6 Steps to answer the dinner question

Big questions of the day: what to wear and what's for dinner. I can't help you with what to wear, but I do have some help for answering the what's for dinner question.

The other day I realized that great recipes are everywhere. They are online, in books, in magazines, in your head, on little cards at the grocery store. A search on Amazon for books using the term cookbook yields 102,622 results. And we are still looking for recipes. A lack of recipes is not the problem with deciding what to eat for dinner. The problem is menu planning, especially if you are focusing on wellness and eating more healthy foods. At least for me that is definitely the hardest part.

If I wait until I am hungry and it is time to eat a meal, I end up choosing whatever is fast and is easy to prepare. Even with vegan foods that often means I will be eating the more processed and least healthy choices in the kitchen.

Now that I know what is the most difficult task between me and a healthy meal, I have been putting more effort into planning menus for the week. I am naturally quite a planner and list maker, so I have easily found a system that works for me. I need to plan three meals a day.You might not need to plan so many meals, so you may have an easier task than I do. Even if breakfast is oatmeal with fruit (again) and lunch is leftovers from dinner (ideal), I need it in writing. Dinner is what takes the most effort to plan and prepare, but 3 meals a day must be in my own plan.

1. On my paper I write the seven days of the week and "B", "L" and "D" with enough space to add a brief list of the dishes for each meal. This should all be on the left side of the page so you can put your grocery list on the right.

2. It helps if at least some of the days are set meals. For instance on Monday or Tuesday, we go to the local pizza store to take advantage of their really great prices on those days. We order a pizza with just tomato sauce, stop at The Boys Market for a box of grilled vegetables, and finish our own pizza in the toaster oven. Sometimes when I really feel like cooking, I grill my own veggies. I gave up on the homemade pizza years ago because I just can't compete with a professional oven. Or maybe you have plans to eat out for lunch or dinner during the week and know you won't have to be shopping for ingredients for those meals. So that is one day.

3. Choose two menus that you like to prepare that will provide enough food to give you leftovers for dinner. That is four days more.

4. Think about what vegetables are in season and plan a dinner and lunch around them. Now we have 6 days of dinners planned.

5. Choose one more dinner based on beans, pasta, or rice depending on the other selections you have made so far.

6. Now you have menus written on your piece of paper for 7 dinners and any other meals you have planned. Look at the recipes you will use or review the ingredients in your head. Check your supplies in the kitchen to see what is missing. Write the items for your shopping list to the right of the menus.

If you need a little more help, check back tomorrow and I will share my meals from last week's menu planning.

Mom is right

Mom told you to eat your vegetables and she was right. Of course, that didn't keep the US government and Wal-Mart heir John Walton from spending $35 million on a study to show us that she was wrong. The National Cancer Institute study, The Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial, is reported to have found no benefit from recommending that women with breast cancer eat more fruits, vegetables, and less fat.

Once again the media is eagerly reporting the "failure" of "high" consumption of vegetables and fruits to provide health benefits. I saw a movie trailer with one line that has haunted me: There are two sides to every story, but there is only one side to the truth. Think about who has the motivation to prove that the Standard American Diet is good for us and how much money that group has. Now think about who has the motivation to tell us to eat whole unprocessed foods. Now follow the money and decide which side of the story is more likely to be the truth.

Before the media causes you throw up your hands in despair over eating a diet proven repeatedly to be healthier, read this detailed analysis of the study in question. If you are not inclined to do that much reading, let this excerpt from Dr. John McDougall give you some food for thought today instead of a recipe to cook:

Breast cancer is a fatal disease and women will do almost anything to live. They will endure poisoning by toxic chemotherapy, burning with radiation, and mutilation from breast-amputating mastectomy; in the hopes of living a few more days. Obviously, if asked to do so, and given proper support from their doctors and dietitians, they would do something as simple, safe, cost-effective, and enjoyable as eating oatmeal and bean burritos while avoiding beefsteaks and cheese omelets. In The Women’s Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial they continued the same meat-, dairy-, oil-, and environmental chemical-laden diet that got them in trouble in the first place, with minor modifications. The investigators, not the women, should be held responsible for the fact that even the instructions to eat, “5 vegetable servings plus 16 oz of vegetable juice; 3 fruit servings; 30 g of fiber; and 15% to 20% of energy intake from fat,” were followed poorly. The full cancer-inhibiting benefits of low-fat, plant-foods were never offered to these women.

A true test of diet for the prevention and treatment of breast cancer would follow the model of the diet of women worldwide who have the least chance of contracting breast cancer and the best chance of surviving it. These are women who follow a diet based on starches, like from rural Asia (rice), Africa (millet), Mexico (corn), New Guinea (sweet potatoes) and Peru (potatoes). The few women, who do get breast cancer in these societies, also live longer than their Western counterparts.