maybe you did too on your food journey).

Overall keeping most meals, snacks, and days as eating healthy real foods gives us our best results.

And when you choose your ingredients for meals and dishes, you do a couple of healthy things:

You become more intentional about what you source and put in your body. Every ingredient and amount you’ve sourced and researched. You know on some level what you’re putting into your body.

You also get to try new foods to bring in more rainbow variety, new flavors, and aromatic spices to your life.

That’s exciting to me (…you too?).

Never being bored with foods is a healthy norm.

You never grow out of loving food because there’s always a healthy substitution to turn to.

We’re not meant to be bored or avoiding eating. Our hunter gatherer forefathers didn’t live that way.

They were inventive and foraged for new tastes and ways.

Finding Your Lose Weight Food Diet

Wherever you are on your journey for trying new foods, it helps to carve out time to be food mindful.

When I first started out baking and cooking daily, I had to adjust to carving out time to think about meals and sniff spices.

My motivation was eating but also creating colorful plates.

I always enjoyed that part of my job in catering where I got to decorate food with food. It’s fun to play with your food.

In the same way, you can think of food as a creative outlet and the cherry on top is you get to eat and share it at the end.

You can’t do that with all other passions, like say making paintings that you either need to find a place to hang or else find a way to pass them onto others.

Embracing food passions can be an easy creative outlet.

I realized early on that I wasn’t the home kitchen maker that wanted to make complicated dishes.

Being easy and creative for me was not following a recipe if I didn’t have to.

So early on I didn’t create recipes at all. But now I embrace them as a way to share easy baking steps and shortcuts.

And I believe there’s always room to change ingredients, amounts, and methods.

Because even if you use the same ingredients and amounts provided in a recipe, so many factors could change your bakes…

Like temperature in the oven, outside temps, and materials used. …and especially how much love you put into your dishes.🧡

If you create when you don’t feel like it or on half-empty energy, your dishes will reflect and not be alive.

The myth that baking relies on recipe precision is a myth. Great baking I’m familiar with is an art and a science that you feel good about.

That’s where I came up with cooking this 15-minute Sunday brunch Saffron Shrimp Egg White Omelet dish that you can tastefully make and is good on a low-carb weight loss plan. 🍳

Healthy Eating Lifestyle Balance Inspiration

Healthy eating starts with a lifestyle plan. And having inspiration helps us to stay on course like a visual or reminder.

Example of a healthy eating lifestyle plan for February heart healthy month. — February is heart healthy month

If you want to balance and optimize healthy eating and tasty foods, this article is meant to help encourage you.

I’m convinced you can fulfill both goals at the same time because that has been my practice and desire for my entire adult journey.

I’ve enjoyed and been enamored with foods like most people who think they have a deeper relationship with food (as a lifelong companion of comfort, love, and joy).

I started my young career around my passion for food in event planning, seeing through a “foodie” work lens in the kitchens I worked beside along with thousands of event hosts and planners.

I can’t think of one instance where healthy food menus were requested for the larger ballroom and banquet space events.

But, when I planned parties in restaurants, the healthy menu requests became more obvious.

Like in the Mediterranean restaurants that use healthier ingredients, methods, herbs, and spices. They used EVOO and vinegar bases for dishes, instead of creamy-butter sauces.

That aligned with a healthy identity I was evolving into where healthy foods can be good and better-tasting than non-healthy.

Plus, healthy eating is easier on the body where you and your gut get along better in happy and healthy agreement.

Reflecting on this, I think it starts from appreciating food and the body.

That’s where a healthy balance and triad relationship between you, food, and your body are daily observed from a mirror and a nutrient absorption lens (that only the body sees).

When we have a healthy eating lifestyle, then we don’t have to let the next evolving health trend (or diet) impact us so much or at all. It’s sustainable until we choose to change our plan.

We can change one food or category under question or change, and rely on the variety of others.

Maybe you remember like I do when nuts were considered bad for you because of the fat content, and now they’re the hero of healthy fat and snacks.

