This is the third installment of a four-part series on how I transformed myself from frozen food queen to healthy weeknight chef. Yes, it is possible to go from almost never cooking anything from scratch to cooking virtually everything from scratch. Even if you work full-time like I do. It may take awhile (I took a full year), but you can do it.

If you missed the other installments, you can read about phase I (Fits & Starts) here and phase II (Mastering the Basics) here.

Experimenting with New and Fun

This third phase of the year of my transformation was all about branching out from the basics and experimenting a bit.

As we headed into the summer months, our local farmers market opened and shopping suddenly became really fun for the whole family. We got in the habit of walking to it every Sunday and discovering new things to try, from leeks to kale, mustard greens, pasture raised chickens, and tomatillos…

Typically I’d create the week’s menu by outlining the building blocks for our meals, namely the proteins and the grains. But then I’d leave the vegetables and sauces up for grabs. The overflowing bins of vegetables at the market never failed to steer me in interesting directions.

One evening, a tomatillo salsa verde made a wonderful accompaniment to talapia.

The kids loved it, and my husband begged me to make the salsa again just to have on hand. It was that good.
{image & recipe via: Pinch My Salt}

Another night, I whipped together a leek tart. This is a wonderfully fast and relatively easy dinner to make. Perfect for those nights when you look in the fridge and don’t have too much left in there. I had tried my hand at an apple pie or two, so making my own crust wasn’t entirely a new thing. The good thing about a homemade crust is that it is generally delicious – even if it doesn’t come out perfectly flaky. Don’t be intimidated.

While at the beach with family, on my night to cook, I tried my hand at homemade pizza.

While not something I recommend for large parties (we were 28 people – oven space fell a little short), it is a great and really easy dinner for a single family. I have fallen in love with Tyler Florence’s pizza sauce recipe and use the pizza dough recipe from the back of a package of Fleischman’s pizza yeast. It has become our new go-to Friday night recipe.

Quinoa burgers made it in to the menu set.

I’ve tried these with and without eggs (without when my vegan relatives were visiting at Christmas). When making them without the eggs, just use something like cornstarch or a little extra flour to make them stick together. The tzatziki sauce that goes with this recipe is insanely good, but I’ve found you only need 1/2 to 1/4 of what’s called for, so I usually half the recipe. In general, Eating Well Living Thin is a wonderful resource for delicious and healthy recipes. I highly recommend perusing her blog.

Fish tacos were another hit of the summer.

And super, super easy. The tangy sauce is delish, but like the tzatziki sauce for the quinoa burgers, a little goes a long way. Definitely 1/2 the recipe for it.
{image and recipe by Daisy Cooks Sometimes}

And how could I forget this beautiful recipe for Thyme Scented Salmon with Tuscan White Bean Salad that I found in a Cooking Light Magazine from May 2003? I had stashed it away with my cookbooks and forgotten about it until I was hunting for some new and different dishes. It took a little longer to make as there are quite a few fresh ingredients to chop. But aside from all the chopping, there is nothing complicated about it. I think the elbow grease is worth it as it is both melt-in-your-mouth delicious and wonderfully nutritious.

The bottom line is, once you’ve mastered some basics, branching out an adding new and exciting dishes to the menu set is critical in helping maintain momentum. For me, I found that experimenting kept interested and excited about cooking in this stage. It kept me from stagnating.

Of course, not every dish I tried came out beautifully. But as I gained confidence, my fear of failure melted away. Nothing was ever so bad it was inedible.

My rule of thumb is that I have to prepare a dish three or four times before I really “get” how to both cook and flavor it to my (and my boys’) taste.

Confection Heaven

Dinners weren’t the only thing that I experimented with in this phase. I also threw my hat into the baking and confections arena. Because I love me some sugar.

It all started with my oldest son’s birthday. We decided to throw him a monster truck themed birthday party in our back yard, and I felt compelled to bake him a proper monster truck cake.

Miraculously, my gamble paid off. You can read the step-by-step monster truck cake tutorial here.

Bolstered by my monster truck cake coup, I leaned on my aunt to teach me how to make bread from scratch and she kindly obliged.

Now, once a month, I turn to this step-by-step bread-making tutorial and make four loaves for the month. I keep one loaf out and freeze the others, pulling them out as needed.

Once you start making your own bread, it’s pretty impossible to go back to the store bought kind. I’ve only had to buy bread twice since last summer. Once when we were just back from vacation and had nothing in the pantry, the other when I was battling the flu.

