Feeding a family to generate health, beauty, and joyful wellness is first and foremost about choosing the right foods, and creating the right emotional environment within the home. Food preparation is a big part of this. Keeping your fruits and vegetables as the focus of each meal is easy when you have the right tools, and when this way of living becomes a habit.
HERE’S A LIST OF TIPS TO PUT TOGETHER YOUR MEAL-PREP TOOLBOX:
1. One of the most important steps you’ll take in this process is throwing away your microwave. Don’t pass it on to someone else, get rid of it! Even using your microwave to heat a cup of tea water fills the house with the worst kind of electromagnetic radiation, and no food eaten from a microwave will ever be a health generator.
2. Pots and pans should always be aluminum-free. Aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer’s, and many other diseases. It is especially dangerous for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Read more about aluminum poisoning here.
3. Never, never, never use a Teflon non-stick surface! A bit of water, some organic butter or coconut butter, and you’ll have no sticking issues anyway. Select instead pots and pans of stainless steel, cast iron, or copper. Be careful to read the fine print, many stainless steel and copper items have an aluminum core for even heat distribution.
4. Using cast iron cookware is a great way to increase iron in the diet of family members who are suffering from anemia (which will naturally decrease the further they get into this lifestyle). One of Natalia’s other trick for reducing anemia is to push an iron nail into a peach overnight, and then enjoy the peach the next day with its added benefits! Several recent studies have underlined this concept.
5. When cooking a dish that would require aluminum foil, use parchment paper or a small glass casserole dish with a lid to seal in the juices in the same way. If You Care Baking makes everything from parchment paper to muffin and cupcake liners with no bleach, chlorine, or quilon. It uses instead naturally occurring silicone for multiple uses.
6. For great glassware, Pyrex is the classic and still one of the best choices.
7. In general, silicone is manufactured synthetically and should be avoided. Recent trends towards baking sheets and muffin tins in silicone candy colors just can’t beat good old-fashioned cast iron bakeware!
