What’s in a nutritionist’s kitchen? Consider this your backstage pass.  

Have you ever wondered exactly what your dentist does for his teeth or what regimen your glowing aesthetician uses on her skin? I know I have. And before I became a nutritionist, I really wondered what people in this profession actually ate. Dietitians and nutritionists are supposed to be the ultimate healthy eating gurus, right? So what do they actually stock in their pantries and make their meals with?

Now that I’ve been licensed as a nutritionist for almost five years (my anniversary is coming up on April 1st!), the tables have turned a bit. I can tell you that when I grocery shop, I often notice what people put in their carts. And, just like some folks might get a thrill from snooping through other people’s medicine cabinets or private drawers, I’m always curious to see what foods people have in their home kitchens.

On the flip side, I totally get it when people are interested to know what my family eats in the everyday. I’ll DEFINITELY admit that my own home pantry, fridge, and freezer are far from perfect (both in terms of their contents and their organization). But in the interest of transparency–and hopefully in the interest of education on real-world healthy eating–I thought I’d share *exactly* what goes on behind closed pantry doors at my house.

Ready? Let’s start the VIP backstage pass tour of a nutritionist’s kitchen. (I feel like there’s a reality show premise in here somewhere.)

Pantry

About a year ago, we finished a kitchen remodel that gave us tons of extra space–everywhere except the pantry. Whereas we used to have a walk-in pantry closet with a real door, now our dry goods are housed in more traditional pantry cabinets with pull-out drawers. Here’s a look.

Canned Goods

If you ask me, canned goods are where mealtime magic happens. They add flavor, they’re cheap, and they last forever. I almost always have canned tuna, chicken and vegetable broth, several varieties of beans, and spaghetti sauce on hand. Other usual suspects in my pantry are jarred veggies like artichokes, roasted red peppers, and olives.

Cereals

We’re not a huge cereal family, but when I do buy cereal, I like to look for brands that have limited sugar (like 8 grams per serving or less) and hopefully a hint of protein (like 3 grams or more).

Snack Drawer

Everyone needs a snack drawer! I try to fill ours with nutritious options that are high in fiber, protein, and/or healthy fats and relatively low in sugar. I also make a point not to get too many snacks in the ultra-processed category–aka artificial colors, lots of additives, and tons of sweetener. That’s why this drawer usually looks about like this. Nuts and seeds, dried fruits (if they’re not, like $800 at the store), whole grain crackers, and popcorn are pretty standard.

Grains

As you can see by now, my pantry isn’t the most pristine or well-ordered. (I warned you!) But I do at least try to keep pantry drawers organized by category, and this one is for grains–except for those lentils that snuck in.

As a nutrition professional, I take to heart the USDA’s recommendation to make at least half our grains whole. Hence the quinoa, oatmeal, and whole grain pastas you see here. Then again, having some refined grains on hand is A-ok with me. White rice, lasagna noodles, and pancake mix have their place in my pantry.

Baking Needs

Baking is therapy and you can’t tell me otherwise! I won’t go into too much detail here except to say that I’m a huge fan of King Arthur flour and buy it whenever I can. It’s an employee-owned company that makes never-bleached, American-grown wheat with a higher protein content than other brands. Need I say more?

Oils and Vinegars

In my pantry, olive oil is non-negotiable. It’s the ultimate healthy fat that works for everything. I use it in baking, cooking, roasting, sautéing, the works. Other go-to oils include vegetable, canola, sesame for Asian foods, and avocado for a splurge. Behind these oily giants I keep a variety of vinegars, like red wine, balsamic, and champagne.

Spice Cabinet

Like canned goods, herbs and spices jazz up meals for pennies (and not many calories). And, uh, yeah, I buy a lot of Kroger spices. I’ve almost never noticed a difference between them and more expensive name-brand herbs and spices.

Fridge

A few things that are always in my fridge:

• Yogurt
• Olive oil mayo
• Butter
• Lean meats and fish like chicken, salmon, and ground turkey
• Cheese (sliced and shredded)
• Deli meat (usually turkey or chicken but sometimes ham or roast beef)
• Milk and almond milk
• Natural coffee creamer like Chobani or Natural Bliss
• Nut butters (peanut and almond)
• Kombucha
• Fruits and veggies
• Salad dressings and mustards
• Eggs
• Hummus
• Wine

Freezer

Frozen foods get a bad rap, but done right, they can be a fabulously convenient part of a healthy diet. Some of my top frozen choices include:

• Frozen berries
• Frozen veggies like peas, corn, broccoli, and green beans
• Frozen meats
• Whole wheat bread (doesn’t have to be frozen, but it can help with shelf life)

And yes, that’s a package of Klondike bars underneath the banana cacao smoothie on the left. 😊

Deep Freezer

Our house came with a deep freezer when we bought it 11 years ago, and we have made good on the investment. Especially during Covid, having a deep freezer was a major help. I love stocking up on meats and fish when I find them at good prices, then popping them in the deep freezer for later use.

