life promoting foods | Gotta Eat, Can't Cook

Posts Tagged ‘life promoting foods’

March 25th, 2025

Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Breakfast, Cereal, Food & Health, Grains, How To & Tips, Nutrition

No Comments »

Overnight Water-Soaked Oats Picture Directions

Picture book directions show how to water-soak oats to maximize nutrient content use in either sweet or savory dishes.

There’s no such thing as a particular “superfood”, or one food that will work miracles on your body to make you feel stronger, become healthier and prevent disease all on its own.

The real “open secret” is enjoying a varied diet rich in whole foods – whole foods are key – and oats, with their highly nutritious, gluten-free and fiber-rich properties plus their equally versatile use, which corresponds beautifully with my often-used “imagination is your only limit” line, are a great food to make part of your quality-of-life enriching eating habits.

For more information about the nutritional value of oats, which includes digestive support, heart health benefits, blood sugar moderation and weight loss/maintenance properties, and more, click this link to Healthline’s “9 Health Benefits of Eating Oats and Oatmeal”.

When it comes to simplicity, convenience and maximizing both nutritional and digestive advantages, water-soaking oats for at least 12 hours is the best and easiest way to enjoy rolled oats and open them up for use in either sweet or savory dishes like what you see below: oats with grapes, nut butter, yogurt and jam (left) and oats with chickpeas, ricotta cheese, tomato and avocado (right).

Examples of water-soaked oats meals: oats with fresh fruit, yogurt and raisins and oats with chickpeas, ricotta cheese, tomatoes and avocado

For easy-to-follow step-by-step overnight water-soaked oats picture directions, click this link or any picture on this page.

Next up: Easy-to-make overnight water-soaked oats with fresh fruit, nut butter, yogurt & jam

January 15th, 2024

Blog, Empowerment, Salads & Salad Dressings

Comments Off

Helping Seniors Empower Themselves to Make Life-Promoting Foods with AARP and Eastway Rec.

I’ve written this here before, and it’s entirely true; only you can empower yourself. Sure, others can help. But the best anyone else can do is provide you with the skills you need to empower yourself because empowerment comes from within. You have to feel it, own it. Once you do, ha!, you’re off to the races!

I’m now 65 1/2 years old, a legitimate senior citizen. And I’ve just started working with AARP to help fellow seniors learn the skills they need to empower themselves to make quality of life-promoting meals on their own though a program we call “Gotta’ Eat Smartly” at Eastway Rec. Center in Charlotte, NC.

To pull back a bit to the bigger picture, even though we’ve just begun, the program’s intent is to start locally, right at Eastway, to develop a proof of concept that connects directly with seniors and shows positive results. Those results include growing participation and seeing how seniors actually apply the skills they learn at our live in-person sessions and at home.

Once we do that, we can then replicate those same skill-providing techniques and use them more widely throughout central North Carolina and beyond. Like throwing a stone in a pond, it’s all about creating an enthusiastic splash that ripples out and connects with as many people as possible by providing seniors – and eventually others – with the skills they need to make life-promoting foods, foods that our bodies and mind need to function as effectively as possible, give us the foundation to live the best quality of life possible – and taste killer good!

Regarding flavor, the next two posts will show the two recipes we put together at Eastway last week: Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing…