Bring Back The Family Meal
Pack Your Pasta with Staying Power
Don't Forget to Add the Rainbow to Your Plate
Bring Back The Family Meal
Many of the families have incredibly busy schedules and are constantly shuttling from one play date or sports practice to another. This leaves little time to sit down to regular family meals. Research shows that families who eat together regularly are more likely to eat nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables and are less likely to develop unhealthy eating habits. Our Italian ancestors established the model for the family meal by serving 5 courses – antipasto (appetizer), primo (pasta, risotto, or soup), secondo (fish or meat), contorno (side dish of salad or vegetables) and dolce (dessert) - over 2 to 3 hours resulting in plenty of good food, lively conversation, laughter and fun! So this weekend, why not try planning and enjoying a healthful multi-course meal as a way to reconnect after a long, busy week.
Here are some tips for bringing a touch of old Italy to your 21st century family meal:
- Get the whole family involved in the process – from meal planning and shopping to preparation and serving.
- During the meal, eliminate all other distractions like TV or radio and focus on listening to each other.
- Include a variety of colors and textures to please all the senses: Antipasto: crudite with your favorite dip; Primo: Piccolini® by Barilla, garlic, and olive oil; Secondo: baked or grilled salmon, shrimp or chicken; Contorno: the family’s favorite steamed vegetable; Dolce: ½ cup Italian gelato.
- To avoid overeating, serve courses one at a time in small portions, taking time to savor the flavor of each course.
- To keep the conversation moving, talk about each other’s interests, tell stories from your childhood, encourage your family to speak their minds and voice their opinions about issues concerning today’s society. Who knows, you may just learn something about each other that you never knew before!
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Pack Your Pasta with Staying Power
Fruits and vegetables come in a beautiful rainbow of colors, but did you know that those colors represent a host of health benefits? Fruits and vegetables are packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants and phytonutrients, all of which are essential to good health. Depending on what color the fruit or vegetable is, it offers us various health benefits. For example, blue or purple fruits and veggies, like blueberries and eggplant, are colored by “anthocyanins” that protect cells from damage thereby reducing the risk of cancer, stroke and heart disease. Red fruits and vegetables are colored by “lycopene” and/or “anthocyanins”; which may help reduce the risk cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. The most famous source of lycopene is tomatoes, which when cooked with a small amount of fat (the perfect example being spaghetti sauce) have 3-4 times the amount of available lycopene than raw tomatoes. Did you ever imagine that having Barilla pasta with spaghetti sauce did your body so good? All the other colors like green, orange, white and yellow also offer their own benefits of equal importance; so add some more color to your plate today and enjoy the great health benefits!
Other tips for boosting the staying power of pasta include adding a source of lean protein and/or fiber to your pasta dishes. Sources of protein include low fat cheese, lean meat, seafood, tofu and beans. You can fill up on fiber by adding cooked veggies to your pasta dish. Either mix in whole veggies or puree them using a food processor and add them to your pasta sauce.
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Don't Forget to Add the Rainbow to Your Plate
Fruits and vegetables come in a beautiful rainbow of colors, but did you know that those colors represent a host of health benefits? Fruits and vegetables are packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants and phytonutrients, all of which are essential to good health. Depending on what color the fruit or vegetable is, it offers us various health benefits. For example, blue or purple fruits and veggies, like blueberries and eggplant, are colored by “anthocyanins” that protect cells from damage thereby reducing the risk of cancer, stroke and heart disease. Red fruits and vegetables are colored by “lycopene” and/or “anthocyanins”; which may help reduce the risk cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. The most famous source of lycopene is tomatoes, which when cooked with a small amount of fat (the perfect example being spaghetti sauce) have 3-4 times the amount of available lycopene than raw tomatoes. Did you ever imagine that having Barilla Pasta with spaghetti sauce did your body so good? All the other colors like green, orange, white and yellow also offer their own benefits of equal importance; so add some more color to your plate today and enjoy the great health benefits!
Try out some of these ideas to bring more of the rainbow to your family’s meals.
- At breakfast time, top cereal with blueberries, strawberries or peaches.
- Let your kids pick a color for each night of the week, and pick a fruit or vegetable of that color to try at dinner time.
- Make a chunky spaghetti sauce by chopping up carrots, peppers, zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, cauliflower or whatever other vegetables you may have in your fridge, steaming them and mixing them into your pasta sauce. If your kids are picky eaters you can mince them in a food processor so they are less noticeable.
- Try chopping up any of these same vegetables to add to meatloaf, casserole dishes, stir fries or soups.
- For dessert, try having a baked apple, grilled peach, grapes topped with a yogurt sauce or make a smoothie using various different colored fruits.
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