Week 4: Italian

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Week 3 (Asian)

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A terribly broad title for a wide array of cuisines, this menu features Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, and Indian food. Thank goodness for the many cultures of the world and for the emerging globalism so that we can  have this many different food options and experiences.

If you live in the Wichita, Kansas area, my top recommendation for Thai food is the Thai House near West and 13th. Containing only 3 tables, space is limited and bathrooms are not open to the public, but the food more than makes up for it. I promise! Be careful on the levels of heat (spiciness) until you know your individual tolerance. Most Westerners don't really know the meaning of the word spicy, so this food has the (literal) power to surprise you!

Week 2 Mexican Food Menu

This week's theme is my most favorite cuisine of all: Mexican! (Well, a little Tex-Mex and Argentinian thrown in as well....)

(Click here for menu)

Growing up in Texas, I was often exposed to Tex-Mex food and we have a running joke in my family that many of my 8 siblings were conceived in chips and salsa, one of my mom's favorite foods.

(Click here for grocery list)

Some of the meals featured this week are Tex-Mex and some are more authentically Mexican. A quick note: you can save time by using dried onions and purchased minced garlic in any of these recipes.





This menufeatures many tortillas, corn, some beans and a few other fun recipes you might not have tried yet!

(Click here for recipes)

Suggested desserts: flan, cajeta, rice pudding

You're So Carb

I don't know how--but it causes me great distress that--fat as a vital nutritional component became conflated with obesity.

Well, some might tediously explain, people are called fat because their bodies have too much fat on them. 

Alright. I get that. But our bodies convert extra protein, carbohydrates, and fat, into the fat which our bodies store.

So we might as well say, "That person is so protein," or "you're so carb," but instead we say "fat," because this is how the body stores it.

And this is used in turn to shame and hurt many people. The statistics on fat shaming and its link to depression are well-documented.

In addition to creating feelings of shame and depression and higher risks of heart attacks, fat shaming also has an adverse nutritional effect: people avoid eating fat because they think it will make them fat, by which most people mean have an "excess" (deemed so by, most often, Western medical practitioners) storage of fat on their bodies. And what happens when people avoid fat in their diets? They replace that fat with carbohydrates. (If you don't believe me, just pull out that bottle of fat-free salad dressing in your refrigerator and check it out.) Our body stores excess carbohydrates in the same way it stores excess fat.

But there are other implications for replacing fat with carbohydrates. The "replacement" carbohydrates often come from "sugar, refined grains and other starches" which affect "blood sugar and insulin levels and possibly result in weight gain and disease"(source here).

The bottom line is that shame is bad. We don't need it. It doesn't make anything better. And I mean shame for anything--that mistake you made back in 6th grade, the time you yelled at a loved one, or the time you didn't achieve what you knew you could.  And fat shaming, a special subset of shaming, has such wide-ranging and backfiring consequences. If nothing else, maybe we could give ourselves some compassion and at least not fat shame our own selves.

And the reality is that this shame for years has been taking its toll on human beings and their nutritional intake.

For even more information about fat shaming and its pervasiveness, read this excellent post by Sapiens (an organization funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, devoted to anthropology), summarizing much of the authors' research on weight loss.

Citation for molecular image of fat above here.

Week 1: Homestyle (Southern Comfort Simple Food)!

Welcome to week 1 of menus, meals, and grocery lists designed to make your life easier!

Menu (click here)

Each week will feature a different theme, and will be accompanied by everything you need for meals for one week: a menu, a grocery list, and recipes! Menus and weeks are designed to optimize the purchase of foodstuffs (many ingredients will show up multiple times in different dishes) and to economize on food purchases, while providing healthy, well-balanced, satisfying and filling meals. I have two teenagers living at home and work full time (except during the summer), so I also include many time-saving ideas and tricks that I employ in my kitchen.

Grocery List (click here)

My food philosophy: calories in = energy out. I am not on the "clean," "organic" or "vegetarian" eating path (although you will find that I make many of my dishes from scratch, with ingredients from my garden). I am on the BALANCED eating path. Our bodies need proteins, carbs, fats and liquids to survive. Those ingredients can come from a large variety of sources to meet the needs of all different lifestyles. And those ingredients often MUST come from a large variety of sources to support the already over-stressed financial and time budget of the modern family. As often as possible, I will include price- and time-friendly alternatives. The sad truth is that oftentimes, people do not have unlimited time or money for meal planning and preparation, which is where this blog seeks to be of  support!

Recipes (click here)

I grew up in Texas and am a huge fan of southern comfort food. Southern food is delicious and economical and uniquely suited to many of the people who created some of these dishes.  Click here for an excellent article on how race, location, and socioeconomics intersected for the birth of traditional southern food.




Suggested desserts for this week: peach cobbler, chocolate chip cookies, butter cake, sweet potato pie