As the summer fruit season kicked into high gear, we also enjoyed

Strawberry shortcakes

{image and recipe via Fine Cooking}

Julia Child’s apple tarts

I followed the recipe from Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking, but this recipe from the Little Blue Hen looks about the same.
{image and recipe via: Little Blue Hen}

Paula Deen’s peach cobbler

Now, this one isn’t for every day as it is not the healthiest concoction. But can I just say, we all went weak at the knees on this one. With fresh picked peaches, it is simply divine.
{image and recipe via: Food Network}

A doggie birthday cake for my youngest

And my personal favorite, raspberry jam.

Since raspberry jam was the very last thing my mom ever made, making it held special significance for me. Surprisingly, it only took 35 minutes from start to finish. And wow, so good. Next summer, I will be making lots, lots, lots more as we plowed through ours before winter really ever set it.

Looking back, the key to maintaining my momentum in this arena was clearly just being willing to experiment – and fail. My first apple tart looked pretty sad. But it tasted great. Each time I make it, it gets prettier and prettier. My first batch of raspberry jam was a disaster. I had to toss the lot because I overcooked it. But I tried again and it turned out beautifully.

Indeed, the overarching theme to this entire journey has been: if at first you don’t succeed…try, try again.

What would you cook if you weren’t afraid to fail?

Your heart is pretty, darn incredible. Weighing in at a mere 10 ounces, this fist-sized organ can pump blood through about 100,000 miles of branching blood vessels to every, single cell in your adult body in under a minute. Literally, in the time it takes you to read this paragraph your heart will have pumped blood through vessels, which if placed end-to-end, would stretch around the earth about four times.

Yet it’s also an organ that is put to the test by our hectic, calorie-laden, stress-filled existence. Heart disease is the number one killer in America. Every year, cardiovascular problems cause half of US male deaths, a third of them by complete surprise. Women aren’t immune either. Heart disease kills more women than men every year; almost every minute, a woman in the U.S. dies from it. These are grim statistics, yes. But the good news is that with a little bit of organization and work, you can significantly reduce your risk of heart disease.
Here are four things you must organize to proactively protect your heart health. Make a pact with yourself (and family members) to cross these things off of your list by the end of the month. For added motivation and accountability, check in with us on your progress at facebook.com/getbuttonedup.

1. Get Screened During Your Annual Physical.

Regular cardiovascular screening is a critical tool for maintaining cardiovascular health because can help you identify risk factors before they are a significant problem. Every adult over the age of 20 should get the regular cardiovascular screening tests each year. Be sure you and your doctor discuss the results and general trends of your blood pressure and cholesterol level checks – sometimes a look at the cold, hard data can be just the wakeup call you need to change your dietary and exercise habits. If you are over the age of 45, you should also get blood glucose levels checked, and if you are “high risk,” you may want to ask your doctor about getting a C-reactive protein (CRP) test, which can be used to evaluate your risk of developing coronary artery disease. If you haven’t scheduled your annual physical yet and it’s been more than a year since you have seen your doctor, do not finish reading this article. Stop. Go pick up your phone, call your physician, and book your physical.

2. Know What Questions to Ask Your Health Provider.

Did you know that heart disease manifests itself differently in men than it does in women? Is your doctor aware of your family history or heart disease? It is critical that you have an open and productive dialogue with your physician about your risks, recommended tests, etc. The Boston Scientific website has some excellent sample questions to help get you started. But the bottom line is: don’t be afraid to ask. There is no such thing as a stupid question when it comes to proactively managing your health.

3. Move for 30 Minutes Most Days.

An in-depth study by a professor at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health showed that your cardio respiratory fitness level is the number one predictor of death. In lay terms, that’s your fitness level. The best way to boost it: walk for 30 minutes every day. If you haven’t seen this informative, animated You Tube video from Dr. Mike Evans about the profound impact of exercise, you should watch it today.

4. Turn Out the Lights Earlier.

Getting enough sleep is important for more than beauty reasons. Researchers at the University of Chicago have found that too little sleep is linked to increased calcium buildup in your arteries, which can lead to the plaques that cause heart attacks and strokes. The study found that one hour less of sleep per night leads to a 16% increase in coronary calcium. So this month, start tracking how many hours of sleep you get a night. If you notice that you are routinely getting less than 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night, make an effort to out the lights earlier. If you need it, set an alarm to ring 30 minutes before your ideal bedtime as it’s easy to get lost in a TV show, your friends’ Facebook status stream, and emails. But none of them are worth your health, right?

At the beginning of 2011, I decided to switch up my typical approach to making New Year’s resolutions. Rather than chasing five or ten different goals (and accomplishing maybe two-thirds of one of those), I decided to switch gears and make one big resolution — one that honored my mom and enabled me to keep her presence in my childrens’ lives.

