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BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!

August 2, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!

Six years ago, I was struggling with the path my life had taken. I had two very small children, I had left my career working with trauma survivors, and I was doing erratic consulting work that bored me to death. I knew I needed a change and so I wrote an email to my closest friends and former colleagues and asked them a question: “If you could see me doing anything, what would it be?” I encouraged them to be creative, to be crazy, to think outside of the box. Every single person responded, and everyone said the same thing: something with food! As soon as I saw the word food, I knew I had found my answer.

Within the year, I completed a training program to become a health coach and launched The Balanced Kitchen. I had found my true calling! I was able to share my belief that cooking could be a simple, easy, healthy, and delicious part of life. I got to help people who really wanted to eat a healthier diet and cook for themselves and their families, but didn’t know where to begin. In short, I had the best job ever!

Today, I am sharing the latest development in this wonderful, challenging, exciting journey. I am SO excited to announce that I have become the new CEO (and owner) of The Six O’Clock Scramble!

 

What’s The Scramble?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Six O’Clock Scramble, founded and run by the amazing Aviva Goldfarb, is an online meal planning service committed to helping busy people get quick, easy, and delicious meals on the table every night. Aviva and I share the same philosophy: making dinner should be a low stress and enjoyable experience and that family dinners are one of the most rewarding and important opportunities to connect with and nourish the people we love and ourselves!

The Scramble will give me a platform to encourage even more people to get back into the kitchen, to experiment with new tastes and cooking techniques, and to feed their friends and families healthy, delicious meals that are simple to prepare.

 

But What About The Balanced Kitchen?

Some of you may be asking, what will happen to The Balanced Kitchen, to the recipes found here, and to my weekly musings on food, feeding kids, feeding ourselves, and life balance? The answer is twofold: my recipes will stay archived here on The Balanced Kitchen, but my new recipes and posts will all be on The Scramble.

I invite you to join me at The Scramble to continue getting inspiration and ideas for feeding yourself and your family well. In an effort to make that as simple for you as possible, I will be merging my list with The Scramble’s. What this means is that you will continue to receive emails from me from time to time with recipes, cooking ideas, and lots of other opportunities to experiment with cooking and eating, just from The Scramble rather than from The Balanced Kitchen.

 

Join The Scramble Family!

Finally (and perhaps most importantly), as an enticement and in celebration of this big change, I am offering a Friends & Family discount if you’d like to join The Scramble’s meal planning service. I love and believe in this service because it helps to make cooking that much easier and more accessible. So, if getting a meal plan delivered to your inbox or phone each week sounds appealing, if a generated-for-you shopping list sounds amazing, if access to a database of over 1,000 carefully curated recipes sounds wonderful, then join us! (And if you aren’t sure we have a 2 week free trial, so there’s no risk!)

Thank you for your support of The Balanced Kitchen over these past years. I have loved carving out my space in the food and cooking conversation. I have loved working with you as clients, meeting you at workshops, and sharing ideas with you online. I look forward to our relationship growing over at The Scramble! Sign up for a free trial now (and use the code FANDF17 to get 25% off all memberships now through August 16th).

Happy Cooking, Happy Eating, and Happy Scrambling!

Filed Under: Baked Goods, Breakfast, Cooking Basics, Cooking with Kids, Culture of Food, Dessert, Dinner, Drinks, Family Dinner, Feeding Kids, Freezer Cooking, Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Lunch, Lunch Box Food, Money, Picky Eaters, Quick Dinners, Sides, Slow Cooker, Snacks, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized Tagged With: changes, meal planning, opportunities, six o'clock scramble, transitions

Lessons Learned from Hospital Food

July 6, 2017 By Jessica Braider 4 Comments

Lessons Learned from Hospital Food

In a week full of the deepest and most profound of fears, I didn’t know whether to be proud of my son or worried for his health when he refused to eat the food at the hospital this week. Yes, the hospital. After three days of what we thought was a stomach flu, we ended up in the ER and then eventually Children’s Hospital where it was discovered that not only did he have appendicitis, but that his appendix had ruptured. All in all, a terrifying experience. I knew we had an additional challenge on ours hands when he took his first sip of the chicken broth he was allowed on a clear liquid diet and declared that he would stick to juice. I then offered him jello and popsicles, still no interest. To him, they all tasted “disgusting.” At first I thought that perhaps he was just not feeling up to the food, so I took a little taste of the broth and found that it was, in fact, disgusting. It didn’t taste real, it tasted like chemicals.

