I am leading a 14 Day Healthy Food Challenge for 100+ Team Members at my work. The Challenge: Eat more of the good stuff including beans, dark leafy greens, colorful veggies, fruit, whole grains, & smaller/leaner ounces of animal protein. The Perk: In this challenge it’s all about focusing on the positive. Team Members can keep their daily diet as is and simply add the good stuff throughout the day. For 14 days they are tracking what they add and uploading it to a site where the highest totals will be entered to win prizes.

Yesterday I got home after a run along the lake and felt recharged. I stepped right into the kitchen and made a few dishes for the week + dinner in about an hour. My strategy involves batch cooking whole grains & beans, roasting or sautéing some veggies, getting soup going and improvising along the way. It’s not about making the best dish in the world–it’s about balancing… using what I have at home, prepping a variety of plant-food, getting the good stuff in, and having fun.

Chosen ingredients:

• 1/2 cup red lentils
• 1/2 cup mixed grains (quinoa& buckwheat)
• 5 organic red potatoes
• Green cabbage, 1 lb mushrooms, 1 bunch asparagus
• 1 bunch collard greens

Quartered potatoes boiling to the left and lentils+grains to the right.

Chopped veggies to the left (seasoned with: jalapeño juice, honey, garlic, white pepper, pickled ginger, Szechuan seasonings, and miso.) Sautéed on Medium-low heat for 5 minutes. Stirred, covered & set aside.

Soup to the right (seasoned with: garlic, veggie bouillon, miso, & sriracha.) Includes: cabbage, mushrooms, tomatoes & collards. Eat as is or add brown rice noodles, other veggies, other spices.

Veggie Mix & grains/bean combo ready to go in the fridge. Maybe the veggies will be a base to a Thai pizza and the beans/grains will become the base to veggie burgers? Maybe we’ll eat them as is?

Dinner to the left. Veggie Bowl Medley: Potatoes with nutritional yeast, grains/beans, veggie mix with extra juice added, & topped with chopped apple cider vinegar & sea salt roasted cashews!

Lunch for the next day to the right: cabbage leaves for wraps, potatoes with nutritional yeast & jalapeño juice, grains/beans, olives, red bell peppers and cashews.

All delicious, all nutritious and all in 1 hour. One of my favorite things is to teach people how to do this. It just takes a little planning, time and encouragement. Hopefully I can help some co-workers find their cooking groove.

Smiles.