The Rundown

 Little things we can all do, to make the little things a little better.

How about we start out with a nice apple cranberry jam? The healthiest, most naturally tasting jam you will ever find. That's how I make them. Absolutely zero garbage in there. 

600 grams of decored apples, peel on (for colour, flavour, fibre), a handful of fresh cranberries (not the dried, sweetened crap), 200 gr sugar and two tablespoons of fresh (from real fruits - not the diluted concentrate) lemon or lime juice.

Boil your glasses to sterilize them and keep them hot in your toaster oven at 250 F while you slowly heat up your fruits and sugar and when it has simmered for a couple of minutes, run it through your blender until it's as smooth as you like it. You may add a little corn starch dissolved in as little water as possible, just to add texture if you so prefer (juicy fruits usually need this). I used 1/3 teaspoon for this batch.

Put your simmering jam into the hot glasses and put the lid on right away and let cool. The little "snap" you hear from the lids, as your jam cools down, is the vaccum that seals your lids to the jar really tight.

Tip: Use any fruit you like and 1/3 sugar by weight. That makes it sweet enough, but not sickeningly sweet.

Mine, calculated out: 600 gr apples and 50 gram cranberries (650 gr total) and 200 gr sugar gives you 850 gr jam (not counting a couple of grams of cornstarch and two table spoons of lemon/lime juice). But since your sugar amount was 200 of the total 850 gr jam, you end up with (200x850/1000 =23.5) just over 20% sugar, which is not even half of your typical commercial jam. And it's 100% pure and healthy.

Pizza, pizza, pizza. Everybody likes it. But what if you don't have any tomato sauce? In this case, I didn't and so I used my own, home-made, full-flavour chili con carne (which is tamato based, anyway) as my 'tomato sauce', doled some pork tenderloin on there and a very generous amount of quality cheese and holy chihuahua; what a phenomenally delicious flavour explosion. It may just potentially be the best pizza I have ever made. My point? Don't be afraid to experiment. You might just suprise yourself. This one sure as hell didn't last long after my daughter woke up. But not to worry; Brian's got another one coming through the pipes as we speak.

I hardly ever eat an orange..or lemon or lime...at home, without grating the peel first, because it's absolutely loaded in vitamin C and can be used for virtually anything baking or cooking, to boost flavour and nutritional value = health.

Leave the grated peel to dry slowly in 'the hands of mother nature' and she will take care of you for a long time into the future...because you were thinking smart.

Need any suggestions on what to do with your peel?

Liver, kidney, heart. All the healthy stuff.
Absolutely delicious. Just don't overcook it. Stuff a heart with parsley. Bit of oil in pot. 10 minutes on medium heat while ensuring it gets colour on all sides. Bon appétit.

No need to make it fancy. This is about super healthy eating on a super tight budget. Not fine dining: 

I roasted some chicken in the oven. You know; pan with a grill on top and then the chicken on the grill, dripping into the pan in which I had some water to prevent the fat from burning. It's what's next that makes me more excited than the roasted chicken. After I ate the chicken, I snapped the bones in half, to cook out the bone marrow easier and threw them in a pot. It's the bone marrow that is loaded in micro-nutrients your body needs. I poured the fatty water from the roasting pan over the snapped bones. Poured some boiling water over the last gunk in the pan and added to the pot, just to get all the good stuff with me. Added a bit of coarse/rock salt (healthier - not added sugar. Believe me. Read ingredients on your box of table salt), whole pepper corns, an onion chopped in half and whatever left-over veggies I had laying around in fridge, waiting for the death penalty (maybe a chunk of celery root? A nugget of ginger root?). Then I gave it 6 hours on "barely simmering", or however many hours I could afford that day. Strained the whole thing so only the broth was left and then it was decision time: Noodle broth or chicken soup? Well, I just had chicken yesterday, so there's your answer. I did give it just a pinch of (add your flavour, here). It was the best rice noodles I have had in quite some time. Unfortunately I'll probably live to be a 100 years old.

I just wanted to add this picture to illustrate what I was talking about above:

Cooked long enough, any bone will soften (at some point disintegrate) and it will be a lot easier for you to get to the bone marrow, which is what you clearly see here. So the bone will not only provide flavour, the marrow inside the bone will provide you with micro-nutrients like vitamin A, B2, B12, E, add omega 3, omega 6, calcium, iron, selenium & zinc. So, next time, maybe you should think twice about throwing those bones out, or laughing at people who are "cheap" and recycle their bones. They are likely healthier (or at least smarter) than you are. If you have to kill that animal...at least use every part of it. Follow "the red path" and waste nothing.

I made my own pasta sauce (I make my own everything) that is great for both pizza and pasta. Nothing but fresh, ripe vined tomatoes, coarse salt (for purity reasons), fresh ground peppercorns and loads of fresh onion and garlic plus herbs and spices and extra virgin olive oil (it doesn't pay to go cheap).

I cook my pasta in the pot that still contains the left-over sauce after I empty the sauce out because it adds flavour to my pasta. I threw in some baked (healthier) fish and I have a delicious, super tasty and healthy meal in no time.

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Make a wonderful marinade: 

1/2 cup honey, 1 large tsp garlic powder. Super simple. Super delicious.

Heat up honey in microwave for 30 seconds and stir in garlic and soak your chicken for 24 hours. 

If you go by weight: 135 gr honey and 7 gr garlic powder.

Keep in mind, because honey is sugar, it will add plenty of colour to your meat when you cook it (especially if baked/roasted).

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