We hear a lot about the obesity epidemic in first-world countries. But we don’t believe those lunchtime hamburgers (or bourekas) are actually cutting our lives short. Below, chef Jamie Oliver delivers a powerful talk about the physical and financial damage junk food inflicts on us, and how to save our children’s lives by teaching them 10 healthy recipes. See my 10 below the video.
Now, what are your life-saving recipes? Comment, and I’ll post the ones I think are the winners.
If you’re also a blogger, please get the video from YouTube, post about it, and include your own 10 life-saving recipes. Pass the message on: Real food saves lives. Junk food kills.
Mimi’s 10 Life-Saving Recipes
These are mostly vegetarian recipes. That’s because grains and vegetables are cheaper than poultry and meat. It’s important to know, and teach, that real food is accessible to anyone with the will to cook, no matter how skinny the budget.
- Toasted Pumpkin Seeds – healthy snacking.
- Black Beans – you can just about survive on black beans and rice.
- Kefir – a yoghurt-like drink packed with things that are good for you.
- Onions Roasted with Olive Oil and Herbs - an easy way to cook any vegetable I can think of.
- Kasha Varnishkes - buckwheat for protein, noodles for quick energy and that satisfied feeling.
- Majadra - lentils and rice, with the same benefits as kasha varnishkes or rice and beans: protein, carbs, fiber, minerals, vitamins….
- Polenta – quick, nutritious, filling, and cheap. Top it with tomato sauce, and no one will miss pizza.
- Sourdough Oatmeal Bread – everyone should know how to make bread from scratch. If you know how doable sourdough really is, you’ll make the healthiest bread in the world.
- Curried Turkey Salad - this recipe is really 2 recipes. New cooks learn how to make a quick broth and how to put together a cold salad with poultry, vegetables, and fruit in it. And something about using seasonings.
- Ful ve-Choumous – beans, eggs, humus and tahini. You can move mountains on the nutrition in this.
…And here’s an eleventh recipe. Something sweet, because there has to be something sweet. But much healthier than mass-manufactured desserts: Rice Pudding with Drunken Raisins.
Hannah of the Cooking Manager blog has already posted her 10 recipes.
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This is a good thing! I will try to find 10 recipes too.
I love your 11 choices! They sound so yummy, and it’s great that you added a brief note on why each is valuable. I also like to cook vegetarian dishes as often as possible. I think it would take me forever to compose such a list, but rice pudding as well as majadra in some form would be on it, or maybe an Indian lentil dish served over basmati rice, or maybe a Persian dish that is called simply “lentils with rice” but has raisins and dates too!
Lentils and rice with dried fruit sounds delicious, Faye. That’s a recipe worth teaching!
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