The goal

My one resolution was to go from someone who at dinnertime relied heavily on this…

…and this:

To a mom who whipped up some healthy goodness like this at least six nights a week…

{image via: Little Yellow Kitchen}

…and even bakes her own bread.

A tall order to be sure.

But I figured that, given the time horizon, it was within the realm of possibility.

As it turns out, I stuck with it and have become one of those people I used to eye suspiciously, if not downright incredulously: one who genuinely enjoys cooking dinner. But you know what I enjoy even more? Three boys who actually inhale quinoa.

I swear it makes me want to break out into song every time I see it happen.

Rest assured, my path to culinary glory has not been a straight one. No significant behavioral overhaul is though, which is why I thought it might be helpful to share some of the key lessons from my journey. I know I can’t be the only person who relied too heavily on packaged, processed foods in order to get dinner on the table, right?

The Journey

While I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, I gradually worked my way through four distinct phases between January and December. During the first phase, I flailed around and generally stumbled more than I succeeded. In the second phase I started to get my sea legs. By the time I got to the last two stages, I was really having some fun.

Over the next few days I am going to share with you the details from each stage of the journey. I’ll dole it out in bite-sized pieces because, as my mom always said, a little bit of chocolate every day is SO much better than a pound of chocolate all at once. Start here for the embarrassing recap of the first phase of my journey from frozen dinner queen to healthy weeknight cook.

Have you ever made a significant behavioral change? What was it? How long did it take to stick? Did you go through “phases?”

When I think about all the things I’m hoarding, the ones I think are the worst for me are the beliefs and emotions in my head.

I tend to find it hard for me to let go of negative feelings and this emotional clutter is interfering with my life. That’s why I need to put an end to it NOW.

I just recently discovered certain things about myself. I hoard certain beliefs. I am very attached to wanting the people I love interact with me in specific ways. When they don’t act the way I want them to, even if they are showing their love in other ways, I withhold my expressions of love, or get angry and frustrated.

I had to clean out my own emotional “closet” to make room for the idea that everyone is different and people don’t have to express their love YOUR way to make it real/meaningful. Every day, I need to remind myself of this so my emotions don’t control me – I control my emotions.

One of the problems with hoarding is that it doesn’t create the space for anything new to come into your life. It doesn’t matter if what you’re hoarding is physical or emotional. If you don’t have room for new things or new experiences, you’ll just keep recycling the same old stuff and eventually drown in your sea of stuff.

What are some of the beliefs or emotions you hoard? Are you willing to release your hoarder’s grip on those beliefs to create room for something new and different?

Hoover has upped their contribution to Clean For A Reason from $1 to $2 when you add a Twibbon to your twitter site! Go here to do that and ask your supporters for their help as well.

Cleaning For A Reason is a nonprofit organization that recruits local, professional cleaning services to provide free home cleanings for women undergoing cancer treatment. They connect the patient applicant to the cleaning service partners.

For more information on Clean For A Reason, go here. To learn about Hoover’s campaign to raise $25,000 for this cause, go to our post here.

Please help this worthy cause – it only take a minute and you can help improve the life of a woman undergoing cancer treatment!

Cleaning For A Reason Week!

Nothing makes me feel better as when my home is clean and shiny. I’m pretty sure most, if not all women would feel the same way. But when you are ill, undergoing cancer treatment, let’s face it, the focus is on getting through the treatments and getting better – not on cleaning.

That’s where Cleaning For A Reason week – April 18-April 24 – comes in.

Cleaning For A Reason is a nonprofit organization that recruits local, professional cleaning services to provide free home cleanings for women undergoing cancer treatment. They connect the patient applicant to the cleaning service partners. Women undergoing cancer treatment need to feel as good as possible and this organization is a great help!

Founded in Texas in 2005 it is rapidly expanding to cover all 50 states. For more information and a list of participating cleaning services in your area, visit http://www.cleaningforareason.org/maidservice.php

Wish you could help? Well you can!

Hoover (as in Hoover vacuums and carpet cleaners) plans to donate 700 vacuums throughout the year to participating cleaning services, and has been a charity partner with Cleaning For A Reason for the past two years. Hoover will donate $1 to the cause for every new Hoover Facebook “like” and new Twitter follower, up to $25,000.

Pretty easy way to help this worthy organization isn’t it? Simply visit www.facebook.com/Hoover or www.twitter.com/hooverclean and help Hoover reach their goal!

Please Tweet and Like Hoover today!

