Absolutely Everyone Needs a Plan. John Schlife,

      March 2020

      Food Preparation: Try New Foods

      I vividly recall the first hot lunch served by my small town school cafeteria. It was 1954. I was in the third grade. As a farm boy in Nebraska, with parents raised during the depression also on the farm, the mentality at mealtime was to eat what was served. With 7 mouths to feed, quantity was more important than quality. We thought almost everything tasted fine, but no one ever considered telling my mother, the cook, “This doesn’t taste good.” My mother fixed what my father would eat. Simply put, we ate a lot of the same food. No one went hungry, but there was little variety. I don’t even remember what was packed in the school lunch box (a red Hopalong Cassidy box) for the first 3 years, but I will never forget the trauma of that first hot lunch meal as a third grader. The menu:

      Eating: An Enjoyable Activity

      Avoid the heavy discussion about whether you eat to live or you live to eat. This is the twenty-first century. We do now have some good science concerning the nutrient value of the different foods available. We see that food is a powerful substance. Very literally it can kill us (a high-fat eating style), make and keep us very healthy (high-complex-carbohydrate eating style), and most importantly it can control how we feel (high-complex-carbohydrate eating style). The physical body needs certain nutrients. Food nourishes the physical body.

      At the same time, eating is also an enjoyable activity. Everybody has many personal stories to illustrate how the consumption of food (the food itself, growing the food, preparing food, the people, the place, the situation, etc.) nourishes the soul.

      Change Is Nourishing: Try Something New!

      People who study eating styles and behaviors in an attempt to learn how to counsel others in this very important health and quality of life area continually search for ideas to share with others about how to get practical. People desire ideas about how to really become successful in nourishing the total person: body, mind, and spirit. Parents want to know how to do this for both themselves and their children.

      Open Your Mind to Change

      First, it is a given that we all have a long history connected to food and eating. It may not be sloppy joes and butter-soaked mashed potatoes, but whatever it is, it can be changed. Remember that eating is a learned behavior. Just be open to ‘trying” something new. The recommendation? I have 1 very simple recommendation for you to consider:

      Once each month from January until December, prepare a meal using as a main ingredient a food that you have never tried before. Avoid, if possible, just fixing an old favorite with a new twist. (There are already 100 different pasta salad recipes, right?)

      Results?

      This will be fun. You will be “forced” to get creative. The new tastes and textures will be exciting. You will probably start creating your own recipes. You may quit your job and write your own cookbook. Jay Leno will probably have you on late-night TV to promote your new book. Your vocabulary will contain words such as posole, buckwheat grouts, crowder peas, tabouli, turmeric, coriander and cilantro, blue corn meal, polenta, collards, pesto, raita, triticale, spelt flour, etc. How about hominy? This past fall, a person taking a class I was teaching came to class all excited because he was preparing a Crock-Pot soup recipe at home that day with hominy. It was to be his first-ever taste of hominy. Report: The next day he told how much he enjoyed this new food. Try the following recipes. Most are simple soup recipes, and they contain an ingredient that may be new for you.