Healthy Fast Food Kitchen™ . . .
make it fast, eat it slow

If you’re looking for inspiration to get you back into the kitchen, how about making an unusual soup that makes you curious about how it will taste? I’ve got a great recipe for African Bean Soup. It features vegetables, beans, and ground peanuts. Sound interesting? Why not experiment and make it? You may already have the ingredients on hand. Here’s a quick version of the recipe I use. I have a pressure cooker so I usually cook dried beans from scratch, but canned beans work well for this recipe too – and you can get it on the table pronto – about 30 minutes!

African Bean Soup

Sauté 5 – 7 minutes (soft but not browned):
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped green pepper
½ to 1 inch fresh or frozen hot pepper chopped or red pepper flakes (if you want some heat)
2 stalks celery with tops, chopped
¼ cup chopped parsley (if you like parsley and have it on hand)

Then add the following and cook for 5-7 minutes:
2 cans cooked beans (all one kind or a combination of Lima, navy, pink or red beans)
4 cups water
1 tablespoon fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried
½ teaspoon cumin
½- 1 teaspoon salt (adjust to your taste depending on whether canned beans are salted or note)

Add and cook for another 5-7 minutes:
1/3 cup peanuts ground to meal or 3 tablespoons peanut butter

Taste and adjust seasonings.

It’s soup now! Enjoy it with a whole grain product (corn bread, crusty bread, tortillas with cheese) and a side salad.

This is just one of the many soups you’ll find out about when you sign

up for Cheryl’s Soup Kitchen. I’ll give you recipes for the side dishes

too. For more details, go here

Packrats, Paper Hounds & Procrastinators™ . . .
life is too big to drag it around with you

Do you resist cooking and eating at home? If you do, look at your kitchen. Is it cluttered, disorganized, stocked with unhealthy snack foods? Are the counter tops filled up with pots and pans, dirty dishes, school papers, back packs, mail, groceries, and other things that seem to have no home?

Cooking in a cluttered, disorganized kitchen is a very unpleasant experience. Most of us simply won’t do it. But there is a solution. Start small or go full blast – but get started.

For 15 minutes a day, clean up, declutter, or organize some aspect of your kitchen. Keep inching away at it until it’s really in good shape. Get rid of all the tools you don’t use, the extra set of china that takes up space and gathers dust, and the gadgets that are so hard to clean you never use them. Put things where they belong. If they don’t have a place, create one or consider moving it out of your household so that somebody who does have a place for it can use it.

Or, if you are the high energy all-or-nothing kind of person, schedule time this weekend to do it all - top to bottom. Go through every cupboard, drawer, and shelf and get rid of everything you don’t use and love.

Whether you prefer to do a few minutes a day or a large block of time, just begin. Soon, you'll have space to cook and eat at home!And what a great healthy habit THAT is.

Move More. . . your body
thinks it's dead unless you move™

Do you know that on average Americans spend only 2 percent of their day outside? We walk from the car to the building and back...and that's about it for being outside.

In Kansas we're having a heat wave. The temperatures this winter have edged toward 70 on many occasions. Global warming? A fluke? Whatever the reason, if it’s warm where you are too, take advantage of it and take some walks. That's definitely what I'm doing. I walk at least 45 minutes a day – no matter what the weather is. I just bundle up or strip down. Dressing in layers is great for walking.

If you've been meaning to be more active, this would be a great time to start a regular walking program.

How much time do you spend outside? I estimate that I spend at least 8% of my day outside on the average. This Sunday I took my dog, Jasmine, for a 4-mile walk on the levee in North Lawrence and it was fabulous.

Make a game out of walking outside. See how many wild critters you can spot. Mentally compose a haiku poem about something in nature that inspires you. Take the kids, the dog, and the significant other and do a little site-seeing on foot in your neighborhood or community. If you’re at work, invite a co-worker to join you on breaks or over lunch to get outside, smell the roses, and produce some vitamin D. Spending time outside is one of the top 10 healthy habits in my book. It contributes to happiness too.

