5 Lemons Healthy Gourmet Blog
Latest info, recipes, tools & gadgets to create a healthy diet
Free “Cooking By Feel Demo”
May 17th
Herbs and spices are what make an average meal extraordinary.
Just want to give you a heads up. I’m going to be offering a free demonstration of my “Cooking by Feel” method of food preparation on June 12th, from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. It will be held at The Creative Center in Greensboro, NC. You can see the calendar listing. I discovered I have a knack for being able to just grab things out of the fridge, willy-nilly, and end up preparing a delicious dish or meal. My goal, through the demonstration and classes, is to get people eating more freshly More >
A Plug For Farmer’s Markets
May 10th
Buy locally grown food is tastier and fresher.
My schedule has been such that I haven’t been able to shop at local farmer’s markets for quite some time. Recently I decided I needed to change that schedule and get back to supporting local food production.
Just today, after I’d made that decision, my husband showed me a documentary that was really interesting, but also a little disturbing. In the PBS series “America Revealed” near the beginning of episode one – Food Machine – Yul Kwon visits the Shasta dam in northern California. He says that because of this one dam California is able More >
When Health Food Isn’t Healthy
May 3rd
How can something be a health food if seven ingredients are sugar?
I have to say I’m really tired of people trying to make their foods look healthy, when it’s really not. I’m not going to name names right now, because it is an industry-wide problem, and is especially bad when it’s foods that are being sold at natural and health food stores.
I’m sitting here looking at the ingredients in a snack bar that is supposed to be a healthier way to stave off hunger until your next meal. These are the unhealthy ingredients – brown sugar, invert sugar, oligofructose, vegetable More >
Barbecue Tofu Over Brown Rice
Apr 26th
It’s Celebration Time!
Tonight I’m having a celebration for the people who have been a part of my healthy lifstyle pilot program. All four of them made it to the end, with varying degrees of “success.” So, we’ll do a final weigh in and take measurements and then just have a nice healthy potluck together.
I’m fixing one of my favorites tonight Barbecue Tofu Over Brown Rice. I only have approximate measurements, so I’ve listed them in the order of the amount I put in. What I did was to look at a regular barbecue sauce and see what the ingredients were. More >
Yummo-schmumo!
Apr 20th
Herbs taste good and make excellent photo subjects. Dill with morning dew drops.
Spring DelightsConfused on how to say that, well I had to guess at how to spell it! It’s an expression I use all the time when I taste something delicious, and yesterday was one of those days. I was cleaning out all the winter weeds from the herb garden. In the process I had to dig up a few volunteers that had come up in the middle of other herbs, and managed to break a stem off the oregano.
While preparing a salad for lunch I pulled out all More >
Know What You’re Eating
Apr 14th
Eating with awareness has a new meaning. You need to know if there are toxins lurking in your food.
I think most of you saw the write up about Coke and Pepsi having to change their formula to stop using a carmel color that was contaminated with a known carcinogen. How many other foods are compromised in some way? Many more than we would like to acknowledge.
I’ve talked some about GMOs and how if you eat anything with non-organic corn, soy, canola, or cottonseed oil you’re probably eating GMO food. Now they’ve started with sugar beets!
We all got a good scare More >
Entertaining With Some Cupcakes
Apr 3rd
The office would love these!
Guest post written by April Gibbs
I’ve never been turned away at a party for bringing cupcakes along. See, I’m really into baking cupcakes and I come up with all kinds of awesome varieties for baking them. I’m always looking for the next big great recipe too!
I’m not quite sure what got me on my cupcake baking kick a few years back, but I’m glad that I did because I’ve never looked back and my coworkers love it when I bring them with me to work. One thing I want though is an apron to wear while More >
Chunky Salad
Mar 30th
I was looking through all my old posts and was shocked that I had never shared one of my favorite salads! So, here’s the recipe for a delicious, quick salad. This is especially great during the summer when your lettuce has bolted.
Chunky SaladServings: 2-? (the more you cut up the more you feed)
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:- Tomatoes
- Snow Peas
- Jicama
- Avocado
- Cumin seeds
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Olive oil
- Celtic Salt (Opt)
Directions: Chop up some of each vegetable and put in a serving bowl. Sprinkle cumin seeds, balsamic vinegar and Celtic salt over it. Drizzle a little olive oil on and toss lightly.
Can be served as is or put a rounded heap More >
Blanched versus Un-blanched
Mar 27th
Harvest Abundance
Last spring I had a bumper crop of snow peas. So many we couldn’t possibly eat them all. I decided to try freezing some of them to see how they did. I’d always read that you needed to blanch vegetables before freezing them.
Blanching is not a lengthy process, but I felt that if I could just clean them up from the garden, allow them to dry, and then freeze them without any processing it would help preserve even more nutrients.
Of course I’m not trying to freeze to keep something for eternity either. I had preserved them to use in More >
When Your Gourmet Muse Goes On Vacation
Mar 23rd
It happens to everyone. You’re on a roll. Everything you cook is better than the last. You come up with a new culinary invention every day. Then one day you walk into the kitchen and the inspiration is gone. Your muse has gone on vacation.
Suddenly frozen dinners look good, just because they’re easy. But gourmet they’re not. When you are in culinary “hell” restaurants like Portland, Oregon Italian restaurant, Pastini, are there to save the day.
With authentic, yet affordable Italian food, those desert (not dessert) days of lackluster dishes can come to an end. Lucky for you they have locations More >