I was stewing all day.....

I went right to work this morning....literally. As soon as I got into the office I chopped up three sweet potatoes and one regular white potato. I tossed these into my rice cooker with some carrot and ginger soup (one of those organic box soups). Then poured in 1/3 a cup of hot water just to loosen it up a little.

I brought this into the back room and clicked the pot to "cooking". When I got back to my desk I set my timer for 25 minutes. As soon as the timer went off I went to the back room and stirred this absolutely aromatic mixture of potatoes and vegetables! I backed the rice cooker of to "Keep Warm" and let it sit for about three hours. At noon time, Matt L., Ry Chi and me headed to the back room for what truly was a pleasurable eating experience. The smell was so wonderful that it attracted three people into the the back room to see what was cooking.

Our Positive Eating Clubhouse is officially compromised. It's okay...the humorous company was enjoyable for a change! I don't know what I will do if they all start wanting me too cook for them!
stay positive,

matthew

Marshall Law in effect!!!

Hi All,

I came up with this great post idea and was going to publish it today! See, every Monday I go to Whole Foods and shop for the week's office meals. I thought it would be fun to share the purchases for the week and then you could watch each and everyone one of these items unfold into tasty office meals.

Here is what went down.....

Ry Chi and I hopped in his car and headed over to the store. Once we crossed the city line something strange occurred. The streetlights were not operating. Traffic was going in whatever direction it felt like. We were convinced that the "Great ReOrg"* may finally be taking place. Whole Foods was closed and people were scampering out with bags of groceries. The bakery manager stood like a bouncer at the door making sure no one entered.

The little devil on my shoulder thought of making a mad dash for as many free groceries as possible....then I thought the better of it and looked and turned to exit. At that moment very angelic looking woman told us to head to the next town over...there was safety there. I checked to see if she was real or just sitting over on my other shoulder....we were all set there thank God!!

We took the backroads and arrived in one piece. Fortunately everything was going fine and we got some soup and a sandwich at a positive eatery nearby.

Next week things will be back to normal and I will post about my fantastic food shopping strategies!

stay positive,

matthew

*for explanation of what I call the "Great ReOrg" please review any and all theories about the year 2012. ; )

Father and son bonding in the kitchen....

Here is a picture of my Father (Raymond) and I cooking together. Cooking is a lot more fun and easier when you do it with other people. My father is preparing a chicken caciatorre and I am making Gingered Broccoli with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds. Raymond is very methodical about his cooking. Ever since I was very young he carefully cut us fruit and made a colorful salad every night. He really is a positive guy and lets his attitude permeate through his food. Although this is quite obvious from the photo....I will also mention he is quite a sharp dresser.

Here is the recipe for Gingered Broccoli with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds.

You will need........

A couple heads of Broccoli

1/2 cup of toasted pumpkin seeds

5 inches of fresh ginger

3 cloves of garlic

1 Tablespoon olive oil

3 Tablespoons Tamari or Soy Sauce

- Pull the broccoli off the stem (this is an easy job to have other people do)

- Grate Ginger (this is not as easy...so I suggest have other people do this as well)

- Mince Garlic

- Steam or quickly boil broccoli

- pour olive oil into a hot skillet

- put garlic and ginger into the hot skillet

- after a minute add broccoli and tamari sauce and swish it around (I would type the word "saute" but I can't find the little line that goes next to the "e" on my keyboard right now)

- Toss in pumpkin seeds and reduce heat.

- cover and serve in 3-5 minutes

stay positive,

matthew

Breakthrough in Pizza crust!!!

Tonight Caitlyn made the absolute best pizza crust I've ever had in my life. This was accomplished by blending rolled oats in the blender and adding them to whole wheat flour. Wowy....it was so good! I am trying to come up with adjectives and all I can say is it was the Perfect Pizza Crust. After it is blended it looks something like this

Here is Caitlyn's recipe for the perfect pizza crust!

