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The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.

Holiday Self-Care: 6 Cooking and Self-Care Hacks in Times of Overwhelm

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I don’t know about you guys but my to do list is killing me these days! It just doesn’t seem to be getting any shorter no matter how many things I cross off. Sometimes I think that there is a little gremlin who sneaks out in the middle of the night to add tasks to the list(s). Stupid gremlin. I keep telling myself to just keep plugging away and it will all get done, somehow, and I know that is true, but there are definitely moments when it just feels like too much.

In the past few months I have read in a number of different places the analogy that self-care is like putting your own oxygen mask on first when a plane is going down—you can’t help anyone else until you are taken care of. As someone who is a chronic “helper” this can be very hard for me to do, but as much as I resist it, I have found that not only do I do better if I practice some self-care in times of stress, but everyone else in my family does too because I am more patient, kind, and efficient. At the same time, though, in these times of craziness I just don’t have time to go get a massage, sleep late, go to a yoga class, or take half a day off for some “me” time. So instead I have been working on finding ways to simplify and create the space for mini-breaks and I wanted to share them with you to help you get through the seasonal insanity, or to store away for a time when you need a boost….

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Brazilian-Style Fried Rice: Dinner in 7 Minutes

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Many moons ago, when my now-husband and I first started dating, we did the thing that many couples do: we tried to increase our appeal by cooking meals for one another. At the time, neither of us cooked very much, so we both fell back on comfort foods that we had grown up with. For me, that was my dad’s Bolognese sauce. For my husband, it was eggs and rice.

When he first told me of his love for eggs and rice I was dumbfounded. Outside of fried rice at Chinese restaurants I had never heard of the combination. And to be completely honest, I thought it sounded absolutely awful. But in the interest of being a good sport with my new boyfriend, I agreed to try it. As I looked down at my plate of rice topped with a fried egg, I was still doubtful. And then I took my first bite and I was blown away! It was delicious, nourishing, and comforting. It felt like something I would imagine a grandmother would make for you when you were home sick….

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Simple Grain Salad: A side dish without a recipe

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One of the recommendations I often make to clients and in workshops is to “cook once, and eat two, three or more times.” Many times, life can get so busy that meal planning seems impossible and all we can do is try to quickly figure out the next meal—tonight’s dinner, tomorrow’s school lunch, etc. When we do that we are constantly searching for recipes and depending on our creativity, which can quickly burn us out and leave us resentful of having to cook at all. But, with a tiny bit of planning and maybe some flexibility we can turn one round of cooking into two or three simple meals.

One of my favorite ways to stretch the food I make farther is with a grain salad. If I am making a pot of grains—rice, quinoa, millet, couscous, etc.—I always make extra. So much can be done with leftover grains: you can turn them into breakfast porridge, throw them into a big green salad for some added heft, mix them into soups or stews, fold them into veggie burger batter, and, my favorite, turn them into a grain-based salad. Grain salads are great because they can serve as a hefty side dish and are so incredibly flexible—any leftover vegetables, cheese, or salad dressing you have lying around can get thrown in!…

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Tostada Salad

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When I was a kid I was a pretty picky eater and the most difficult meal for me (and my poor mom) was breakfast. I hated breakfast. So time and time again my mom would work with me to find some sort of breakfast that I would be willing to eat. Once she found one, then I would go on a major food jag and would only eat that one kind of breakfast day after day after day, until I would get sick of it (I would literally gag at the sight of the food) and refuse to ever eat it again. She must have wanted to kill me some days…

As I got older I began to realize that obsessively eating certain foods was slowly ruining them for me (I still have trouble with Canadian bacon, for instance), so I pushed myself to alternate foods so this wouldn’t happen. As a parent, I have also worked very hard to encourage variety in my boys’ diets so that they don’t grow sick of any one food.

But the recipe that I am going to share with you today is actually what I eat almost every single day for lunch. How is that possible? Because it is incredibly flexible, I just use whatever I have in the house that day, so every day is different!…


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Chili Lasagna

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This week has been a rough one for us. The boys and I got knocked flat by the flu, the cat got sick, and my husband has been super stressed at work. Not a great start to the New Year. Outside of surviving, the only thing I was really able to accomplish this week was managing to make a number of simple, comforting, and nourishing dishes that could keep us all going. One of the recipes I made was a crock pot chicken chili, which was great. It took a whole 10 minutes to get into the crock pot and then we enjoyed it for a number of meals. But I still had a lot left over and needed another simple meal to build from it. Enter Chili Lasagna.

This is barely even a recipe, but it is so delicious and easy I had to share it. It is a great addition to the meal plan for a week when chili is already planned because it is different enough from the chili itself that even haters of leftovers will probably be ok with it. It takes 10 minutes to put together and 35 minutes to bake. You could even assemble it ahead and either freeze it or just keep it in the fridge for a day or two until you are ready to throw it into the oven….

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5 Ways to Use Up Leftovers

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I’m very excited to announce that in four weeks, on Wednesday, October 8th, Lori Atwood of Lori Atwood-Fearless Finance and I will be hosting a WEBINAR on money and food called 30 Minutes/$30: How to Spend Less and Eat Better in Less Time (sign up here!). So to get you excited to join us for this awesome event, I will be doing a 4-part series on ways to save money in the kitchen.

The first topic I am going to tackle is the hatred of leftovers. We all know that cooking once and then eating the leftovers can not only save you time but also money, but many people hate leftovers and so the idea of cooking a big meal to use throughout the week is just not going to work… Maybe it is because your parents served the same thing night after night, maybe it is because you want something new every night, or maybe it just grosses you out.  No matter what the reason, there are some ways to overcome this aversion and take advantage of what you’ve got….

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5-minute Breakfast Scramble: Getting vegetables into breakfast

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We all know we should be eating more vegetables. Many of us try to get them through salads at lunch or an extra serving at dinner, and those are great approaches. But what about breakfast? In mainstream U.S. culture, vegetables in breakfast is often a strange concept, unless you are having a fancy brunch with a frittata or quiche (which can also be easy and quick breakfast foods, like these spinach bites). Instead we often think of breakfast as the time for starches and fruit.

One of my favorite ways to get the veggies into my breakfast is with the 5-minute breakfast scramble. This easy, delicious, and fun option for breakfast is a great way to get everyone off on the right foot. It’s got protein, carbs, and vegetables, and can be adapted in countless ways….

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Running on Empty and Still Cooking

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Life never seems to slow down, does it? This morning, as I practically stumbled down the stairs to get the lunches packed and breakfasts finished up, my husband and I greeted each other with sympathetic, exhausted smiles and compared notes on our exhaustion headaches. “Does yours hurt more when you bend over?” “Yup.” It was a pathetic scene.

Even the weeks when there is less planned seem to fill up with decisions we have been putting off, tasks around the house we haven’t completed, and work we have been putting off because we haven’t had time. So sometimes it gets to the point where we are just worn out. That is the state of things in our house this week. It is times like these when I have to fight the desire to pick up take out or order a pizza. It is times like these when my husband gently and cautiously asks how many dishes will there be to wash after dinner….

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