by Walter Holstad

Created on: February 17, 2009

Tips For Keeping Your Cooking Light And Simple

There are many ways to incorporate healthy foods into your diet that will invigorate your body and mind and improve your life.

The bulk foods section at your local health foods store or grocery co-op is an excellent place to start. Here you will find brown rice, and many other varieties of unprocessed rice. You will also find different types of beans and also mixes of assortments of beans.

At the local co-op near me they have a bean salad which has a variety of beans and also spices and other ingredients all contained within. The bulk section also has barley, (which can be cooked similar to rice), oats, dry pasta, nuts, and much more in bins that are labelled and bags with twist ties are provided for self service. Most of the labels on the bins show cooking instructions and nutritional content.

Beans are not as hard to make as many recipes would have us believe. I have found many recipes saying to soak the beans overnight or for 8 hours or to boil for two hours. This is too much in my experience. I have found soaking beans for 4 hours and then simmering them for an hour is plenty. A little trial and error will find what works for you.

The difference in time could be the freshness of the dry beans at the co-op but I don't know for sure. Plan ahead. Start soaking the beans well before meal time. Then cook them when you would normally cook your meal. Simmer them similar to how you would rice. You can even throw some rice in with the beans. Or you can make the rice separately and then mix the two together at the end. Beans and rice go great together as do beans and pasta. Be creative.

Rice is a very nutritious food item. Brown rice and other unprocessed types of rice are the best because when they remove the tougher part of the rice grain it loses some of its nutritional content.

Basic brown rice is cooked as follows. Use a 2 to 1 ratio of water to rice. For example, 2 cups of water and 1 cup of rice. You could even add a touch extra water to be sure not to burn the rice.

Bring the water and rice to a boil in a 2 quart saucepan and then turn the heat down to low and simmer the rice, covering the pan with a lid, for 40 minutes. Stir once after about 25 minutes if desired. That is the basic recipe for cooking brown rice which is a good protein source.

Tomato is another supremely healthy food. Incorporate tomato with your meals as often as possible. Tomato sauce is an excellent source of tomato for your meal. Pasta sauce is the

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