Nutrition Corner

Holiday Cooking

November is the official start of the holiday season and the beginning of menu planning and preparations for holiday dinner of various sizes.

Whether hosting or attending, many holiday dishes are not intuitive to prepare. Food safety is an important key quality when meal planning, preparing, and storing all items on the menu and is crucial to remember both when initially cooking dishes as well as when re-heating to create leftover dishes!

Whole Grains Month

Whole grains are one of the best sources of carbohydrates, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and healthy plant fat. 

As is illustrated in the diagram above, the “whole grain” hasn’t had the bran or the germ removed.  Often these are removed to make the grain more shelf stable.  Because removing them tends to remove nutrients too, the refined grain is ‘enriched’ with nine essential vitamins and iron.  The problem is that we don’t replace everything that was removed.