Experience Nutrition

Category: Get Set for Healthy Eating Success

  • A New View of Healthy Eating: Daily Healthy Recipes by Melanie Albert: Smoothie Mise en Place

    by Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, speaker, Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

    As I sit here late tonight with the beautiful full moon above my home in Phoenix, with a beautiful cloud ring around it, I really want to be outside looking forward to the Super Blue Blood Moon. Thus, tonight’s blog will be very short.

    This morning while making my Superfood Smoothie, I realized that I actually almost always set up my “mise en place” when I cook, prepare, and plate food. Even with today’s smoothie, I mindfully put my ingredients into place before “plating” (if you want to call it plating) my smoothie.

    My Smoothie Mise en Place

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    Today’s Superfood Smoothie

    Excerpt from “A New View of Healthy Eating”

    Mise en Place: Be Organized When You Cook

    Mise en Place (French pronunciation: [mi zɑ̃ ˈplas]) is a French phrase that means “putting in place,” as in “setting up.”

    Mise en Place is used in the kitchen to “set up” all the ingredients needed to prepare a dish before we start cooking. The purpose is to be organized when we cook, with everything ready so that it’s easier to cook. Mise en Place is a useful cooking technique to incorporate when you are cooking in your kitchen for both complex and simple recipes.

    With the Mise en Place concept, before we start cooking we get all the ingredients ready, sliced, diced, measured, and organized. To be super organized, we can even set up our ingredients in order of use in the cooking process, which is especially beneficial when cooking a fast-paced meal like a stir-fry or a recipe with a lot of ingredients.

    4 Reasons to Love Mise en Place 

    1. Be prepared and calm. You will not be scrambling around your kitchen during the middle of the cooking process, looking for that one ingredient you really need. Also, you will be so organized that you won’t need to rush out to purchase a missing ingredient.
    2. Cook when cooking. You will not need to quickly chop food you might have forgotten about right in the middle of the cooking process. You will mindfully enjoy cooking your meal.
    3. Save time. As an example, if you are mincing onions or garlic for several dishes, you can mince them at the same time while setting up your Mise en Place.
    4. Cook mindfully and clutter-free. Cooking is much more enjoyable in a neat, clutter-free environment. Your cooking process will be mindful and beautiful when you cook in an organized fashion.

    ACTION: I invite you to use the Mise en Place process when you cook to bring more mindfulness, organization, and calm to your cooking. Would love to see your Mise en Place photos on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/NewViewHealthyEating

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  • A New View of Healthy Eating: Find the Right Chef’s Knife for You

    By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

    Today we were shooting some video segments and one of the segments was about Getting your Kitchen Ready for Success. For success in the kitchen, our kitchen tools, refrigerator , and pantry must be ready to cook.  In my view, the number one most important kitchen tool is a Chef’s knife. While I also use a 4” paring knife, serrated tomato knife, and a large 8” Chef knife, my everyday knife is a 6” heavy steel German-made knife. It fits nicely in my hand, feels balanced, and is always sharp.

    Learn more about knives and some of the other basic tools to successfully cook whole foods in this excerpt from A New View of Healthy Eating.

    Knife. A knife that is “right for you” is the number-one most valuable kitchen tool. The key aspects of a knife are: fits comfortably in your hand, feels balanced, and is sharp. For me, a basic Chef’s knife, 6-inch or 8-inch, can be used for virtually all cutting in the kitchen. Before you purchase a knife, visit a kitchen store and experiment by holding and cutting with different knives to determine which works best for you.

    Some people prefer stainless steel, relatively heavy German knives. Others prefer lighter, thin Japanese knives, while still others prefer lightweight, colored ceramic knives. The most important thing is to find a knife that feels comfortable in your hand and to know that the investment is worth it, as each of us tends to use our favorite knife every day, for years and even decades.

    “When traveling for a week or more, I take my favorite Chef knife with me, as it is so much nicer to cook with ‘my’ knife that fits ‘just right’ in my hand; it cuts food smoothly.”

    Bamboo Cutting Board. Cutting boards are essential in the kitchen to make cutting easier with a flat surface, protect your kitchen counters, and keep knives sharp. My favorite cutting boards are made of bamboo, as they are clean, sustainable, and naturally anti-bacterial and anti-microbial. Cutting boards last decades, so finding the right cutting board to invest in is important. A key to purchasing a cutting board is to be sure that it is large enough that your entire knife (blade and handle) stays within the board when you chop.

    Wooden Spoons. A few wooden spoons are staples in the kitchen and are used to move food around in a sauté pan or to stir food in a pot. Personally, I prefer bamboo with a flat edge. Bamboo, a grass, grows at a fast rate, so it is eco-friendly and biodegradable. It’s strong and durable, and will not scratch cookware.

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    I’ll continue to share the key tools to get your kitchen ready for success. Come on over to our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/NewViewHealthyEating and share photos of your favorite kitchen tools.