Wellness Kitchen. - The Wellness Kitchen: fresh flavorful recipes for a healthier you

Avon, Massachusetts

Soups

Breads

Beef

Fish and Seafood

Poultry

Tofu

As the Director of Nutrition for California Health & Longevity Institute and creator of its Wellness Kitchen, I am always surprised that most people believe it is difficult and time-consuming to eat healthily and live well. I hope the time spent delving into this book convinces you that making a few easy changes in the kitchen for optimal health and wellness can be just as quick as buying lower-quality foods, and that the dishes you make can still be delicious! My objective is to make you healthy with as little work as possible, and to have you blissfully enjoying every tantalizing bite of my healthy, nutritious food. All it takes is a dash of thought, a touch of organization, a smattering of basic skills, and, of course, fresh ingredients.

All of us at California Health & Longevity Institutes Wellness Kitchen love good food and good health. Its not just a nine-to-five occupation; its our lives. When developing recipes for the Wellness Kitchen, taste is the first priority, but we use our professional training to tweak just about any part of a dish to make it healthy. I truly hope that this book will prove to you and your family that healthy food can be great-tasting food, too! The great benefit, of course, will be more energy, a slimmer body, and peace of mind knowing that you are engaging in a way of eating that promotes health and longevity.

If youre a novice cook, youll find step-by-step instructions that are not intimidating or difficult. It makes our day when a guest who clearly is a novice smiles broadly and states, I can do this! I have designed all of the recipes with the simplest instructions possible and using basic cooking techniques. If youre a seasoned cook who has spent your fair share of hours in the kitchen, this book will add to your skill repertoire and suggest ways to revise older, unhealthier recipes with newer, healthier cooking techniques. Its often an Ah-ha! moment in the Wellness Kitchen when experienced cooks find out they can saut with much less oil than they ever thought!

Over my career, I have spent much of my time in the kitchen devising ways to simplify the process of delivering a healthy, delicious meal. I know what it means to have little time; I have been a working mom. Even though I consider myself a foodie, Ive never had much patience for tedious kitchen tasks. Between work, driving my son to soccer practice, and finding time to hit the hiking trail, I always looked for ways to be more efficient and timely. In my opinion and experience, fast food can be real food, and healthy, if you know how to do it. Watch for the tips given throughout the bookthey will help broaden your skills in food preparation and nutrition. These tips will help you plan ahead, work faster, and cut down the amount of time you spend in the kitchen. (For those who need help with specific medical concerns, such as heart disease, please see the General Nutrition Guidelines chapter in of the book for more specific, in-depth information on eating for health and specific disease prevention.)

Knowledge is power, but the power of practice is much more important. You must cook great food over and over again, until it becomes second nature, until it becomes habit. Practice various recipes until you find them easy and then move on to others. Perform these new cooking skills until they come naturally, even if it means that you start out with something as simple as a natural peanut butter and banana sandwich on whole-grain bread versus opting for processed food. Make a habit of eating new foods that are not processed, such as whole-grain only carbohydrates, natural peanut butter with no added sugars, fish, and fresh vegetables. Believe it or not, you can develop a taste for these ingredients, and studies tell us that you can change your food preferences if you take the time to work at it. I cannot believe how many men come into the Wellness Kitchen adamantly opposed to consuming any vegetables, only to ask for seconds of the cauliflower soup with truffle oil. You can change your attitude about what you eat, and the way you eat it, one meal at a time. You can master this!

I hope you enjoy my seasonal selections as well. I think that youll find the Cedar-Grilled Salmon with Fresh Herbs () outright addictiveand that once youve tasted any of our silky, pured soups, youll be craving vegetables in a way you never thought you could. The best outcome would be that you eat healthily because it tastes so good and its easy to do. And better yet, its guilt-free!

Bon apptitand to your health,

Paulette

The Wellness Kitchen is a real place, an open, light-filled teaching kitchen and dining room that, as part of California Health & Longevity Institute, is set in the lush gardens of the Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village in Los Angeles. There, as small groups of people gather in classes to cook, chat, and enjoy the meals they have prepared, I share what is, to most of them, an entirely new way to approach food and health.

By the end of their visit, participants have created and tasted a number of dishes, and they have learned how to prepare meals that are truly healthy and downright delicious. I dont call what I do cooking classesthey are more like culinary experiences where people get a chance to rediscover the pleasures of fresh ingredients, simple recipes, and glorious tastes. And yet when this approach to cooking and eating is applied to everyday life, the results have proven to be transformative.

Over the course of my thirty-two-year career as a registered dietitian, I have created healthy recipes and easy meal plans that have helped thousands of people regain their health and lose literally hundreds of pounds, one simple, scrumptious dish at a time. If you have watched past seasons of ABCs Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition, you have seen me teach the shows participants, all of whom are at least 100 pounds overweight, how to cook and eat from the Wellness Kitchen.

It has been tremendously rewarding to see these folks regain normal lives after spending years trapped by diet-related illnesses, massive weight, and unhealthy lifestyles. Their radical transformation is based on the same insights, techniques, and recipes that I share with all of our guests at the Wellness Kitchenand now with you, in this book.

Some take my classes to learn how to make healthy dishes that their families will enjoy. Others come to gain new insights to help them prevent, manage, or reverse chronic and debilitating diseases, including heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer. Many of them come simply because they want to make better food and have more fun in the kitchen.

A few of my students are highly experienced cooks; many barely know how to handle a knife. But luckily, nothing is complicated at the Wellness Kitchen. There are no difficult recipes, no strict regimens, no forbidden food groups. What we do have is a plan that works. If you want to cook and eat for genuine pleasure, maximum health, and optimal body weight, you can learn to do so at the Wellness Kitchen.