And, in case you were wondering, yes, nutritionists eat frozen pizza. At least, I do! The Private Selection salami and marinated peppers version in this pic is one of my absolute favorites.

Last Word

Okay, you might be wondering, what aren’t you showing? Not much! I occasionally buy ice cream or other sweets (if you’ve looked at this blog’s dessert page, you’ll know sweets are NOT off limits in my house). In general, though, my policy is to make most desserts from scratch. I prefer the freshness and quality of homemade treats, and since it takes effort to make them, it probably means we have them less often than if I stocked up on Oreos and candy each week.

So that’s it! A 360-degree look at my not-too-organized, mostly-but-not-entirely healthy food supply.  Now tell me in the comments: What’s one thing YOU always stock in your kitchen?

Looking for ways to make pandemic cooking a little easier? You’ve come to the right place!

Happy new year! I hope your 2021 is off to a good start…or at least a not-too-bad start or…yeah…

I personally didn’t have any expectations of reality making a dramatic turnaround with the change of the calendar. Although I do have hope for this new year, I think we’re all going to be living in some pretty stressful conditions for quite some time, between what my friend Sally calls the “P and Ps”: the pandemic and politics.

So raise your hand if you’re still struggling. Yeah, me too. After the 10 months we’ve all been through, it can be hard to muster motivation for work, parenting, and keeping your house from looking like a tornado blew through–let alone making a healthy dinner every night.

I’m right there with you, but as a nutritionist and long-time mom/chef, I have some tips for getting a home-cooked meal on the table, even when you’d really rather drink wine and watch Ted Lasso. (Or is that just me?)

Here are my top suggestions.

5 Ways to Make Pandemic Cooking a Little Easier

1. Give yourself built-in breaks

These days, I try to pencil in at least one really, really easy dinner a week. Maybe that means a three-ingredient salmon, a fix-and-forget “dump” meal in the Crock Pot, or a healthier Trader Joe’s meal. I especially like TJ’s chili-lime chicken burgers and their lentil soup with ancient grains. These go-to products save my bacon on those evenings when I just don’t have the energy for a more impressive meal (and the dish washing that comes afterward). Give yourself planned breaks with super-simple meals.

2. Go for almost-homemade

There’s no shame in getting a little boost from meal-starters that take some of the work out of prep. I personally draw the line at high-sodium boxed meals like Hamburger Helper, but almost-homemade is better than not homemade at all. Consider shortcutting your way to a more convenient meal using ingredients like pre-made pizza crust, pre-sliced veggies, or rotisserie chicken.

3. Meal plan (always!)

I will beat the meal planning drum until the day I die, but I find it especially important during the pandemic. Going into the week without a plan for (at least) your weeknight dinners is just asking for stress. So set aside an hour or so on a Sunday afternoon–or any time that works for you–and hammer out a plan for the week ahead. An ounce of meal planning prevention is worth a pound of fast food cure. (Or something like that.)

Check out my semi-vegetarian monthly meal plans here and here!

4. Double up

Here’s another tip I’ll happily advocate all day long. Doubling up on entire meals or sides makes life soooo much easier. Use a large pot of rice as a side dish for chicken, then as the base of fried rice later in the week. Make a batch of pulled pork for tacos, then put the rest on a pizza. Or straight-up make two casseroles, soups, or pasta dishes. and save half for another evening. In the words of my husband’s favorite bizarro TV personality Dr. Steve Brule:

 

5. Get the whole family involved

News flash: Even if you’re a mom, you’re not the only person in your household who can take part in meal-making. I know…

The fact is, any able-bodied person in your home can–and should–help out with cooking. Getting kids to join you in the kitchen doesn’t just help you; it sets them up for a lifetime of healthy home cooking. (Check out my article on Verywell Family that will get you started on age-appropriate cooking tasks for kids!)

So get those kids and husbands and grandmas and anyone else you can grab to help with slicing, dicing, sautéing, and more. The family that cooks together weathers the pandemic together–with some healthy, homemade meals on the table.

Need recipes for healthy, easy meals? Here are some of my faves:

Easy Canned Tuna Poke Bowl

Soba Salad with Chicken and Cabbage

Salmon Kale Caesar Wraps

Lemon Dill Orzo with Chickpeas and Artichokes

 

My kids have these books–if you have kids, you’ve probably seen them, too–that are all about strange and interesting facts. 1,001 Facts About the Human Body That’ll Blow Your Mind, 2,002 Weird and Wacky Facts About Natural Disasters, 3,003 Star Wars Facts You Won’t Learn From Watching the Movies. These are, of course, always complete with pictures of volcanoes gurgling over and half-costumed Wookies. (Aside: No, autocorrect, for once in my life I do NOT want to write “cookies,” but thank you for understanding my inner monologue so well.)