The other challenge we came across was feeding ourselves because, sadly, the food offerings for families were not that much better. To be fair, I did see signs of the hospital working to get better at it, but for the most part the offerings were pretty grim.

There’s a whole tirade here that I could go on about how I can’t understand how we expect people to heal in the hospital if we are not offering them good, nourishing foods, but, as you know, one of my goals on this blog is to offer up reasonable, manageable solutions that can help right now. So I wanted to share with you some of the work-arounds we came up with that helped all of us to get the nourishment we needed to take on the stress of what we were facing. These lessons would come in handy if, God forbid, you were to find yourself hanging out in a hospital, but they are also applicable to traveling, hanging out in a shopping mall, or just generally when you find yourself somewhere without the healthiest options.

First of all, and important note on being kind to yourself. These are the times when we just need to be at peace with the fact that the offerings aren’t ideal and that it is outside of our control. That being said, while the donut, hamburger, and fries, may sound awesomely comforting—and maybe you need that kind of comfort for one meal— in the interest of feeling your best and clearest that you can, seeking out the best options possible is worth it. So how did I do that?

When possible, bring from home. When my son wasn’t eating any of the hospital food, I called for reinforcements in the form of friends who cook and within two hours he was sipping homemade broth with a contented smile on his face. Similarly, my husband (who was the one going back and forth from home to the hospital to care for our younger son) put together meals from what we had at home and my in-laws brought a homemade dinner in one night as well.

In the cafeteria, look for color and compromise. Whenever I went down to the cafeteria I tried to look for options that were good enough, which often meant having one thing that was less than ideal, supplemented by extra fruit or vegetables. A bagel and cream cheese and some cut up pineapple. Pretzels, hummus, and a bowl of soup. To help me in my quest for healthier options, I tried to find options that had color (and by that I mean natural color not red #5), so fruit, vegetables, or foods made with fruits and vegetables, such as soup, veggie burgers, and veggie pizza. For my son, once he was allowed solid foods we tried a couple of different meals and he either wouldn’t touch them or would take a bite and then refuse to have more, but he was always willing to have fruit. So we let him focus on fruits and vegetables: apples, watermelon (from home), and green salad, and just trusted that once we got him home the carbs and protein would follow, and we were right! Within an hour of being home from the hospital he had eaten TWO homemade scones!

What it comes down to is that, for me, this experience was a lesson in letting go. In accepting that I can’t control it all and then doing the best I can with what I’ve got. And if, God forbid, I ever find myself having to spend lots of time in the hospital again, I will be sure make due with what I’ve got, ask for help, and bring food from home whenever possible.

Filed Under: Culture of Food, Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: balanced diet, healthy eating, life balance

F’ it! Wear the bikini!: 3 Ways to silence the self-doubt and start living

May 18, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

F’ it! Wear the bikini!: 3 Ways to silence the self-doubt and start living

It is a seasonal right of passage. The weather warms up and people start to feel self-conscious about how their bodies look. We start to see ads for diets and workout plans that will “get you ready for summer.” Maybe it is just me, but I have found that even as I roll my eyes at these ads, some deep-down chord is struck and I find myself looking more closely at my thighs/stomach/butt/etc. I then I start wondering if I need to change me.

Then, this week, I saw an awesome post on Facebook that helped me wake up. A friend posted:

This year’s new mantra applied in different ways (figuratively) to different circumstances: F’ it! Wear the bikini!

If you have been following my blog for a while you will know that I have spent years working to get to a place where I am (more or less) at peace with my body. This has been a long road and I absolutely see this as a life-long journey. You see, even though I have come far in terms of my own self-acceptance and have in many way comes to peace with my relationship with food and exercise, I still have those old habits and negative thoughts buried down in there and every once in a while they come back up. My friend’s statement on Facebook helped to realize that I was in a self-deprecating rut and that I needed to get out of it so that I could relax and be present for the important things like enjoying time with my family and savoring delicious food without guilt.