Eating Pure with Pure Bar Plus a Coupon & Sweepstakes!

If your New Year’s resolution was to eat healthier, and eat foods that use only real ingredients, organic fruits and healthy nuts untouched by harmful herbicides and pesticides, then you know that what you want is hard to find – at least anything tasty. Until now that is! Pure™ Bar has only real ingredients, no refined sugars, no chemicals, no genetically-modified stuff.

How do I know? I was asked by Pure to try their organic bars and let you know what I thought.

I was slightly hesitant because, like you probably, I am used to bars that are like eating dried mud with stones and twigs in it. They are so dry you have to have water or a cup of coffee with them just to get them down. Or else they look and taste like a candy bar and the contents aren’t much better either!

But I found Pure Bars to be moist, sweet, chewy and really, REALLY good! I am not a big Orange lover unless it’s the actual fruit. Too often it tastes like “Tang” – manufactured and processed. However, when I opened the Cranberry Orange bar I could actually smell the oranges! And the taste! OMG! Awesome. Same with the Wild Blueberry, and Cherry Cashew and Apple Cinnamon – well – all of them really! (Although I was not crazy about the Chocolate Brownie – I would eat it if the others were not available and others in the household LOVED it!)

I was pleasantly surprised and I am a convert! These bars appear small, but they are filling. I also liked that they can be easily thrown in a backpack, purse, glove box, pocket or cookie jar without any guilt!

There are six different bars to choose from and they are hardy little things sure to please the palette as well as the body’s nutritional needs. I liked that the ingredients are smack dab on the front of every bar – like they are wearing the ingredients proudly.

I ate one a day for six days and then started all over again! If you know of anyone with special dietary needs, these bars may help supplement their diet.

Coupon!

But don’t take my word for it! Get a buy-one get-one free coupon on the pure bar website that you can print and bring into stores. So give it a try today!

The Pure Bars:

Apple Cinnamon Pure Bar INGREDIENTS: Organic Dates, organic apples, organic agave nectar, organic walnuts, organic cashews, organic almonds, organic rice protein concentrate, organic cinnamon. That’s all!

Cherry Cashew Pure Bar INGREDIENTS: Organic dates, organic cherries, organic walnuts, organic agave nectar, organic almonds, organic cashews, organic brown rice protein. That’s all!

Chocolate Brownie Pure Bar INGREDIENTS: Organic dates, organic walnuts, organic agave nectar, organic almonds, organic cashews, organic brown rice protein, organic cocoa. That’s all!

Cranberry Orange Pure Bar INGREDIENTS: Organic dates, organic cranberries (with organic apple juice concentrate and organic sunflower oil), organic walnuts, organic cashews, organic brown rice protein organic almonds, organic agave nectar, organic orange peel, organic orange oil. That’s all!

Trail Mix Pure Bar INGREDIENTS: Organic dates, organic agave nectar, organic cashews, organic apples, organic raisins, organic almonds, organic sunflower seeds, organic cacao nibs, organic walnuts, organic rice protein concentrate. That’s all!

Wild Blueberry Pure Bar INGREDIENTS: Organic dates, organic wild blueberries, (with organic apple juice concentrate and organic canola oil), organic cashews, organic agave nectar, organic walnuts, organic brown rice Protein, organic almonds, organic unsweetened lemon juice concentrate. That’s all!

Facebook Sweepstakes

Plus if you become a fan on Facebook you will see the sweepstakes currently running! You could win a five-day, four-night trip for two to Costa Rica! To enter just submit a tip about your Pure lifestyle! The Grand Prize winner will win a Pure Eco Resort Trip for two people to Costa Rica and a one-year supply of Pure Bars. Plus there are weekly prizes too! They will also select weekly winners. If you’re a lucky weekly winner, you will receive a supply of Pure Bars, and will also choose one of three organizations for Pure to donate $100 on your behalf. The winner will be chosen on February 21st!

Disclosure: This is sponsored content and we have been paid to do this post. That being said, we do not blog about anything we do not believe in and Pure did not edit our post or direct our content in any way.

One Stop Health Organization

When was your last checkup? If it’s been 18 months since you went to the doctor, stop putting it off! It’s easy to let “busy-ness” be the excuse for falling behind on your routine healthcare visits. But it’s also a pretty lame excuse for not taking care of the most important thing you have: your health. It’s the start of a new year, and the perfect opportunity to turn over a new leaf. Take a moment now for you and organize a few visits that will safeguard your own well being.