Last week I was chaperoning my 8-year-old daughter’s field trip to the natural history museum when a kid in my little student-herd kept getting on my nerves with his endless recitation of facts. Actually, he would pipe up, the longest whale on Earth was blah blah feet long. ACTUALLY, the oldest trilobite ever discovered was blah blah billion years old. No doubt, he had gotten these from the same books my kids pore over. (That or he has a lot of internet access for a third grader.)

I really had to grit my teeth to keep from opening up an ACTUAL can of chaperone whoop-ass on this kid, but then I realized…I’m a collector of weird facts, too. I just like different kinds of weird facts, usually about food. After all, fun facts are such delightful little nuggets of intellectual enjoyment, especially when they pertain to something that already interests us. Learning something new or strange must light up a particular part of our brains connected to pleasure. See, kids? Learning IS fun.

Anyway, I’m a sucker for surprising tidbits about any category of comestible, so for your reading pleasure (or, more likely, my own) I’ve assembled several about one of my favorite categories of food: fruit! Fruit is such a commonplace thing in our edible lexicon, but ACTUALLY it holds a ton of strange secrets. Therefore, I give you..

11 Weird Facts About Fruit

1. Kiwi isn’t originally from New Zealand or Australia. This fruit was originally grown in China and was known as the Chinese gooseberry until 1959.

2. Many people assume jackfruit is the world’s largest fruit. After all, these giant, spiky beasts have been known to kill people when they fall off trees–and they are the largest tree fruit on the planet. But the biggest fruit ever recorded was an Atlantic Giant pumpkin, which weighed in at over a ton. (Though if you ask me, it’s debatable that a pumpkin is a fruit.)

3. What we think of as seeds on the outside of strawberries are actually called achenes. The actual seeds are inside the achenes.

4. While we’re on the subject of strawberries, did you know that, ounce for ounce, they contain more vitamin C than oranges, grapefruit, lemons, and limes?

5. Passionfruit contains the most fiber of all fruits, with 98% of your daily value in a cup.

6. Tried Sumo oranges yet? If not, get thee to a Whole Foods and load up on these amazingly delicious mandarin oranges! But don’t be shocked when you see their price tag; the reason these oranges are so expensive is that they take up to four years to grow. Plus, in the U.S. they ship from only one facility in California.

7. While bananas get credit for containing lots of potassium, several other fruits actually boast more of this micronutrient. Watermelon, dried apricots, and avocados all have more potassium than bananas.

8. Why does one bad apple spoil the bunch? When apples (and some other fruits) start to rot, they release a gas called ethylene, which can reach–and begin to degrade–other fruits close by.

9. If you’ve ever been warned against eating grapefruit while on certain medications, you should probably listen. Grapefruit can block the action of certain enzymes responsible for metabolizing medication. The result: you end up with more of the medication in your bloodstream (and possibly adverse side effects).

10. Maybe almonds should be classified as fruits! They come from the prunus genus of trees and shrubs, which includes peaches, plums, cherries, and apricots. (Almonds are most closely related to peaches–which could be why the two taste so good together.)

11. Finally, my favorite weird fact about fruit–or is it about a vegetable? In the 1893 case Nix vs. Hedden, the Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes are vegetables, at least for tax purposes. So there you have it, if you ever need to settle the age-old debate.

Are you considering a career in freelance nutrition writing? Check out my post on how to get started, or like A Love Letter to Food on Facebook for more tips!

Need a professional health and wellness writer? Contact me at Sarah@ALoveLetterToFood.com.

If you don’t know me personally, you might not know that the writing I do here on A Love Letter to Food isn’t my only writing. Not by a long shot, actually. I’m a freelance writer–and not in the sense of one-off articles published here or there. Writing is my main gig, my bread and butter, my livelihood. I spend anywhere from 15 to 30 hours a week cranking out content for a number of publications and private clients (and probably would do more if I weren’t also a wife and mom to three school-aged kids).

As a licensed nutritionist, I primarily focus on nutrition, health, and wellness writing. I’ve been fortunate enough to land articles (and sometimes recurring work) with respected sites like Eat This, Not That!, Healthline, Verywell Fit, Greatist, and–coming soon!–Eating Well and Prevention. I also do quite a bit of parenting and spirituality writing for publications like Today’s Parent, Busted Halo, Aleteia, and Amendo…because I’m more than just a nutrition professional. I’m a mom and a Catholic Christian. I figure my writing can reflect all of these facets of my identity. And so far, I absolutely love this career path.

