Make Healthy Eating Fun, Imaginative and Sensual
Would you eat healthier if it were more fun, pleasurable and delicious?
By Jill Badonsky, MEd | Posted 6/15/08 | Updated 1/2/21
"It is a happy talent to know how to play." —Ralph Waldo Emerson
We continue the creativity and wellness theme of using creativity to shape a healthier, longer life and to live healthier in order to free more creative energy. Body Blissmas asks, "Would you eat healthier if it were more fun, pleasurable and delicious?"
As you sharpen your skills for any creative endeavor, those skills of resourcefulness, ingenuity, and making-things-up-as-we-go-along can apply to many other aspects of your life. Consider consciously applying creative thinking to any area of your life that you can and notice how you create a more enjoyable, liberated and adventurous existence. You can infuse any process with your passion — creativity.
The Body Blissmas Creativity Coaching Club provides recipes that not only adhere to the Schwarzbein Principle, a nutrition program that has helped millions lose weight, unleash energy and defy obese-related illnesses, but also are delicious, creative and fun. When creative fun is an element of any venture, the child-like spirit within us, which can either be resistant or exuberant perks up and wants to play. Making anything more fun catalyzes participation and follow-through… plus it's fun. Why do we make our goals so not-fun when we have creative minds that can tweet things into more enticement?
"The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground." —G K Chesterton
This just in: You can make earth a playground. You have the technology — the creative center of your brain.
So yesterday I took Potato Leek Soup, a recipe from my unhealthy, fatty French cooking class years ago and I made it healthy. I almost ate the entire pot. I could not believe it tasted so creamy and delicious. But it was the creative foreplay beforehand of revising the recipe so it was not only healthy but also fun, sensual, quirky, and well … a little silly, which made preparing it irresistible.
Cauliflower-Leek Castle-Puddle Soup Recipe (Humor)
"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing." —Dale Carnegie
Ingredients
- A bag of cauliflower from Trader Joe's or an organic head (…of cauliflower not, like the thing on your shoulders… although it is organic).
- 2 organic leek stalks, firm and erect.
- 2 organic apples (I used Gala).
- Smidgen or more of sea salt (watch for rabid mermaids and reckless jelly fish).
- Dasher, Dancer and perhaps maybe even a Prancer of pepper or lemon pepper (depending on your intuitive preferential spice index for the minute, hour and day). I love lemon pepper.
- 3 tablespoons of organic butter (preferably European because it's just creamy goodness and it's on the Schwarzbein plan).
- 4 cups organic chicken or veggie broth or purified puddle water following a light summer downpour outside an enchanted castle.
Sensual Preparation
- Wash the cauliflower and notice the texture, hue and music, and ponder with awe the abundant art we have in the form of vegetables with so many tastes, varieties and colors … even white! Call a flower if you just happened to have a hand-free phone stuck in your ear.
- Clean the leeks, smell their essence, notice their concentric layers that just grow naturally that way. Slice one of them roughly, yet deftly, without cutting your thumb or wrist. Chop the other leek really, really small like the size of fairy footsteps if you're a fairy-person or like teeny, tiny crescent moons if you're not.
- Shred the apples, roughly while singing Michael Row Your Boat Ashore, Hal-le-lu-u---jah (even if it's roughly off-key).
- Steam the cauliflower until it's tender and meek. Sauté the roughly cut leek in butter with salt and pepper. Smell it as if you were a cartoon character carried away by an irresistible aroma. Add the apples and cauliflower and swish around a bit longer like a child cooking for the first time.
- Cool for a few minutes while you write a quick poem about having an organic head or calling a flower.
- Then pulverize the concoction in a blender while adding the broth little by little (add, if you like, a splash of white wine then surreptitiously drink a gulp from the bottle — I added a bit of balsamic vinegar instead of wine cause wine makes me melancholy). Transfer to a pot if you need to make room for more.
- Sprinkle with the finely sliced leek and serve with a crooked smile and a raised eyebrow…
Phew! I need some soup.
©2008 Jill Badonsky. All rights reserved.