As I worked to reset my attitude, I realized that over time I have come up with some tricks to shift my perspective and I wanted to share those with you. An important note: while my recent struggles have been around body image, these tricks can work with any kind of negative self-talk that you may be struggling with. Here are three strategies I use when I am working to overcome negative thoughts:

  1. Three good things. When I catch myself tearing myself down or listening to that nasty voice in my head, I try to stop myself and challenge myself to come up with three good things that have happened that day (or recently) and what my role in those good things has been. This incredibly powerful act helps me to see the good things that I am capable of, it boosts my mood, and it shuts that nasty voice in my head up.
  2. What would you tell a friend? If I am ripping myself apart, I try to pause and ask myself, “if a friend was saying these things about her/himself, what would I say them her/him?” Chances are, it wouldn’t be “yeah, you’re totally right…”
  3. Find the pattern, then break it! I have noticed that my negative thoughts tend to come up when I am stressed, over-tired, and around milestones like birthdays/graduations/big transitions when I am taking stock of things. Once I recognized these patterns it became easier to notice when they were rearing their ugly, nasty heads. What this means is that now, when I am starting to feel crummy about myself, I try to pause and ask, “is this coming from an old pattern?” If the answer is yes, then I can use my logical brain to see the other side of the coin. Once I do that, I can then move forward, usually starting with some deep breaths to calm my mind. Your triggers for negative thoughts may be different from mine. I have clients who have discovered that their negative thoughts start when they see a family member who stresses them out, on Sundays before starting the next work week, when they are at different stages in their menstrual cycle, the list goes on and on. As you go through these cycles, try to notice the patterns. What led to the feelings? What else is going on in your life? And then, as you start to identify those patterns, you’ll be better able to counter-act them with logical thinking, self-care, and reminding yourself that this a pattern, not reality.

Once you are able to shift your perspective and be kinder to yourself, you will find that it is much easier to put on that literal or figurative bikini and enjoy the life you are living.

Do you have tricks to snaps yourself out of these sorts of ruts? If so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments section!

Filed Under: Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: healthy eating, life balance, self care, stress

Mediterranean Spinach Dip

May 11, 2017 By Jessica Braider 10 Comments

Mediterranean Spinach Dip

“I received free samples of Sabra Hummus mentioned in this post. By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Sabra and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.”

Sometimes the best things are simple. Super simple. That was a lesson I was reminded of as I worked to develop a recipe for this Sabra hummus recipe contest organized by The Recipe Redux. You see, I kept trying to come up with some innovative, creative, blow-your-mind-surprising use of hummus. Hummus croquettes and sweet potato toast towers were two of the almost-blogworthy recipes I worked on. Both of them were good, both of them were kind of fun, but as I sat down to write about them I just couldn’t get inspired. And then yesterday it kind of hit me: I was just trying too hard. I was making things more complicated than they really needed to be. So I pushed those two recipes aside, perhaps I’ll come back to them at another time, and decided to keep things simple.

Honestly, when I stop to think about it, making things too complicated has been kind of a theme in my life recently, as well as the hope that I can instead simplify (please tell me I’m not alone in this struggle). This recipe was a wonderful reminder for me that simple is often better. That sometimes we have to let go of our over-inflated expectations for a more balanced reality that will actually make us happier, as is the case with this rockstar, super simple dip.

So in honor of National Hummus Day on May 13th, I give you my Mediterranean Spinach Dip. A super simple, vegetarian, plant-based protein powerhouse of a snack that takes all of 5 minutes to make. Everyone in my family went nuts for this one and an added bonus is that it is another opportunity to get vegetables into everyone’s diet without cajoling or reminding. It works really well with crackers or chips, but also with crudité. My husband also recommends using it as a spread in a sandwich. Haven’t tried this yet myself, but it sounds amazing! Enjoy!


4.0 from 1 reviews
Mediterranean Spinach Dip
 
Save Print
Prep time
5 mins
Total time
5 mins
 
Author: Jessica Braider
Recipe type: Appetizer, Snack
Serves: 8
Ingredients
  • 3 cups frozen spinach, thawed and drained
  • 1 cup Sabra Classic Hummus
  • ½ cup crumbled feta
  • 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon thyme
  • ¼ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
  1. In a food processor, blender, or with an immersion blender, blend all the ingredients until smooth. Serve with vegetables, tortillas chips, or pita chips.
3.5.3226

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Filed Under: Feeding Kids, Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Lunch Box Food, Sides, Snacks Tagged With: appetizer, Easy, feta, healthy, healthy eating, hummus, protein, quick, sabra, Spinach, vegetarian

The 8 Steps to Healthy-ish

February 9, 2017 By Jessica Braider 4 Comments

The 8 Steps to Healthy-ish

One of my favorite parts of my day is going through my newsfeeds and seeing what strikes me—new articles, new recipes, new perspectives. I love being challenged to see a different perspective and being inspired by a new flavor combination or cooking technique. But every once in a while I come across an article or a trend that I think is damaging or dangerous when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food. This week that happened and so I wanted to share my thoughts on the term “healthy-ish.”…

