Chill Out Challenge: Week 1 (Stress-free cooking)

Dear Chill Out Challenge Participant,

Welcome to Week 1 of the Chill Out Challenge. This week’s post will focus on ‘stress free cooking’.

Stress-free cooking is an excellent way to promote healthy eating habits. Cooking nutritious food can be easy; just plan your menus ahead and cook for the week. This way, you can have control over your portion sizes, sodium, sugar, and fat intake. Cooking healthy can be a pleasant experience and will prevent the need for last minute substituting of fast food.

Here are several tidbits for Stress-Free Cooking:

• Set up your kitchen for speed - keep your kitchen organized with items in the same place to prevent wasting time searching for items.
• Buy prepped food - ‘halfway home made’ can be just as good! Try incorporating items such as shredded cheese, chicken strips and cut veggies from the salad bar into your recipes
• Read the Recipe – Read the entire recipe BEFORE you cook! This can cut down on time (and stress!) if two parts of the meal can be cooked at the same time. This is an important and stress reducing habit to get into!
• Use your grill any time of year! - grilling doesn’t have to be used only during summer season. Plus, it is helpful in lowering fat intake and doesn’t require messy clean up!

And some quick tips for reducing clean up:

• Take a few minutes to chop extra nuts, breadcrumbs, or vegetables, and freeze them in small amounts for future use.
• Measure dry ingredients before wet ones so you can reuse measuring cups.
• Seal crackers or cookies in a heavy-duty, zip-top plastic bag, and crush them with a rolling pin if crumbs are needed for coatings or crusts.
• Marinate food in a heavy-duty, zip-top plastic bag; then throw away the bag when you’re finished.

This info and more available at: www.allfavoriterecipe.com/RecipeDetailHelpfulTips.aspx

*Smooches&Hugs*