Month: October 2018

Spooky Sips: Weekend Cocktails, Halloween Edition

On By Cultivate WellnessIn cocktails, entertaining, holiday, RecipesLeave a comment

weekend-cocktails

If you have read my blog you know how much I love a good fun cocktail. If you’re new to my blog, you might be thinking “But she’s a Nutrition and Wellness Consultant! How can she also promote drinking cocktails?”. Good question! My approach to wellness is to follow the 80/20 rule. That means 80% of the things I eat and drink promote health. The other 20% is devoted to pure enjoyment. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the things that fall in the 80%. For instance, I can’t tell you how much I love to bite into a caramelized balsamic glazed Brussels sprout. But the things in the 20%, such as cocktails and the occasional handful of peanut M&Ms fall solely into the treat category.

So, occasionally I will post a cocktail recipe for the weekend. I get a lot of enjoyment out of trying new cocktails. We frequent some restaurants nearby that have a strong cocktail game. It’s always a highlight for me to try them. For instance, the last time I went to one of my favorites, Lake & Irving in Uptown, Minneapolis, I tried something called “I Didn’t Say Banana” which featured house rum blend, coconut water, banana, lime, and Peychaud’s bitters. Delicious!

I’m not capable of making such a fantastic concoction so at home I tend to stick to my old favorites like the Aviation or a simple G+T. However, I think I could easily swing this Monster Mash Margarita. I love blood orange juice and I love a margarita, so I feel like I can’t really lose here.  Since I have most of the ingredients it will be easy to whip up.

For more ideas, try this list of 34 easy fun Halloween inspired cocktails.

I hope you have a Happy Halloween!

close up photo of halloween decors
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Food Waste: America’s Dirty Little Secret

On By Cultivate WellnessIn Cooking, eating, health, Health and wellness, UncategorizedLeave a comment

peppers and veggies

I was cleaning out my fridge yesterday and came upon several fruits and vegetables that had gone bad. I threw them into the compost bin (we are lucky that our progressive city provides curbside compost pickup) feeling terribly guilty. And for good reason. According to the US Department of Agriculture, Americans waste 150,000 tons of food a day, the equivalent of 1 pound per person per day. Those with the healthiest diets, the ones that contain lots of fruits and vegetables, are the worst offenders. That would be me.

Not only is this offensive to the people in this country who struggle with food insecurity, it’s also horrible for the environment. All the water, pesticides, soil and other materials it takes to grow vegetables and raise animals are being wasted at alarming levels. If your city doesn’t provide composting services, and the huge majority doesn’t, all that food waste is going into a landfill which releases methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.  Hello climate change.

Add to all of this the fact that only 4 of the 10 larges supermarket chains have plans in place to address waste in their own stores, and we have one very big problem.

I wrote over the summer about my plan to make each day of the week unique. On the list  I will add taking stock of our food situation on weekends so that I can plan ahead for the week to use the food that needs to be consumed soon. My husband pulled a Larabar from the back of the pantry for a snack this weekend and it had mold growing all over it. Turns out it expired in 2017. Larabars are expensive and we ended up having to throw away two boxes of them. To say I felt ashamed of that is an understatement. They are a nutritious source of calories and they could have been donated to our local food shelf if we weren’t going to eat them in a timely manner.

Ever since I watched this Oprah episode on food waste way back in 2008 I have thought about the food we waste. Did you know Americans make up just 5 percent of the world’s population but use 25 percent of the world’s energy resources?

I, for one, am just tired of the waste, and I’m ready to make some changes. One thing we do well in our house is eat leftovers. We love them and more often than not we eat at least 75% of the leftovers in our fridge. But I am going to start freezing what we don’t eat instead of finding them in the back of the fridge when it’s unsafe to eat them. I’m going to insist we finish one type of snack food in the pantry before we buy something similar. And I am going to stock back up on these reusable BPA-free GreenBags that I used to use all the time until we ran out. They keep fruits and veggies fresh much longer.

What haven’t I thought about? Is there something you do that helps reduce your household’s food waste? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

 

StopTober?

On By Cultivate WellnessIn Cooking, Health and wellness, wellnessLeave a comment

I have been thinking about this word for several days now. It’s a mashup of “Stop” and “October” and apparently some people in the wellness and self-improvement world use it as a chance to try to stop a bad habit. I have also heard it more specifically referred to as “SoberTober” amongst people who take a break from drinking any alcohol during the month of October.

So ,what habits are people trying to stop? Drinking. Smoking (in England, the National Health Services, or NHS, uses the word for their stop smoking campaign). Eating junk food, gluten or sugar. Swearing. Watching TV. Overspending. Going through the drive through. And on and on.

Part of me loves this idea. So many of us wait until January to decide to cut out unhealthy or unhelpful habits (and sadly, the majority of us fail). This sort of gives us an opportunity to address things that are bothering us during a time of year when we are ramping up our eating, drinking and celebrating.

The other part of me would like to see people focusing on adding healthier behaviors rather than stopping or giving up something. There is real value to the “crowding out” philosophy, where you crowd out unhealthy behaviors with healthier ones. It’s a bit gentler and for many people this approach works better. But, I am a moderator, which means I can eat just a half of a cookie or drink a half of a glass of wine. So for me, the crowding out approach works. But I appreciate that many people do better abstaining than moderating, and need firm guidelines.

I am going to do a little experiment for the month of October. The one thing I really have trouble moderating is my iPhone usage. I am on it most of the day (reading articles, researching, emailing, texting family and friends, and yes, scrolling through my social media feeds). I am not happy with the amount of time my hand is tethered to my phone, so while I am not going to give up my phone completely, I am going to set limits. The new iPhone update has a “Screen Time” tab in the settings. You can keep track of how much time you spend using certain apps and set limits on them. I was shocked to see how much time I have spent on my phone over the last few days. And although yesterday I “only” spent a total of just over two hours on social media, I spent almost two full hours texting.  Another way to help me stop the habit of picking up my phone whenever I’m bored is to use the Forest app more often. You can grow virtual trees if you don’t use your phone for a set amount of time. And when you’ve racked up enough points, a real tree will be planted.

Is there something you’d like to give up in October? Or do you think it is a silly idea? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

You might also like:

Make Each Day Of The Week Unique (plus a new carnitas recipe!)

Portobello “Burgers”