Just Stop and Think

Yesterday, my husband picked our son up from school. They had an hour to kill before a doctor's appointment and of course, my son was hungry. So they decided to go to Fazoli's for some bread sticks. At the counter my son ordered a dozen bread sticks and proceeded to eat 9 of them. Fazoli's bread sticks are warm, tasty, white bread sticks coated just enough with a buttery, garlic spread. Delicious. But neither one stopped to think whether eating 9 bread sticks or even two was a good choice for a snack. According to a Fazoli's website, each bread stick has 150 calories and 7 grams of fat. Therefore my son consumed 1350 calories and 63 grams of fat in a snack. Since my son needs about 2600 calories a day, he got more than half the calories and more than a healthy daily portion of fat in one snack!

Now I'm not too concerned about my son's splurge yesterday but I wanted to make a point here. Far too many people make just such poor choices everyday and never think about it. Then they can't imagine why they are seriously overweight and suffering from health problems. Parents also aren't teaching their children about good nutrition and making healthy choices most of the time. I know many people think I'm obsessed or weird, but good health is too precious a thing to waste. Today I'm asking you to learn to stop and think before you eat. You'll be glad you did.

My husband and children made a lovely Mother's Day dinner for me on Sunday - grilled salmon with rosemary, fresh green salad with lots of veggies and roasted fingerling potatoes. (There was also a wonderful, sinful fruit tart. See, we aren't perfect.) We found a great way to roast potatoes that I want to share because it's so easy and the results were so good.

Roasted Potatoes
2 lbs. fingerling or new potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled
2 or 3 Tbsp. water
1 Tbsp. kosher salt
Place the potatoes in a cast iron skillet large enough for a single layer. Sprinkle with water and salt. Place skillet on stove top and cover tightly with a lid. Cook on low heat for 50 to 60 minutes. Shake the pan once in a while but do not lift lid. Toss with butter when done. We didn't have a lid for our iron skillet so we covered our skillet with heavy duty foil. Because the pan was so crowded the potatoes couldn't move when shaken, I also took the cover off and turned the potatoes once so they wouldn't burn. They were soft on the inside and somewhat crunchy on the outside, perfectly done. We'll be roasting all our potatoes this way from now on. A bit of rosemary would have been great too.

My next post will be Friday as I have to be out of town Thursday. In the meantime, start examining your eating choices.