If you eat them along with the right foods (like fat-soluble Vitamin A foods), they synergistically help your body.

From your body (aka the end-user or the health critic in you), it’s smart to know how foods are better absorbed from a nutrition-biology standpoint.

I made a visual of some of these nutrition synergies.

Some are palatable for pairing, like chocolate and raspberries. A few are odd and you have to really get creative to appreciate.

For those, instead of trying to put them together in the same dish, you could figure out how to start with one and end with the other.

Your gut doesn’t care what it looks like on a plate. It cares how it mixes together in your mouth and ultimately in your stomach.

It helps to be informed and to listen to your inner gut if that’s a strength for you.

If that’s not so easy or has not been helping you out much lately, then eating “from the rainbow” and having healthy eating habits is a good start.

You can turn a boring broccoli side into a delicious soup or a can of pinto beans into a zesty dip.

Both are then easier to digest and you get to enjoy better. That’s just a couple of examples of how healthy eating can be delicious.

Sometimes it just takes a little thought and food prep. It’s encouraging we can reset and start over each day with new healthy eating goals.

In my younger years, I studied the French language, and that helped me to learn catered dishes back then with French titles and names like hors d’oeuvres and foie gras.

The French are also known for their buttery recipes and patisseries, where a bakery is on every Parisian corner.

So, it’s interesting their obesity percentage stats are lower than we have in the U.S.

One reason for this is that French people eat smaller meals and take time to enjoy the bites.

They slow down to chew and appreciate food aromas.

They enjoy a slower-paced lifestyle.

Paris has the pace of living similar to a smaller metro city in the U.S. where the emphasis is on quality living, and not just immersing in the hustle and bustle.

French foods revolve around the idea of high quality over high production. There’s a respect for ingredients.

They have a different way of seeing and appreciating the food they eat. Take cheese: they use the highest quality milk to make their cheeses. And in our American factories, we turn the lower quality milk into cheese.

In the U.S., we love our convenience, fast-paced, and relatively inexpensive options. And in our Melting Pot culture and diversity, we have many cooking influences that help bring back helpful balances.

And each of us can get interested in the nuances behind what we eat, ingredients, cooking, and knowledge. And that helps to become healthy eating inspired. It’s a lifestyle choice.

Each day, it starts in the morning. Breakfast can be nourishing like a protein-rich smoothie.

You can choose a prebiotic-probiotic combination. Examples would be starting your day with oatmeal or a banana and yogurt.

Then rolling into lunch, you can add a healthy eating menu: cooked red onions with fermented foods.

It’s easier to make your own fermented foods than you think as they’re not advertised everywhere like fruits in a produce section.

These days, many of us are into sustainability and feel deeply for the climate changes we’ve seen especially over the past couple of years.

We value recycling despite knowing our efforts of placing our trash in the right bins are limited and we have almost no control.

One way where you can do something about this is to reuse grocery containers for fermented foods that are healthy for you, us, your gut, and the environment.

You could make simple sauerkraut leaving the slaw in a jar of water and salt out at room temperature for a few days and then refrigerate.

Your slaw tastes better and has health benefits. Plus you salvaged the jar as a bonus.

When you make healthy eating changes, in the beginning, it may seem odd to you and your stomach as you both adjust.

You can gauge how this impacts your daily gut and entire GI system and see how that lands.

All our bodies are different (e.g. we’re all given different metabolisms).

But our bodies are similar too as we have the same systems and needed organs to function.

So what works best for one person is different for another.

But I think too often we reject ways that could work for us because we don’t see the benefits of it working out for us or our busy lifestyle, and so we skip the healthy habit and lose out on an opportunity.

Another worthwhile cause (and food for thought) is snacking on healthy snacks like carrots and hummus every few hours in the day.

I think many would have their weight goals met as the body is happy with the food energy boost, and thereby fed assurance that it won’t need to go in survival mode.

Plus, it wouldn’t have to process as much food in one sitting.

…Retraining our body, restoring our body-minds and learning how the body functions along with the world can make a difference for all of us.