Kitchen essentials, part one
Stuff your pantry with healthy food
A good diet needs a good pantry. When you’re hungry, you are likely to eat whatever is in your pantry and refrigerator, and if that happens to be (say) instant noodles, that is what you will eat. As our recent post outlined, several diets plans have stumbled on the idea that reducing carbohydrate consumption may be a good thing:
When you reduce carbohydrates in your diet, you have to substitute with one of the other macronutrients—fats and proteins—to meet your energy requirements. Here’s our post on the macronutrients:
If you’re going to stock your pantry healthy (while still being tasty), here is what you need.
Dry food
- Almonds: Roasted, salted, raw, spiced… Any which way you like, except for the ones that are sweet (honey is still sugar). Almonds are a great snack as long as you don’t end up eating a half kilo of it.
- Macadamia nuts: Same as above, nothing sweet. Everything else goes. This is a much better snack, much more satisfying as it has high fat and high fibre. Much more expensive than almonds, if that helps discourage you from eating too much.
- Walnuts/Pecans/Brazil Nuts/Pine Nuts (Chilgoza): Also great as a snack.
- Flax seeds: This is an awesome but often overlooked food. It can be used in a variety of recipes, is a great binder, and can also be just roasted and eaten.
- Almond flour: Also known as blanched almond flour or almond meal, this is a staple flour used in many low carb recipes. It is quite hard on your wallet, but it will eliminate your need for wheat flour or gram flour. You’ll see this amply demonstrated in a few recipes we’ll share over the next few weeks.
- Coconut flour: This is similar to rice flour and unfortunately is not easily available in India. Note that this is different from desiccated coconut (it has the fat removed) and is actually a flour. You can use desiccated coconut as a substitute however.
- Chia seeds: This is one of the superfoods that’s been talked about lately. We don’t believe in superfoods, just as we don’t believe in detox. But we love chia seeds. It’s high on fiber and low on carbs. We’ll introduce a few recipes that will use chia seeds, including a very tasty dessert.
- Peanuts: While this is not as safe as the other nuts above, it is ok if you don’t binge on it. It is tough not to binge though. And remember, nothing sweet here either.
- Coconut milk/cream: This is awesome by itself, in puddings and Thai curries. We’ll post some more recipes that will use this ingredient extensively.
- Ghee: This is manna. Tasty, healthy and full of fat. 😀
- Psyllium husk: It’s a must in most of our recipes where we need to add texture and fibre. It might sound like something you might not need now, but trust us and stock up with a pack of psyllium husk. You can ask for “Telephone brand sat isabgol” at your local chemist (yes, chemist, not grocery).
Fruits
- Watermelon
- Muskmelon
- Orange
- Guava
- Plums
Vegetables
- Cauliflower
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Kohlrabi
- Eggplant
- Beetroot
- Cucumber
- Green pepper
- Zucchini
- Greens (Palak/Spinach, Methi)
- Lettuce
Refrigerator
- Butter
- Cheese: Any and all kinds. Processed cheese is fine. Cheese slices are great to make cheese chips. The other varieties such as Parmesan, Grana Padano, Pecorino Romano, Cheddar, Mozzarella, Edam, Gruyere, Feta, Bocconcini and Mascarpone come in handy to make some really tasty and healthy food. Slightly more expensive than processed cheese, but it is definitely worth it.
- Paneer: Indian cottage cheese. It’s a great ingredient for a quick meal or snack. You can also make fries and steaks using paneer.
- Mayonnaise: Not the eggless variety, please. Get real mayonnaise or skip it.
- Cream
- Cheese dips & cream cheese: These are usually great as a veggie or chips dip. Make sure the carb content is low.
- Tofu: A great protein food. We usually add it to our Thai dishes to improve the protein count. We do not recommend a lot of Tofu though. More on this later.
In part two, we’ll look at what else you need in your kitchen to cook up those amazing, tasty, healthy meals. Cooking is easy, even if you’ve never made anything more than instant noodles. We’ll show you how.
Kilter is HasGeek’s humble attempt to provide a space for reasoned debate on how your body actually works, and how you can find your own path to good health via better nutrition, fitness and habits.
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