2 1/2 cups of blended oats

1 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat Flour

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

1/2 Tablespoon of Maple Syrup

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 (or 1 package) Tablespoons of Yeast

1 Cup Warm Water

Place these ingredients in a bowl in the order we wrote them. The warm water activates the yeast so get to kneading the dough right away. If the dough is no longer sticking to your hands but is till moist the texture is just right. Once it forms a nice ball of dough put a towel over the bowl and put in on top of your preheated oven. When we discover the perfect pizza sauce recipe will let you know right away. There is no such things as secret ingredients or hidden family recipes at positive eating. There is only one additive we put in all our food and that is a few heaping Tablespoons of Vitamin L.

you feel me right?

matthew

Lemon Oil to the Rescue!

This blog post was to be about my experience with trying to bring some positive food to a Super Bowl party. Then disaster struck. Just as the hopes and dreams of the New England Patriots were dashed...my dream of transporting Toasted Pecan Native American soup came literally crashing down.

A substantial amount of soup remained in the crock pot...probably because people found the soup "weird"! I found it delicious and fortunately ladled myself out several servings before going to the party.

Just as I am new to the idea of "cooking"...I am also new to the idea of "cleaning". In a panic I got home and ran for the hose. I sprayed the interior of my car with water creating a mini flood in the back seat. I then sopped up all the remaining water with several beach towels.

Now my car smells like Toasted Pecan Native American Soup.....hmmm.

I called up my good friend Rachel who is an essential oils provider and asked her how to rid myself of this "gravy like" smell. This was our conversation.

Rachel: What did you do to clean it up?

me: I sprayed the back of my car with a garden hose.

Rachel: (laughing)....you really are a funny guy, Matt, well you might want to roll down your windows and air your car out.

me: got it....what about the smell

Rachel: Citrus oils are very effective at cutting through odors. All you need to do is sprinkle some lemon oil over the carpet and cloth seats, rub it in with a scrub brush and let it dry.

me: I will do absolutely everything you said

Rachel: Good....just make sure you credit me in your blog when you write about this.

me: you read my blog.

Rachel: Matt.....Oprah reads your blog!

me: Oh yeah....forgot thanks!

If you would like to learn more about essential oils and lots of other cool natural stuff....please visit Rachel's site at

http://www.naturalzest.com/

she is wicked cool!

Stay Positive,

matthew

PS: If you ever want to make Toasted Pecan Native American Soup here is the recipe

2 1/2 cups pecans

2 Tbs. Olive Oil

1 large Onion

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 Tbs Chili Powder

2 cloves garlic (minced)

3 cups vegetable broth

4 sprigs of fresh Thyme

1 bay leaf

1 cup soy or cow milk

1/2 cup shredded carrots

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (Faranheit...if you had an oven that went to 300 celsius though that would be cool). spread pecans on baking sheet in place in oven for 7-10 mins. Chop them up after they cool down.
2. Heat oil in large sauce pan and add chopped onion. Saute for five minutes then 2 cups pecans. Adsdd maple syrup, chili powder, garlic. Then add broth and 3 cups of water with thyme and bay leaf. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer. Go for a walk or do something positive for a couple hours.
3. When you return place soup in blender in batches and blend until smooth. Place in Crock Pot and add remaining pecans and shredded carrots.

enjoy in your home if possible....saves the trickiness of transporting that way :)

A New "Spin" on things

Who wants to eat the same thing two days in a row. I never do. I love to mix it up, mash it up and blend when it comes to my meals! Every time I noticed that every time I make pizza sauce there is a ton of tomato juice leftover. Today I decided to do something about it. This morning I sprinkled some rosemary and salt into the juice. I also put 1/4 cup of milk in as well because one time I saw on a can of tomato juice from the store that they added milk.....so I did too. I grabbed a can of tomato paste and headed into work.
After blending the tomato juice (with added milk, rosemary and salt) and the paste I headed to the back conference room and found an outlet. I plugged in my rice cooker with the soup inside and let it simmer all morning. After three hours of simmering the entire room was filled with the wonderful aroma of tomato and rosemary.
I enjoyed this soup with come multi-grain bread and crunchy peanut butter....because a man (or woman) cannot live on soup alone.....well actually I think I could!


Stay Positive,

matthew

Fruit Pizza

Thursday night is pizza night here at Positive Eating! I always make two pizzas...one standard Mozzarella and tomato with homemade everything and one off the wall one. This week I ventured to make a fruit pizza.

