Second Helping Toolbox
Cooking the Second Helping way
Learning how to cook — by which I mean perfecting technique, flavor combination, presentation and depth — is an invaluable weight loss tool. As is mindfully appreciating good food — by which I mean that every element of a dish works in concert with every other ingredient, forming a distinct-yet-cohesive whole. But the true value of these things ventures beyond “tasty recipes.” It’s deeper than marketing slogans.
My weight loss occurred amid also learning the food beat for a newspaper. In addition to visiting a trainer, working my cardio and prepping my meals in Gladware, I also was visiting up to eight restaurants a day and spending all my time reading about food I wouldn’t — not couldn’t — eat. Not bad for an emotional eating dashboard diner with no cooking experience.
In Second Helping’s original incarnation, available on this site, I discussed the transformations that occurred along the way. But now we’re talking about you.
Beyond having control and freedom with your food, cooking provides a different context with which to think about food and eating. Willpower, discipline and all those quaint weight loss principles become a nonissue: I won’t eat that boiled chicken and broccoli any more than I’ll eat a peanut burger hamburger, but not because they’re healthy/unhealthy. It’s just insipid one-trick ponies we’re fooled into thinking is good or “healthy” food.
Yes, we view standard diet food and fried monstrosities with the same contempt. We choose a third option that twists standard diet mythos, classic culinary truths with gastronomy and modern foodie ideology in our discussions and instruction. Sounds very pretentious and self-important when you say it like that, huh?
It doesn’t make it any less true or viable, and it’s actually simple. Before you start learn how to cook, you first need to learn how to think about cooking. “Healthy” eating isn’t a foreign concept divorced from culinary principle. The only food worse than what got us fat to begin with is “health food” that just reinforces eating and cooking as something that keeps you numb or suffering. We care for neither extreme.
Foodies and gourmands understand one truth about eating; those of us who understand food also carries with it pain and frustration understand a different truth. They’re just two halves of a whole — and when you see both extremes for what they are, truths neither understands surface.
You discover the middle ground. And in doing so, you prove to yourself and everyone else that you are not what you eat; food bends to *your* will, not the other way around. The craft of cooking benefits more than your waist — it is a source of power, becoming a leader in your own life. Every meal also becomes evidence that “that was then and this is now.” Every meal sticks it to the naysayers who say it can’t be done.
The are bold statements to make from someone who could still eat two large pizzas every night. I didn’t learn to live boldly in therapy or with any diet tool. I learned to live boldly in the kitchen, a dish at a time. So we’re talking about more important than “fabulous food,” here. I encourage you to grab a chef’s knife and join in.
And if not cooking, seek new skills or crafts that empower. Because to lose and maintain weight loss in this society, to buck statistics, popular opinion and personal saboteurs, boldness and power are paramount. No matter what, look at your life and step up to the plate.
Second Helping Food and Cooking Philosophy
- Provide Freedom | Ever notice how some recovering substance abusers (food, alcohol, sex, drugs, etc.) can only talk about how they *aren’t* addicts anymore? The bottom line is people’s lives still revolve around whatever it is they *don’t* do anymore. It’s just a flip side of the same old coin, and there’s not much freedom in it in the long term. By nature of that, Second Helping strives to introduce its readers to a freeing, long-term, lasting relationship with food that transcends whatever you ate before.
- You call yourself a foodie? See how you fare without butter, cream and deep frying and get back to me | I think everyone knows a food snob; I just happen to know a lot of them. They over-rely on high-fat ingredients like a badge of honor, daring you to disapprove. I say, if you’re half the foodie you think you are, you can be more creative than choosing the laziest flavor boosting methods. It’s like bragging about painting the Sistine Chapel with two crayons. So if you call yourself a foodie, think of making health food not insipid as a challenge. You chef enough, scrub?
- Eating (and Cooking!) Well is the Best Revenge | Renovating your relationship with food is also a great way to stick it to your old unhealthy habits, your old life. Living well is the best revenge, and what better way to surpass a bad relationship with food than to reclaim that relationship through the joy of cooking.
- Encourage Balance | We don’t think of our food as “health food” per se – we prefer the term “balance food.” Second Helping are neither doctors nor dietitians, but we have lived through various diets, body contouring methods, and cooked up a storm throughout it all. Our cooking most closely resembles the Mediterranean Diet, but we offer techniques that invigorate “rabbit food” and apply to any eating method. Because we’ve used them all.
- Expand horizons | Look at our recipes and don’t ask “would I cook this?” but instead “what can I learn to apply to my cooking?” If you do this, you’re no longer confined to low-fat cookbooks for recipes – every cookbook, every recipe, has something to enrich your life and develop your skills as a cook and a food lover.
- Distinguishing between food that deadens you versus food that wakes you up | Ever notice in your overeating days you never really experienced the food you ate? We use the experience of tasting as a starting point; when you understand how flavors relate to each other – what to add to brighten, refine, focus or deepen your dishes – your cooking immediately improves regardless of your cooking experience.
- Put flavor first | When most people want to learn how to cook, they might start with boiling water or learning how to use a knife. Second Helping takes a different approach. We start with flavor pairing and balance, learning how to taste and determining what flavor would improve a dish.
- Put texture second | Most quality chefs understand that the texture of food – how it feels in your mouth as you chew – is just as important as what your taste buds experience with a dish. Little medical research has been conducted on the importance of texture in food, but our practical healthful cooking experience taught us how vital diverse textures are in your food. Second Helping considers texture a flavor unto itself as a means of keeping your food engaging and interesting.
- Encourage improvisational cooking | The chefs and cooks at Second Helping advocate on-the-fly cooking in our private kitchens. So yes, we provide recipes and hope you try them out, but understanding the techniques and flavor pairings in our dishes can help improve even your most basic, road-tested weekday meals. We teach and encourage keeping a well-stocked pantry of spices, herbs, vinegars, oils and other flavor enhancers. With the techniques we teach, you can take these enhancers and apply it to high-end dishes, some soup you heat in the microwave, or even a cheap can of green beans at Wal-Mart. You can cook with whatever you have on hand, cook it quickly and still have it be healthful *and* interesting. In other words, with some know-how, you can have it all.
[...] We hear the term “rabbit food” and associate with it all that’s lifeless and dull about dieting. That’s not our thing — fitness and fine food both should enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So we use clever recipes and explain the techniques and ideas behind them to make rabbit food fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. Dried Apricot Vinaigrette Makes about a [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin DeMarco and Russ Lane cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]
[...] We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox. [...]