Simple, Clean Green Living . . .
for busy people who love the planet™

Are there things about our modern culture that you’d like to change? Me too. Developing countries are using a disproportionate percentage of the world’s natural resources and we’re not being very good caretakers of the planet. So I’m collecting website links of nonprofit organizations that promote and support sustainable, healthy living and putting them on my website so you can have easy access to them.

The websites will feature research, petitions, and educational resources about things like protecting rain forests, not abusing animals, growing clean food instead of genetically modified foods, working for peace and community instead of divisiveness and war, cleaning up our water and air, living more simply and sustainable, feeding our children healthy foods in schools, and dropping out of the over-the-top consumer society.

Will you help me do something?

I would really appreciate your sending me the links of educational or activist websites that meet the following qualifications:

* Nonprofit – not pushing a product

* Positive – even if they are a little radical

* Action oriented - no doom and gloom just to scare us without offering solutions and ways to become active

* Content based on a combination of truth, research, science and common sense

* Offer opportunities to create community and get involved

Featured Website – Clean air and water

I’ve written a short post in my blog about a website that will provide you with a report of the amount of pollution in your county as far as air, water, and chemicals - if you live in the US. Get the link here:

Perfect Environments for Healthy, Happy Living . . .
let the environments do the work for you™

Does your home environment supporting healthy habits? In order to live a healthy, happy lifestyle, your home life has to be pretty orderly and supportive. Is your home orderly or does chaos rein? Are your refrigerator and pantry stocked with healthy foods or junk and processed foods? Is your bedroom a totally serene, comfortable place to get adequate, restful sleep? Is your morning routine designed to be stress-free so you can easily get yourself and your family out the door in the morning? Is your evening routine welcoming, nurturing, and restful? Does your home feel like a sanctuary, a war zone, a toxic dump, or somewhere in between?

When chaos and disorder reign, there’s little or no energy left for exercise, self-nurturing rituals, peaceful family dinner experiences, and regeneration. If the TV room is the center of your universe, I’m guessing your health and happiness are suffering.

This weekend, look for simple ways to create a healthier living environment. Streamline your daily routines, eliminate clutter, and turn off the TV after your favorite program is over instead of leaving it on all evening gobbling up your precious time to rejuvenate, get on top of life, and spend time talking and laughing with others.

Smoke Now, Quit Later . . .
smoke guilt-free while you get ready to quit™

At the risk of upsetting you, I’m going to ask you a very personal question. Would you rather not be in charge of your life? When stressors confront you (argument, task you don’t want to do, financial concerns, clutter, relationships), would you rather ignore them and smoke? Research indicates that people who have addictions like smoking and drinking often have an external locus of control which means that they think the control over their lives is external (boss, spouse, job, bad luck, bad genes, etc). They look outside of themselves for answers instead of looking within and taking control.

Granted we all look outside of ourselves for answers, but the extent that we do this differentiates people who are in charge of their lives and people who let life happen to them. If you smoke and want to be more in charge of your life, you’ll have an easier time quitting smoking if you learn about taking back control of your life. This means taking 100 percent responsibility for your choices, practicing good self-care, and continually looking for ways to successfully quit smoking - even if it IS hard.

Yes, it sounds like a lot of work. If you’d rather go have a cigarette than think about it, you’ll delay your success. Or you can choose just one thing to get on top of and congratulate yourself for taking responsibility for your life. Take a walk, eat a piece of fruit, make a homemade soup, take a hot bath and let the tensions of the day drain away, take a break at work without smoking. All of these things send the message that you mean business about taking control of your life and choosing health. Then you do it again. And again.

Taking responsibility for your life is the pathway to successfully making healthy choices. And yes, it takes work. You don’t need to do it alone. Get help. Get a life coach, read a book about quitting, just do it, search the net for a program that speaks to you, or find another solution that appeals. There are many, many ways to get there. Taking responsibility is one of the surest pathways to success.