veggiessima

Fall produce started to show up at the grocery stores, yummmmm! I've been pretty obsessed with delicata squashes. If you're not familiar with them, this is what they look like:

Winter squashes can be a bit intimidating because most of them are not very easy to deal with. Delicata squash is perfect if you're not very experienced with Winter squashes: it's small, you can eat the skin, it's easy to prepare. And it's super delicious.

I've been roasting them and eating them mostly with salads:

But they are also a great side dish and a great snack to keep in the fridge and eat cold:

If you've read some of my articles, you know I'm very passionate about a whole food plant based lifestyle, I really believe that the more we add wholesome foods to our diets, the healthier we get.

This is what a healthy diet looks like to me:

https://cinnamon.video/watch?v=399369298167990068

There is so much confusion nowadays about diets, and there are lots of “health experts” out there trying to convince us that certain diets are the best ones, there is an endless fight between the diet advocates. I steer clear from those fights and heated discussions. I never claim that my lifestyle choice is the best, I truly believe it is the best for me, I do see the results of my food choices on my overall well being, therefore I enjoy sharing my kitchen experiments to inspire people looking for tips on how to add healthy foods to their diets.

I have a good friend from work that was trying to lose some weight and improve her health, we've had lots of conversations about food choices and after a few months on a whole food plant based diet, she sent me this message:

That message made me so happy! It made me reflect a lot about our impact on others. If each one of us could have a positive impact on one more person, just one, wouldn't this world be significantly better?

But eating only healthy foods can be very difficult at times. If we're eating out, most available choices are not healthy, if we're eating at home, we don't always have time to prepare healthy options and then, to make things more complicated, there is mindless eating. There are so many occasions we eat just because something tasty is in front of us and we're not hungry at all.

While I believe a whole food plant based diet is ideal for me, my diet is not perfect, I tend to share the perfect part of my diet because, as I mentioned, my goal is to inspire others looking for healthy tips. But I also go through some crazy times where I get super busy and have little time to cook, or I get surrounded by unhealthy options, life happens!

The last few months have been challenging for everyone with the need to rebuild our routines and, like everyone else, I also went through some difficult times and allowed some unhealthy choices sneak into my daily routine: more processed foods than I think is ideal.

Last week I felt it was time for a reset, time to go a few days doing a perfect diet, and by perfect I mean only wholesome foods, nothing processed, no refined sugar, no refined flours or maybe try to keep them to a very minimum.

I've done this before, it's so fascinating how our bodies adapt to the new inputs, especially how our taste buds adapt. After a few days of natural foods, all of those foods start to taste more delicious. Even plain foods without seasoning taste more interesting, and when we try something processed with added sugar for example, it tastes too sweet. It's like when you're used to coffee or tea with sugar, then try without, they taste horrible at first, but when your taste buds adapt, you can't drink sweetened coffee or tea anymore.

Besides that change to the food flavor, we also start to feel more energetic, we sleep better, our focus improves. It's very interesting how this process affects our overall well being. Sometimes we feel worse before we feel better, it's kind of like a withdrawal process, where our bodies first crave those things we're used to and we don't feel well in the absence of them, but if we get passed that initial discomfort, the results are very rewarding!

My week started very well, lots of motivation until day 4 when I was hit with a very nasty headache that lasted over a day. I still tried to focus on my goal and ended up eating a couple slices of bread on that day but still kept the rest of my refined food intake to zero.

I got past that nasty day and am now feeling wonderful!

The most important part: I didn't give up just because that wasn't a perfect day and I ate a bit of something I had decided to avoid. I just started over again after that and moved on.

During this last week I focused on very simple foods.

I cooked some beans:

Baked different types of potatoes:

Steamed lots of greens and vegetables:

Ate lots of fresh fruit:

And prepared lots of wholesome plates:

Cintia

I super enjoy cooking new and different dishes, but on a daily basis my life is pretty busy, I don't have tons of time to cook new meals every single day.

When I cook, most of the times I cook large batches of food that last for a few days. Having food in the fridge or freezer ready to eat is key for a healthy lifestyle.

**Simple** is my favorite keyword.

The less complicated the plan is, the better chance it has to work. Well... at least for someone like me, who learned to cook by experimenting and by following recipes. I have taken a few short hands-on cooking classes, day long ones, but that's about it, so all my cooking skills are mostly from my daily experimentation.

I have been surprised so many times thinking that a simple combination was going to taste mehhhh... and in the end it turned into something really delicious. Sure there are some days where the combinations don't work well, but that's part of learning, right?

My second keyword is **wholesome**. I try to use fresh wholesome ingredients as much as possible. I do use canned beans and canned tomatoes for example, but even when I use those not fresh ingredients, I'm careful to read the labels and make sure I'm not buying foods with a long list of impossible to understand ingredients.

I buy unsalted canned beans that have just beans, or the ones that also have kombu, which is a seaweed that actually helps with the digestion of beans, kombu's enzimes break down the sugars in the beans making it easier on the digestion.

I buy cans of tomatoes that have just tomatoes, no salt, nothing else.

Fresh ingredients are hard to beat. I love the color of my food, I never get tired of admiring the natural color of those wholesome ingredients.

I know it can be overwhelming to make big changes to our daily diets, I didn't start eating this way overnight, I learned overtime.

I love the advice of adding one or two new healthy things at a time. Focusing on adding new healthy foods, instead of focusing on removing processed and unhealthy ingredients, is much more attractive to our brain than the thought of missing the foods we're used to eating.

One pot meals are a big favorite of mine, I have lots of fun experimenting with combinations of grains, beans/lentils, vegetables and spices.

This week I had lots of corn again from my CSA, plus tomatoes, onion and zucchini among a few other items.

This is what I came up with: