Heart Smart for Your Loved Ones
My husband’s cholesterol is a little high and he’s tried diet and exercise to bring it down. It helped a little but Lipitor is even more effective. Still, he likes to go off Lipitor for a while just to be off meds, so we’ll shop and cook with more vigilance to make sure we’re eating super healthy when he does that.
Some swaps are pretty simple.
We use extra virgin olive oil as our cooking oil of choice for pretty much everything except baking.
Instead of white rice, I’ll mix half the amount with brown rice. The trick to that is to soak the brown rice overnight so that it cooks at the same rate as the white rice. My Korean mother-in-law taught me that. And if you forget to do that the night before, add hot water to the brown rice for a few hours before cooking.
Oatmeal is also something I push. PickyKidPix and I both like oatmeal — steel-cut or quick oats — but no one else in the family does. It’s delicious with a little brown sugar and berries and is proven to bring down cholesterol levels. So, for my husband, his oats of choice are Cheerios. I also grind up oats in my blender to sneak it into baked goods like cookies. No one is the wiser for that!
Home-made soup is another strategy for getting our kids to eat more cooked vegetables We also welcome the warmth during our cold New England winters! My husband uses the Cooks Illustrated‘s chicken noodle soup recipe and it’s a big hit with our kids.
The problem though is that it’s very time-consuming. It’s a multi-step process including making stock and then making the actual soup. I personally don’t have the time or the patience to follow the recipe but I enjoy the end result when my husband is in the mood for an all-day cooking project. For busy weekends and lunches, it’s nice to have a more convenient alternative. The problem is that we’ve created a monster. My kids like and expect homemade soup. I had to try a variety of brands to find one that they like but we’ve settled on Campbell’s Savory Chicken with Brown Rice and Campbell’s Mexican Style Chicken Tortilla. Both of these soups are loaded with vegetables and healthy ingredients like brown rice and black beans. They are both low in sodium as well.
February is National Heart Month
To celebrate National Heart Month, Campbell’s is running an Address Your Heart Kitchen Project for a chance to win a $50,000 kitchen makeover. To enter, just share a photo below, along with a corresponding story or tip that shows how you care for your heart in the kitchen.
Healthy, convenient, delicious and heart healthy! Now that’s heart warming!
Follow the steps below and share how you care for your heart to participate in Campbell’s contest and you could win a $50,000 kitchen makeover. Contest Rules & Prize Page.
Step 1: Submit a photo below that shows how you care for your heart
Step 2: Fill out the information required including your name, email address and zip code.
Step 3: Write a short contest entry (up to 200 words) that corresponds with the photo and share how you care for your heart. Please be honest and sincere with all your thoughts and remember to tell us in 200 words or less.
Step 4: Confirm you’ve read the Official Rules.
Step 5: Log in through your Facebook account.
Step 6: Submit your contest entry.
You can share your contest entry on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and visit AddressYourHeart.com for recipes, tips, and downloadable coupons for heart-healthy products from Campbell.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of the Campbell Soup Company’s Address Your Heart initiative. The opinions, text, and images are all mine.
To examine any of the items listed, please click on image of item. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
BEST #OWNVOICES CHILDREN’S BOOKS: My Favorite Diversity Books for Kids Ages 1-12 is a book that I created to highlight books written by authors who share the same marginalized identity as the characters in their books.