Basic Pursuits

Orzo is a pasta that looks somewhat like large grains of rice. You
can cook it like rice and that gives it an advantage over other
pastas. If your flavor the water you cook it in with broth. The pasta
absorbs the flavor of the broth like rice. You can add enough flavor that you
don't have to put a sauce on it, saving you time and calories.

There is another advantage. You can add lots of nutrition. For
example you can throw in a bag of frozen peas and a pound of frozen
spinach.

Furthermore, you can brown up some protein like chicken breast and
add it.

Habit formation takes planning and repetition. But like any good story, good habits have a beginning. Good habit formation requires that you make a plan, write it down, refine the plan, make mini-plans to cover details and contingencies, and repeat, repeat, repeat.

Here are ten nutrition practices that you'll want make a habit over time. Pick ONE and start today. Work on it until it becomes part of you. Then pick another.

Here are some useful tips from the US Dept. of Agriculture on how to pick out fresh vegetables.

Great tip: don't buy old, over-the-hill vegetables just because they are on sale. Last night I chopped up a cucumber that had been in my frig for over a week and it really was a downer in an otherwise very fresh salad.

How to Buy Fresh Vegetables

Refrigeration keeps bananas fresh longer. Yes, I know it causes the skin to brown, but it will keep the fruit fresher longer. Luckily, we don't eat the skin. Older refrigerated fruit also works well in smoothies.

Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little "stringy things" off of
it. That's how other primates do it.

Take your bananas apart when you get home from
the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Discovery Health, the TV channel, produced a pretty good special called The Truth About Food. One segment strove to make the point that people eat too much because they grossly misjudge the size of the portion that they are consuming.

Good health is pretty tough and very expensive without doing a little cooking for yourself. All of us are strapped for time and are looking for ways to be more productive in every phase of our lives. Getting it done in the kitchen in no exception.

Kevin Purdy of Lifehacker has compiled a group of productivity enhancers to speed things up in the kitchen. When you read his blog, also check out the comments where others have contributed hints of their own.

I find that I have to do quite a bit of meal prep on the weekend. If I don't, I have to accept what the world offers. That ain't good.

My main act is usually to prepare a big dish that's going to provide a lot of taste and nutrition for the coming week. If I can't eat it all, I freeze it.

Since I've already got a mess in the making, I try to think of other food prep tasks that are going to save me time during the working week when time is scarce.