Quite honestly, before now, I’d never had a career I really liked. I’ve been an adjunct German professor, children’s museum tour guide, a secretary, a YMCA customer service rep, a substitute teacher, and–a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away–an ice cream scooper at Cold Stone Creamery. In each of these positions, I was always seeking more: more opportunity, more money, more ice cream (Ha! But seriously.). But now, with my freelance writing career, I find there’s no limit on my achievement or how far I can go.

I’ve written on this blog before about how this nutrition freelance writing journey began. In fact, it’s one of my most popular posts! Check it out for practical tips on getting started. But now I wanted to share some of the reasons this is such a rewarding career. Whether you’re considering dipping a toe or taking the plunge into freelance health and wellness writing, I hope this list offers some encouragement that propels you forward. (Or, if you’re looking for a writer, visit my Work With Me page.)

Here are five things that make freelance nutrition writing an awesome career.

1. Flexibility

Let’s say I want to meet a friend for lunch or need to pick up my kids on an unexpected early release day at school. No problem! The freelance career means that I make my own schedule and can roll with the punches of unexpected schedule changes. (Which we all know happens often, especially with kids.) If need be, I can get my work done at night or on weekends. Heck, as long as I have my laptop and internet access, I could even leave the country. I sure wouldn’t mind tapping away at a window overlooking the Eiffel Tower!

2. Recognition and Purpose

One of the saddest things I ever heard from colleagues when I was interning as a diet tech at a local hospital was, “We don’t actually know if the doctors read our notes.” Wait, what? You don’t even know if all the work you’re doing charting on patients actually does anything for their care? Major NOPE moment for me. (In addition to the fact that the dietetics office adjacent to the cafeteria that smelled like dirty mop water and overcooked tater tots.)

Personally, I want a job that I know actually makes a difference to someone, somewhere. Even though I might not know my readers’ names or how my writing impacts their lives, I believe that creating trustworthy nutrition and health information has a certain nobility and purpose. That means a lot to me.

3. Money

Raise your hand if you like making money. Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The nutrition industry is notorious for grossly underpaying its professionals. I happen to know that several employers in my area start their NDTRs at under $15/hour. And when I worked for a health and wellness non-profit–one with a top-notch national reputation, mind you!–I literally made minimum wage. For most of us trying to make an actual living, this is not sustainable. And as nutrition professionals, our knowledge isn’t worth such low compensation!

That’s why I love freelance writing. In a given month as a writer, I make anywhere from four to seven times what I made for around the same number of hours at a non-profit. Yes, skills and experience matter for scoring higher pay, but I don’t have to attend seminars or trainings or even necessarily obtain my RDN. I just have to research well and communicate well.

4. Independence

I’ll be honest…I never had a boss I loved. Several companies I worked for were oozing with hierarchy, which, when you’re at the bottom, can be pretty discouraging. (Or, to be more blunt: It sucks.) Plus, I’m not crazy about getting micromanaged. (True story: I once had a manager write me a note that said, “Write a note that says…” and then wrote the entire thing herself.) But I really don’t mind working for myself!

As a freelancer, I can pitch whatever publications I have the guts to approach, set my own hours (see #1, Flexibility), and go after as much or as little work as I like. I work in tandem with clients and editors, but I’m in charge of my own career.

5. Minimal Hassle

Long commute? Mandatory meetings? Dress code? Nope, nope, and nope. There are definitely some things I miss about working in an office setting with fellow co-workers, but I sure do love not having to deal with a lot of the hassle.

If you’re a dietitian or diet tech, I’d be willing to bet you face another hassle: wondering whether your patients or clients actually listen to you. Your training qualifies you to be an expert on all things diet-related, but is that high-cholesterol patient really going to take your advice and stop eating burgers and fries five days a week? Maybe, maybe not.

The beauty of putting your writing out into the universe is knowing that, very likely, you won’t get pushback about it. You won’t have to hound anyone about counting their carbs or cutting back on sodium. You’re simply creating solid health information–and you can feel good about that. Rest assured that plenty of eyeballs will see your work. Whether or not the owners of those eyeballs take your good advice and translate it into practical change isn’t up to you. For me, that’s a relief. People change on their own timeline, not mine.

Convinced yet that freelance nutrition writing is a great career? I wish you all the best! Don’t forget to check out my post on how to get started with freelance health and wellness writing, or like A Love Letter to Food on Facebook for more tips!

If you need a freelance nutrition, health, wellness, or parenting writer, I’d love to work with you! Email me at Sarah@ALoveLetterToFood.com.