I decided to celebrate the first week of February by blogging about the Real Food strategies that help me stay healthy. By experimenting with different strategies and routines, you can find those that work to support your healthy eating patterns. Growing up, I spent time in the kitchen watching my mom cook. Although she is now 91 years old, she continues to cook each day for herself and also prepares holiday meals and family dinners in her own home with some assistance from her children. Cook and eat meals in your home everyday.

 Statistics show that over half of daily meals are now eaten outside of the home. Dr. Hyman mentions in his blog some tips to take back the family dinner in your home:

• Reclaim your kitchen-stock real, fresh whole foods
• Reinstate the family dinner-set a dinnertime and invite friends and family
• Eat together-sit down together and talk with each other
• Learn how to cook and shop-prepare quick and simple meals
• Plant a garden-maybe just herbs and a tomato plant on your deck
• Conserve, compost and recycle-reuse your own shopping bags
• Invest in food-food is precious-treat it that way

In my early twenties, I did not have the disposable income to go out to eat. I learned how to shop for economical, healthy foods. The foods that I use to cook quick, simple meals and the foods I have leftover in the fridge, combined with what is in the cabinets to make healthy meals.   I am no Giada, but I am passionate about cooking and eating.

I love to cook with local foods while I am on vacation. Pictured in today’s blog is a meal I made recently in Hawaii. It includes grilled Ono, a leafy green salad with macadamia nuts and avocado, passion fruit and tangerine from a local organic farm-yum!