The backbone of healthy cooking and eating is the ingredients. Take any recipe and make it more or less healthy by the ingredients you use.
For example the average cookie recipe is often made with the following ingredients:
- white bleached flour
- margarine
- white sugar
- table salt
To make this recipe a little healthier, all you have to do is switch out those unhealthy ingredients for their all-natural, whole foods counterparts, like this:
- whole wheat flour
- butter or coconut oil
- raw sugar, sucanat or honey
- sea salt
Of course, you can add things to the recipe like fruit (mashed bananas, for example), dried fruit (cranberries), seeds, other grains (oats, quinoa), or yogurt to make it even healthier, but just making those simple switches will instantly create a healthier cookie.
The same applies to all the cooking and baking that goes on in your kitchen: don’t stress out looking for healthier recipes, just take the ones you already have, make a few changes in your pantry, and use the healthier versions.
On these pages, you will find the healthy ingredients I’ve incorporated into my pantry and my life to establish healthier eating habits. I like to call them “QECH (Quick Easy Cheap Healthy) Kitchen Staples”. Whether or not it is explicit in the recipes, these are the ingredients I use in all my baking and cooking.
