Whole Foods Cooking

So many people are intimidated by whole foods cooking, and that's a real shame because it's really quite easy. True, purist whole foods cooking says that you should be cooking with ingredients in their natural state - grinding wheat berries for wheat flour, using fruits and vegetables and meats starting as single entities, etc. I, like many others, have a more relaxed approach, and it is simply this: cook with as many basic ingredients as you can and for things that others make, go with simple ingredients or at least ones that you can pronounce and recognize. Think of it this way. A cheese pizza can easily be whole foods cooking. Mix up the dough yourself using flour, yeast, water, and sugar (each of those ingredients can't be broken down any further). Top with basic tomato sauce (not pizza sauce but basic tomato sauce, I put a huge can in my crockpot and cook it down to thicken it but it's still just tomatoes) and any herbs that you wish. Cheese on top - basic mozarella is only a few ingredients - and you have a whole foods pizza. Think of how many other things are whole foods cooking: tossed salads without store bought dressings or croutons, both of which you can easily make yourself. Just about anything you made from scratch was whole foods. Rice, tomato sauce, ground beef, some herbs, and bell peppers, and you have stuffed peppers which are also whole foods. Fajitas, homemade refried beans, scrambled eggs and fresh fruit, grilled steaks with a baked potato and corn on the cob, oatmeal, all are examples of whole foods cooking. Think of how people cooked 50, 60, 70 years ago, before so many convenience foods had a lot of mysterious ingredients. Make snickerdoodle cookies from scratch, and you've baked a whole foods snack that is preservative free, dye free, and naturally flavored. This is so easy that it's scary! I dare you to try it. You'll get hooked, and you'll love the results.