Sweet and Sour Chicken on a Weeknight

This is the most simple, flavorful and healthy Asian meal I've ever prepared. My best time-saving tip for weeknight meals is to start tomorrow's dinner while you're loading the dishwasher after tonight's. So, the night before you will need to cook a batch of rice, preferably a rich flavorful brown/wild/whole grain rice. And you will need brown chicken breasts, leaving them slightly undercooked. Put the cooked rice in a container. Chop the chicken into cubes and you're done for the night.

To prepare the meal the next day, you'll need 1/2 a pineapple (fresh if possible), 1/2 red bell pepper, 1/2 green bell pepper and 1/4 C of Frank's sweet chili sauce (or any other duck sauce, sweet and sour sauce you like).

Put the chicken cubes in a skillet and begin to reheat them. While chicken is cooking, cut peppers and pineapples into bite size pieces. [Tool tip -- I use a manual food processor that processes all of my chopping and cutting in about two minutes.] Reheat the rice in the microwave [using a steamer basket]. When chicken is heated through, add the pineapple-pepper to the skillet and heat it all. Prepare the plate using a drizzle of eel sauce or peanut sauce. If you don't have either one you can create a sauce by diluting peanut butter with a bit of water. Plate the rice using a measuring cup to create an nice round shape and then add your sweet and sour pork. Finish the presentation with crushed red pepper and chopped peanuts and sesame seeds (all three or any one.) Enjoy!

All about color

Here are two simple tricks to determining whether or not the foods you are putting in your body are good for you. 1) how close to it's original state is the food? 2) what color is it? In fruits and vegetables, their original state of raw is the state in which you capture all of the nutrients the produce has to offer. Steam it, and you retain a lot of the benefit. If you over-boil it or cook it out of a can...not so much. And pay attention to color. A general rule is that the more colorful the food, the healthier it is (usually). For example, dark lettuce varieties are healthier than light green iceburg. Many eating plans talk about avoiding the white stuff (sugar, white bread, salt, white rice, white pasta). Switching to other alternatives is definitely a plus. We will talk about this later when we discuss food absorption, but here are your better options:  whole grain bread, brown rice, whole grain pasta and as little sugar as possible.