Gotta Eat, Can't Cook

February 12th, 2021

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Frigid Weather Remedy: Instant Cereal from Simple to Exciting!

The weather guess for Valentine’s weekend and into next week is hardly heart warming.

Though we can’t change the cold outside, we sure can make the most of what we eat to keep us warm inside and do it quickly, easily – and flavorfully.

Last post showed how to make instant hot cereal from your favorite cold cereal.

For added flavor, just click this link or the picture below for picture book directions that show how to ramp up the flavor and take that instant hot cereal from simple to exciting.

Of course, the ingredients you see in the above recipe are only suggestions. As always, make any substitutions to suit your taste.

Happy Valentine’s Day weekend!

February 7th, 2021

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Turning Your Favorite Cold Cereal into Instant Hot Cereal

Yep! Winter’s still full-on.

After the snow. Hickory, NC, Feb. 7, 7:30 AM

Want some “get it done now” inspiration to pry yourself out of a warm bed? Here’s a very quick & easy way to turn your favorite cold cereal into what might become your new favorite hot cereal.

All you need is your favorite cold cereal, milk (or milk alternative) and a microwave oven (the banana, Greek yogurt and jam are some of my favorite add-ons – flavor rules!).

Just click this link or any picture on this page for step-by-step picture book directions.

Next post: How to Take Instant Hot Cereal From Simple to Exciting!

February 4th, 2021

Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Drinks, Drinks (no alcohol), Fitness Food, How To & Tips

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Warm Antidote to Bitter Cold: Ginger Mint Tea with Picture Book Directions

Man, it’s been and is brutally cold across much of the US. So, how ’bout we turn this…

…into this…

…all in a cup. Ginger mint tea is something I make and drink everyday – warm, fully flavorful and all anti-inflammatory.

Just click this link or any picture above for Ginger Mint Tea picture book directions. Then, enjoy – and stay warm!

January 30th, 2021

Blog, Education, Mind Food

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Atomic Habits: Mind & Behavior Food

No doubt: good habits are hard to make, bad habits are hard to break.

But, what if you had help that really worked?

A good friend, Jay, recently recommended Atomic Habits, “An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones”, by James Clear, which I just finished reading – and highly recommend to you for its clarity, directness and practical application.

I’ll paraphrase the most book’s most potent line: “Habits are caused by the predictions that precede them.” For a Bruce-specific example, if I always put my wallet and keys on the same table near my door, I will always predict where they will be when I need them.

The four keys to developing good habits: 1. Make them obvious, 2. Make them easy, 3. Make them attractive, 4. Make them satisfying.

How and why to do that? You’ve gotta’ read the book! I did, and it has made a significant difference in my daily life – but more about that later – as long as I stick to my freshly renewed habit of writing daily and posting twice weekly.

November 21st, 2020

Blog, Thanksgiving Dinner, Video & Picture Ebooks

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Fresh Cranberry Sauce and Picture Book Thanksgiving Help

Last post talked about self-empowerment and how this site can help you put together life-promoting meals, even if you’ve never cooked before, with easy-to-follow step-by-step picture book recipes.

I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving is my favorite holidays because all that is expected is having a great tasting meal with family and friends. Unfortunately, some of the “greatness” of Thanksgiving might be diminished this year due to Covid-19 restrictions. My recommendation: accentuate the positive. Enjoy Thanksgiving with those closest to you and make it as richly flavorful as you can.

One of the easiest full-on traditional Thanksgiving flavors to nail is fresh cranberry sauce. Homemade fresh cranberry sauce, with its rich sweet and sour flavor and mouth pleasing snap-pop, tastes much better than canned cranberry sauce and is literally just as easy to make as boiled water. Fresh cranberry sauce can also be made well in advance and keeps fresh for weeks in the refrigerator.

Here’s all you need to make fresh cranberry sauce. Note: you’ll see a carton of orange juice in the picture below. Cranberry sauce recipes usually call for water. Instead of water, I like using fruit juice – orange juice as shown or apple or any other juice – for added flavor.

Click any picture above for an easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipe. For more stress-free Thanksgiving dinner help, click this link to the Gotta’ Eat, Can’t Cook “Thanksgiving Help” page.

August 16th, 2020

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Change We Can Manage: Food, Body, Mind Plus Fresh 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing

I don’t think you’ll find a person on the planet who would agree that our current state of affairs points to a positive future in any sense. Instead, I’ve heard more people than I can count say they hope the extreme nature of what we experience daily – across the board – will finally force positive change.

Hope, no matter how passionately felt and expressed, won’t do it. Action is the only way forward. And that action, at it’s most basic yet most powerful level, starts with what we eat, moving our bodies and how we think. Food, body, mind: three simple words that make a world of difference to both our personal quality of life and to the world as a whole.

For now, right here, just planting the seed of personally managed change is enough. I’ll follow up – always briefly.

Regarding simplicity in an entirely practical sense, how ’bout something easy and fresh to make that both tastes great and is extremely versatile: fresh 5-ingredient salad dressing, which goes great, of course, on any kind of savory raw or cooked vegetables, over pasta, rice, fish, chicken or meat, on sandwiches – imagination is your only limit.

Here’s all you need to make this dressing (yes, you’ll see six ingredients below because I used two vinegars – all about flavor!).

Click this link or any picture on this page for complete, easy to use step-by-step picture book directions that show you how to make this dressing.

April 7th, 2020

Blog, Salads & Salad Dressings

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Enabling Empowerment Vs. Covid-19 and Enabling Kitchen Self-Sufficiency with an Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing

You are the only person who can empower yourself. You can, however, get and find the needed help to enable your empowerment.

Regarding Covid-19 and seasonal flu and their effect to date – and the numbers are sobering, first, the seasonal flu; Global Research reported on Feb. 22, 2020, that “The common flu causes up to 5 million cases of severe illness worldwide and kills up to 650,000 people every year, according to the World Health Organization .”

In the US alone, here’s an image from the CDC showing 2019-2020 US-only seasonal flu statistics through the end of March 2020.

Staggering!

Now, Covid-19; As of yesterday, April 6, 2020, according to the WHO, there have been 1,210,956 reported cases and 67,594 deaths related to Covid-19 globally. According to the CDC, again as of yesterday, there have been 330,981 reported cases and 8,910 deaths related to Covid-19 just in the United States.

The big problem with Covid-19 is that it is new, hence the name Novel (new) Coronavirus 2019-nCoV, and that means that avoiding the disease can only be accomplished by following all but the first of the WHO-published five easy steps to avoid the flu:

getting vaccinated (Only about 4 in 10 US adults get vaccinated. I’ve not been vaccinated in years. I will start getting vaccinated next season – and document it here.)
frequent handwashing
avoiding touching eyes, nose and mouth
avoiding being around sick people
staying home if you are sick to prevent contamination to others

These are all common sense steps to take, and following each can help empower us to cope with all strains of the flu with less fear.

That said, let’s switch gears to help empower better eating, which always improves a brighter outlook, with a quick, easy, richly flavorful and incredibly versatile recipe that you can make no matter how little cooking experience you have. The instant 5-ingredient salad dressing you see here goes great, of course, on warm or cold salads but is also a go-to for me on sandwiches, with cooked grains, over pasta, and much more.

As shown in the picture below (yes, I did use 2 vinegars for added flavor that count as only one ingredient), the only five ingredients you need are garlic powder, black pepper, mustard, vinegar and oil. For equipment, all you need is a 16-ounce jar with a snug fitting lid (if you don’t have a jar, you can use a measuring cup instead).

Click this link or any salad dressing related picture on this page for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipe.

October 31st, 2019

Blog, Cycling, Education, Mind Food

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The Magic of the Unexpected Abounds

Way too long since I said I’d laid down part 3 to the Cycling Unexpected Magic series I started in September. And here it is, Halloween, an evening that abounds with magic.

But magic abounds everywhere. You bet, I felt it when I hopped on a rocket cool packed dirt trail from Concord to Bedford that my road bike and I managed more than just fine – and with a big smile. No doubt my biggest smile was seeing families, kids with moms and dads, riding the trail.

And then there’s magic of a totally different kind but just as – or even more – powerful, and that has to do with the second picture in the title banner above.

I don’t belong to or promote any traditional faith or religion. I believe in a collective consciousness and making the most of living in the present. But not too long ago, I think because of my membership as an elected representative to our town’s Westborough Diversity and Inclusion Committee, I was asked to check out an interfaith organization that was just getting off the ground. That group became the Central Massachusetts Connections in Faith (CMACIF) committee, a terrifically energetic collection of diverse people of diverse faiths and opinions focused, entirely positively, on building bridges & friendships across cultures.

To do that, we facilitate events featuring individual faith groups and what and how they practice their faith followed by round table discussions with all those who attend. Our next event is an afternoon/evening with a movie, “Free Trip to Egypt”, that airs at 4 PM this Saturday, Nov. 2, to be followed by a discussion and dinner all at the Worcester Islamic Center in Worcester, MA, as shown below.

If you’re local to Worcester, CMACIF and I most heartedly invite you to attend. If you’re not local to Worcester and Central Massachusetts, think of the magic an event like the one we’ll have this Saturday could have where you live – and I’m glad to lend a hand (bruce@gotta-eat.com/508-446-7790).

September 17th, 2019

Blog, Cycling, Cycling Food

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Cycling and Magic of the Unexpected, Part 2: Concord Cheese Shop

Stopping at The Cheese Shop in Concord is really part 1 of this story for a couple of good reasons. First, they’re the ones who recommended Hutchin’s Farm when I asked for a local farm stand that sells fresh basil. Second, I stopped at the cheese shop on the way to Hutchin’s last Saturday to provide feedback on Mimolette cheese I’d recently bought that wasn’t nearly as flavorful as the same name of cheese I’d bought a while back.

Mimolette cheese

There’s a story to the cheese. Years ago, around 2013, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) determined that Mimolette cheese had too many microscopic mites in the cheese rind when brought to market. The FDA’s concern: those mites could cause allergic reactions among consumers. Now, the reason for cheesemakers introducing artisan mites to Mimolette cheese is that the mites eat molds on that cheese rind to impart a distinct flavor to the cheese as it ages. And though those mites are vacuumed or air and hand blasted off the rind when the cheese is prepared for sale, some of microscopic mites inherently remain on the rind.

When the cheese industry asked the FDA for a ruling on a tolerable number of mites, they were told at first that the FDA didn’t really know. The FDA then came up a number; the cheese had to have fewer than 6 mites per square inch on the rind. Again these are microscopic mites. I’d love not to be the person counting those bad boys.

Fortunately, after quite a bit of back and forth, the cheese is back on the US market. The only problem for me after looking so much forward to tasting the cheese after years of it not being available was flavor. And when I expressed that to one of the Cheese Shop managers, Steve, he told me that the real flavor difference in the cheese comes from aging. The cheese I’d bought recently had probably only aged 12 months, whereas the cheese I’d had years ago was probably aged 24 months. Those added 12 months make a big difference

I appreciated that information. Steve said he’d contact me when he had the longer aged cheese in stock. I gave him my business card and told him about this website geared entirely to enable people to empower themselves in the kitchen no matter how little cooking experience they have. Steve liked the idea and said maybe we could collaborate sometime. I’d love to! Again, a totally unexpected experience – all while on the bike.

Next post: The Unexpected Thrill of Trail Riding from Concord to Lexington

August 24th, 2019

Blog, Cycling, Cycling Food, Running Food

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Cycling and Magic of the Unexpected, Part One: Hutchin’s Farm

Open road; spinning legs; sights, sounds, smells, air temps that change on the fly: they’re all a big part of the thrill of cycling for me. And then there’s the magic of the unexpected.

Aside from the pure joy of spending most of the day on the road bike, my purpose last Saturday was to ride to Concord to make whole for an accidental $6 underpayment of fresh basil at Hutchin’s Farm just up the road from the historic Old North Bridge. (I only paid for 2 bunches and then realized when I got home that I was kindly, but unknown to me and the person who handed me the basil, given 2 clusters of 2 fresh bunches each when I visited the farm stand weeks ago.)

As soon as I hopped off the bike, after a gorgeous ride from Westborough to Concord, I explained to Brain Daubenspeck, one of the farm managers pictured below, what had happened and why I was there. The story gave him a smile. He insisted we were all square, and asked only that I tell people about the farm. Telling about the all organic farm, which I then visited the next day by car to buy – and pay correctly – for their incredibly fresh and flavorful produce, including another fresh bunch of basil, it is exactly what I’m doing here. Thanks very much, Brian. and thanks, Hutchin’s Farm! You bet, I’ll be back again soon.