Posts Tagged ‘seattle’

Most of us have a few eating personalities.

Do you have an Inner Cereal Monster?

In my next Make Peace with Food and You class we will have a great time calling out our personalities, naming them, and the laughing very hard as we decide how to handle them.

We meet one Friday night a month.   Email Lisa   @ Lisa Crunick .com if you would like to join us.

Successful Weight Loss Means Changing Eating Habits

Can you remember a fall in love with food moment?

I fell in love with Minestrone soup in Italy.

I was pregnant, DRAMATICALLY exhausted, and starving. Even now, I can feel the love steaming from the bowl. With the first bite, I felt so much better.

Lisa Crunick loves Marcel Hazan’s Classics of Italian Cooking.

Years later, Marcel Hazan took me into her kitchen, via her book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, one of my favorite cookbooks.

Now I want you to fall head over heels with how easy this is to make, how delicious it tastes, and how amazing you are to make something teeming with flavor, nutrition, and love.

The vegetables are ones we take for granted. Cooked together they are Mama Mia.

Minestrone Soup

1/4 to 1/2 olive oil
1 yellow onion
You are going to into a nice little relaxing trance as you chop or dice, to please yourself, the following vegetables:
3-4 carrots, 2-3 potatoes, 1 c. inner part of the celery, 2 med zucchini, 2 c.green beans
about a half of a medium size head of cabbage to equal about four cups shredded
1  28 oz can of quality pureed tomatoes
1  15 oz can of rinsed cannellini beans
Beef stock if you happen to have some, and are not vegetarian…. otherwise, water is perfect.
If you have an old and dry end piece of Parmesan or Romano cheese, you could put it to good use here, but it is not necessary

However, you will want freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese at serving time. I also recommend you have some crusty white bread on hand and more olive oil. The more olive oil you eat, the happier you will be. yayaya!

You need a place to chop the vegetables, close to the pot, at least a four quart one and a big spoon.

Dice the onion and saute it in 1/4 cup olive oil until soft and slightly golden.

I like to begin with the carrots. I find the short stubby ones to be the sweetest, and no not the pre-cut ones in the bag, but go ahead if that is all you have. Ahem..Think of the vegetables in regard to your spoon. Do you want a big slice of carrot or do you want itsy-bitsy pieces?

Add the cut carrots to the onions and stir. While this cooks on low heat, chop the celery. The sweetest part of the celery is the inner stalks which are almost white. Use the leaves if you have them. If you are using outer, greener stalks, I would dice them into very small pieces because they can be tough.

Toss in the celery and stir. Let everything continue to cook as you dice the potatoes. Add the potatoes and stir again.

While that is cooking, dice the zucchini, and then add and stir.

Look at all the colors of the vegetables, glistening with olive oil. Your soup is going to be so delicious! I like to add a little salt now.

I also love David Kessler’s book, The End of Overeating

In David Kessler’s excellent book, The End of Overeating, he talks about how restaurants strive to get the fat, salt, and sweet to bliss points. Here, you are in control of your own bliss point!

I confess I rarely use fresh green beans. Frozen work fine. Add the green beans.

Add the can of tomatoes. Add the shredded cabbage. Cabbage is very sweet and like celery, the closer you get to the center, the sweeter it is.
I even grate the core for this reason. Some of will us take sweet however we can get it!!

Add the cannelloni beans and the cheese rind if you have it.

Add water or beef broth. How much? Leave a couple inches from the top of your pot. You want to cook this until the vegetables are soft.
The liquid is going to cook down and you can always add more water if you need it.

You are going to let this simmer until everything is soft and lovely. You won’t eat it until tomorrow because you want all of the flavors to relax into one big happy mouth party!

Add some pepper. Refrigerate overnight.

While you are reheating the soup, pour some olive oil into a frying pan. Add thick pieces of bread. Day old is better, but whatever you have is going to work. Slightly brown the bread on both sides. You can put this in the bottom of the bowls or cut up like croutons and add to the top.
Yes, this is good fat. It adds to your bliss. Enjoy!

Live in Seattle, WA?  Interested in becoming one of Lisa Crunick’s Hypnotherapy clients?

I have two weight loss slots left for the year.  If you are thinking it is your time to mind your magnificence, now is a good time.

Do you eat organic, play soccer, and smoke on your back deck? or something like that?  I am offering a very small group session for people are ready to ditch their habit. Click here.

Image courtesy of  flickr.pointykitty.org

August was a hot month for change. A software engineer came in to stop an embarrassing, long-term habit and we took care of it in one session.

I had to call him two times to get this information. When we finally talked I said, "Don't tell anyone you saw me. I think it was a coincidence."

A woman came in because she was sure that buried somewhere in her mind was abuse. She felt that she had so many of the symptoms and was just tired of living with them. We were able to shift some of her thoughts; she sent me an encouraging report on how she is feeling as she processes. There is still more to do.

Someone bothered with fibromyalgia came in for pain reduction. I think she was shocked by what a difference EFT made for her. Within twenty minutes her range of motion increased dramatically. While her pain subsided, we did not manage to get her to zero pain. I taught her some things to do and made her a hypnosis recording. I am hoping for her to be free of pain. OK.

This one is from July, but it is fun. I got a text from a beautiful and talented Goddess. She said, "I have been saying no so much this week- and it is delicious and bubbly like champagne! Thanks, you changed my life."

A few people came in for help with processing some painful family relationships. I think of these emotional clearings and picking up the arm on an old record player, and moving it to a new tune.

Some times changing your mind is just that easy!

And then there was the handsome baseball player, who came in with his wife to improve what he called "his head game." His game is on. There's more. She came in for weight loss. Now she is going to Rumba Class and has sent her friend to me.

Another client came in and gave me the high five, " Twenty-five pounds freer!" I love what I do! 

What would changing your mind do for you?

After rolling my eyes and playing dead over all of the twitter hoopla, I am now a mesmerized fan. Yes, I shifted my stubborn stance and changed my mind…….whew

Six months ago I said to Sandy Jones-Kaminski, the Miss Manners of networking and early Twitter fan, "I mentioned Twitter to my kids and they asked, What is that?"

Now my recent college graduate tweets every day….all day! As I write, I hear the tweet of her TweetDeck. I showed her the possibilities and then I had the delicious pleasure of hearing tell a friend, "My Mom knows more about Tweeting than I do."

That girl used to call me techno-babe and roll her eyes. OK. End of my mid-life bloviation.

What is so fascinating about Twitter? and TweetDeck? Well, TweetDeck is the mother lode of eavesdropping. Do you want to know what is the word on the street for iPhones? a book? a movie, traffic, the Tour de France, the MJ special you weren't watching. You can find out in real time. And it keeps at it while you are off doing other things.

Search anything: At&T, organic cherries, Wii Fit and find out what people are really saying.

Do you have any idea how many people put Wii Fit back in the box after it calls them obese?

You can easily make twitter a personalized news feed. Your own international and local associated press feed without interference. Whatever eclectic interest you have, that you want someone, anyone, to talk to about, you can find that someone on Twitter.

Facebook is a virtual neighborhood. You create a community and you put on your Mr. Rogers sweater and check in to see what your friends are doing. You are at your neighbor's kitchen table, or on the front porch in a small town and you learn a lot about what is going on, but your virtual neighborhood can span the globe.

Twitter has the potential to open your world a few more big notches. What will it become? Will it last? Who knows?

If the internet is the Wild West, then Twitter could be San Francisco.

You might want to check it out. I am off to check my Tweet Deck searches. I hope I find you there.