Fall Favorites to Keep You Healthy: Food Tips for the Coming Chilly Weather

Nutri-News: Cold Weather Equals Carbs

As the weather turns colder, you are turning to carbs, right? There are darned good biological and psychological reasons for this craving, but the bottom line is, if you keep indulging your carb cravings, you are going to feel it in your, er, bottom line.

Your best defense is soup. Studies show that having a bowl of broth based soup before a meal actually helps you eat less during that meal. Try sipping on a cup of miso soup at 3 pm instead of a latte. It will likely nourish you right up until dinner for a mere 20 or so calories. Tips for making simple, great soups.

Key Ingredient: Add a Half Cup of Beans a Day

Beans go well beyond the few kidney beans you throw in your chili. Adding just a half cup of beans to your diet each day has been shown to lower your risk of heart disease. There are insanely delicious ways to accomplish this starting with adding canned chick peas to salads or including hummus on every sandwich.

They don’t need to play a starring role in the day, even a handful of roasted soybeans as a snack can help. That said, there is nothing like a French inspired cassoulet to warm up a day. This bean dish often has sausage and or poultry stewed in but a vegetarian version is great as a side dish when you have a flexitarian household to keep happy.  A simple cassoulet recipe to get you started.

Useful Tool: How to Fix the Fatal Flaw in Crockpot Cooking

Slow cookers are a boon to the rushed or non-cooks, but do you ever wonder why slow cooker recipes lean so heavily on cans and jars (and are therefore overloaded with salt)? It’s the inherent flaw in the cooking method that is to blame.

There are two important elements missing from slow cooker food that end up begging for the compensating effects of salty cans. In order to develop colour and flavor in any dish, you need high heat and evaporation, the two things that the slow cooker is designed to avoid.  The simple solution to the crockpot conundrum.