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Filed Under: Culture of Food, Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: dessert, exercise, fruit, healthy eating, Vegetables

Breaking Bread in a Modern World

January 19, 2017 By Jessica Braider 4 Comments

Breaking Bread in a Modern World

This week I had the amazing opportunity to go to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture with my 8-year-old’s 3rd and 4th grade class. It was a powerful experience in many ways and brought many emotions to the surface for all of us—sadness, pain, anger, joy, and hope. After touring the museum the whole group met in the cafeteria for lunch and as we sat there discussing what we had seen and the many emotions and thoughts it had brought up for us I looked up and saw this quote:

 

I’m concerned that Americans are losing that place of meeting. There are very few times we can be more intimate as to share food together.”

                                                -Maya Angelou

 

As I sat there, sharing a meal with these children and the other chaperones, I was struck by the fact that in that little moment we were living out the power of Maya Angelou’s words: we were sharing in the intimacy and the power of the experience we had just had, while we ate together….

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Filed Under: Culture of Food, Family Dinner, Healthy Eating, Life Balance Tagged With: culture of food, family dinner, life balance, self care

3 Simple Ways to Make Your Health-Related Resolutions Actually Stick

January 5, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

3 Simple Ways to Make Your Health-Related Resolutions Actually Stick

Did you know that only 9.2% of people felt that they were successful in achieving their New Year’s resolution?! That means that 90.8% of people felt that they had not succeeded. Brutal. Over the past year I have been doing a lot of reading about habits and one of the things that comes up over and over again is that habits are really hard to break because our brains become hard-wired to fall back on those habits, especially when we are tired or stressed or distracted. What this means is that when you are trying to change a habit there are two steps you can take to improve your chances of success: one is to replace the old habit with a new and easy-to-accomplish one and the other is to start with a small change that will then create a ripple effect.

Now that all sounds fine and good, but what does it actually look like? As you know, I am all about simplicity and practicality. So I wanted to share some possible ways that you might be able to tackle those health-related resolutions and achieve your goals….

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Filed Under: Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: cravings, goals, habits, Resolutions, tips and tricks

2016 Round-Up: Best Recipes and Posts to Inspire and Feed You

December 29, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

2016 Round-Up: Best Recipes and Posts to Inspire and Feed You

2016-wrap-up

The end of year is often a great time to take stock of what we have learned and how we have grown and changed. This year has been a big one for The Balanced Kitchen and I am so grateful to all of you for joining me on this journey to make cooking simple and delicious! In an effort to inspire you to get 2017 off to a delicious and happy start, I wanted to share with you the most popular posts and recipes this year. Enjoy and Happy New Year! Here’s to a joyful, delicious, and healthy 2017!…

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Filed Under: Cooking Basics, Culture of Food, Dinner, Family Dinner, Feeding Kids, Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Lunch Box Food, Picky Eaters, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized

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

December 15, 2016 By Jessica Braider 1 Comment

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

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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Filed Under: Life Balance, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: holiday, leftovers, quick, self care

Super Simple Slow Cooker Chili

November 17, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Super Simple Slow Cooker Chili

Did you know that the night before Thanksgiving is one of the biggest nights for ordering pizza in the United States? I get why. I really do. Whether you are hosting, cooking to contribute to the big meal, or preparing to travel we all feel pretty overwhelmed on that Wednesday and so, for many of us, the last thing we want to do is think about what to make for dinner. And while I am a big fan of ordering pizza from time to time, it seems to me that with all of the indulging and overeating that is going to happen the next day, having a nutrient-packed meal the night before might actually be a good thing to help to keep our bodies (and spirits) in balance. But making a big fancy meal is not going to fly. So here’s my suggestion: super simple slow cooker chili!…

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Filed Under: Dinner, Freezer Cooking, Healthy Eating, Life Balance, Slow Cooker Tagged With: bell pepper, chili, corn, kid-friendly, sweet potato, tomato, vegetarian

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Jessica Braider

Hi! I'm Jessica. I love delicious food that is simple and easy. As a busy mom, I am always on the lookout for ways to make life easier and tastier! Read More…

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  • BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!
  • Zucchini & Eggplant Pie
  • Lessons Learned from Hospital Food
  • Vanilla Mini-Cupcakes with Tangy Chocolate Glaze
  • Grilled Fennel and Red Onion Salad
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