Sarah on “Take Care of Everyone at Once”

Alicia on “one week a year”

What doctors do I need to visit on an annual basis? We’ve mapped it out for you, and if you need it, your whole family too. Go through the list today and make relevant appointments before the day gets away from you. If you’re under water with work right now, schedule visits for the summer months, when schedules tend to be a little less hectic. The good news – when you schedule your appointments far enough in advance, you will usually be able to get the coveted first appointment, before the doctor is running late.

List of appointments:

For You:

For Him:

For Kids:

The Trick to Avoiding Unwanted Holiday Pounds: Get Organized

It’s the mother of all hangovers – the holiday weight gain. The average person gains between 2-5 pounds over the holiday season, so while it’s may not shock you to learn on January 2rd that you’ve creeped up a bit, it’s definitely disheartening. It’s so hard to resist the cookies and cakes and extra helpings of mashed potatoes…and it’s only once a year, right? Take heart in knowing that you can enjoy yourself this holiday season without getting smacked in the face come January. It just takes a little organization now to save yourself later.

Sarah on “not getting swept up in the moment”

Alicia on “keeping my schedule sacred”

Three Tips for Getting Organized & Trimming the Fat from Your Holiday Season:

1. Keep Track!

2. Be Accountable.

3. Eat Well When You Can.

Ethnic Gaps in Breast Cancer Linked to Hormones

In our efforts to bring you news about Breast Cancer and its available treatments and causes, below please find an article regarding on a recent study that looked at hormone levels as one explanation of the difference in rates of Breast Cancer occurrence in different ethnicities. We have duplicated the full article with a ‘translation’ of the study from BreastCancer.org. We hope this information is helpful to you and your loved ones. – Buttoned Up

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Differences in estrogen levels may partially explain the ethnic disparities in breast cancer rates among U.S. women, new research suggests.

In a study of more than 700 postmenopausal women, researchers found that participants’ blood levels of estrogen and “male” hormones, called androgens, varied by race and ethnicity. And the differences in estrogen, which fuels breast tumor growth, often paralleled ethnic differences in breast cancer risk.

Native Hawaiians, for example, had the highest levels of estrogen and androgen, and the highest rate of breast cancer. On average, their estrogen levels were about one-quarter higher than those of white women, according to findings published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Similarly, the study found, women of Japanese descent had higher estrogen levels than white women did, and their breast cancer rate followed suit.

These findings fit the theory that racial or ethnic differences in estrogen levels account for some of the differences seen in breast cancer rates, according to study leader Dr. Veronica Wendy Setiawan of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

An exception, she told Reuters Health, was the finding that African-American women had lower rates of breast cancer than white women did, despite having higher estrogen levels.

“We can’t explain that yet,” Setiawan said. It’s known that before menopause, black women have a higher risk of breast cancer than white women, she noted. So it’s a puzzle as to why their risk doesn’t remain elevated after menopause, even though their estrogen levels remain relatively high.

Another finding with no clear explanation is the fact that Japanese-American women had higher estrogen levels and a higher rate of breast cancer than white women did — a stark reversal of what’s been previously observed.

This rise in estrogen levels among Japanese Americans may be driving the rise in breast cancer, according to Setiawan, but no one knows what factors — such as diet or other lifestyle changes — are affecting estrogen levels in these women.

Excess body fat raises estrogen levels, but Japanese Americans in the study were generally thinner than other women.

The findings are based on 739 women who are part of a larger study that has followed an ethnically diverse group of adults from California and Hawaii for more than a decade.

Setiawan notes that more research is needed to figure out why black women differ from other women when it comes to the relationship between estrogen levels and breast cancer — and why estrogen levels appear to be changing among Japanese women.

SOURCE: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, October 2006.

WHAT BREASTCANCER.ORG SAYS:

Ethnic gaps in breast cancer linked to hormones

Research has shown that breast cancer is diagnosed more or less frequently in different ethnic groups in the United States. But scientists aren’t sure why these differences happen. Differences in genetics might be part of the explanation. External factors, such as diet and lifestyle choices, also probably contribute to these differences.

The study reviewed here looked at whether differences in hormone levels could help explain differences in breast cancer rates. While the results don’t provide all the answers, they do offer more information. For example, Japanese American women and native Hawaiian women have a higher than average risk of breast cancer and their estrogen levels were found to be higher than average. On the other hand, African American women have a lower risk of breast cancer than white women, but in this study, African American women had higher estrogen levels than white women.

The study also showed that average estrogen levels of Japanese American women have been rising over time. The reason for this is unclear, and it is not clear that an increase in breast cancer risk will follow.

Stay tuned to Breastcancer.org for the latest updates on this important area.