I made the sauce similar to how I make the tomato sauce. I juiced pineapple, a mango and some cilantro. I seasoned this with Lime Pepper and a little salt. I squeezed in some lime juice to give it that extra citrus taste. Then I blended a 3/4 a cup of the juice with the remaining pulp.
After spreading the fruit sauce over the homemade dough....I sprinkled mozzarella and goat cheese on top, crossed my fingers and put it in the oven.

This was the finished product. The positive eaters of this pizza said the taste hit you in three stages. First the sweet fruit taste....then a weird taste they could not pinpoint....this was followed by the cilantro taste. Whether this was good or not is open to debate. It certainly was an adventure. Feel free to offer any suggestions.

Stay positive,

matthew

The wonderful land of Oz....Dr. Oz that is

Who is the man behind the curtain! (or next to the gross picture)

It is Dr. Mehmet Oz. The most famous physician in America! He is found that there is no place like home - "home" meaning the Oprah show. Dr. Oz is the author of several books You On A Diet, You the Owner's Manual, You the Patient. I had the great pleasure of seeing Dr. Oz speak in November an IIN class weekend. He reminded me of Oprah. He came out on stage and just presented fascinating information until they literally had to pull him off stage. His energy and enthusiasm were unmatched and he came from a place of sincerity and passion.

He told us about how there are more "seratonin receptors" in your gut then in your brain. This means that the nerves in your digestive areas respond to pleasure signals stronger than anywhere else in your body! Trying to "think" yourself into feeling better is not nearly as effective as eating yourself into feeling better. This is why we reach for that Ben and Jerry's when our positivity meter is barely getting off the ground. Eating in a positive manner and nourishing yourself with food that makes you feel good is what I am all about! Here was the nation's most famous doctor telling 1200 people that what we eat has a greater potential to make us feel good about ourselves than anything we can think about! I was in ecstasy!

Mehmet, when you read this, please grant me the liberty to tell all the readers of this blog you fully endorse all the above statements. It will be good for them to hear since you are a M.D. and I am just a guy who just likes to be positive. (and if I got any of the scientific stuff slightly askew please post a reply and set me straight....you can post under "anonymous".....oh, and let Oprah know that I will give her a call I've just been so busy working, blogging and making positive meals that January just slipped away)

stay positive,

matthew

more on Dr. Oz

http://www.oprah.com/health/oz/health_oz_main.jhtml

Sweet Potato Pizza Pie

I am starting to look like a crazed fan of the sweet potato. Tonight, this maniacal obsession was solidified when I made a sweet potato pizza pie. I guess pizza in Italian means pie so I am saying pie twice. Sorry to my Italian readers for the redundancy.

I also made a traditional pizza as I do every Thursday. This was the best dough Caitlyn's made. It really tasted like a cookie! She worked very hard at kneading it and got frustrated several times (oat bran is not the easiest to work with). I kept her positive though....

The sweet potato pizza was made by steaming sweet potatoes and blending them with leftover tomato juice from the other pizza's sauce. I used only goat cheese on this pizza and sprinkled black currants to give it a tart sensation in your mouth. This was quite possibly one of the greatest culinary adventures I ever went on. We remained truly positive and we have nice satisfied stomachs because of it.

Thanks for reading my blog.....have the most positive day possible!

matthew

Cashew and Coconut Hummus

The requests are filing in! Yesterday one of my loyal readers emailed me about doing a blog post on homemade hummus. I decided to take a revolutionary approach to this well known spread. Mainly because I still had an extra can of Coconut milk at work and I had some leftover cashews from another recipe I whipped up just the other day.


I soaked the cashews over night in this bowl and brought them into work today. Soaking makes the cashews extra soft and it is actually easier to digest when you do this.


I put about 1/3 cup of water in the blender then dumped in the cashews. After that came the can of coconut milk. After the coconut milk settled into the blender I hit "Puree" and the picture below that is probably too dark to make out is the result. This made for a sweet and light textured spread. It kind of reminded me of a whipped butter. This might be a great way for vegans to make a "butter like" spread. If you are vegan and you try it let me know.


I probably should add some spices but wasn't quite sure what to add? Please feel free to send me your suggestions.

Stay positive,

matthew