Keeping a Healthy Pantry
Keeping an organized and stocked pantry will save time, money and make menu planning easier but its important to take care of your pantry! Check out our top tips below for keeping a safe and healthy pantry and from Chelsey in our short video!
- Use the first in/first out method – After grocery shopping if you find that you purchased an item you already had, place it behind the item in your pantry. This helps you use items that are closer to their expiration date, sooner.
- Keep items in their original packaging – original packaging has lots important information such as name, expiration date, nutritional information, serving size and instructions!
- Reseal your items before returning to the pantry.
- Keep your food items at least 6 inches above ground level – this helps keep food away from potential contamination.
- Store chemicals and cleaning items away from your foods. Separate cabinets or locations is ideal.
- Shop your pantry first before heading to the grocery store!
Are you measuring ingredients correctly?
Yay it’s March! There are so many things to look forward to this month. For example, the official start of spring (March 20), which is also the international day of happiness. Daylight savings time is coming on Monday (we will now have more time to exercise outdoors.) Also, we can’t forget about spring break.
March is also National Nutrition Month. 
One purpose of National Nutrition Month is to encourage people to be mindful of what foods they are consuming. Think about this for a minute. Do we take the time to think about foods we eat as energy for our body? Or, do we just eat food because we are in a hurry? This month start working on a “healthy” relationship with food and be mindful of what you are putting in your body.
With all that said, cooking meals is one of the first steps in developing a healthy relationship with food. When you cook your own meals, it allows you to control the ingredients in the recipe, which can reduce the fat, calories and sodium. Before we dive right in with all of our cooking adventures, let’s talk about some basic skills. Measuring ingredients correctly is important when it comes to preparing recipes.Watch this short video on how to measure ingredients.
http://youtu.be/7898nvtEgEQ
Measuring ingredients correctly gives you a desirable outcome and it can reduce calories in recipes. For example, 1 teaspoon of oil has around 45 calories and 5 grams of fat. If we are mindlessly pouring oil while sautéing veggies, we can rack up a lot of added calories and fat. Same goes for salt. It is easy to over season with salt, so make sure to break out those measuring 
spoons. Too much sodium in the diet can affect blood pressure.
Enjoy and keep practicing those measuring skills! Have a great dinner tonight!
Grilling
Grilling can be a fun hobby and a delicious way to prepare food! We have tons of recipes as well as tips and tricks to make the most of your grilling time.
Rodger and Julie go over the basics in this video:
Rubs & Marinades
Rubs and marinades are a great way to add flavor to your dishes. Rodger and Julie show us some rub and marinade basics in the video below:
Below is a list of marinades and rubs to help you with your dinner tonight!
