In my efforts to help you understand how to cook healthy foods for yourself and your family, the most important thing to remember is that the most nutritious food comes from fresh produce. So go ahead, enjoy the summer harvest and the flavor of just-picked items, you might even want to enjoy the flavors of some unfamiliar fruits and vegetables.

Today, I want to share information about an item that you probably very familiar with and already understand the health benefits and eat it every summer. The tomato.

One of the best flavors of summer are fresh tomatoes. They are bright, clean, slightly acidic and can be used in just about any kitchen application. Most of us love a sliced tomato on sandwiches, or diced tomatoes into a cool summer salad or salsa.

However, if you have to cook a tomato, the skin becomes bothersome. The skin of a tomato does not break down under heat and needs to be removed unless you like little rolled quills of tomato skin stuck in your teeth after a meal.

First heat some water to simmer or a very slow boil. While your water is heating, core your tomato and on the opposite end, mark an "X" in the skin. Once your water is ready, drop in your tomato. You will not need to leave the tomato in very long as you're not trying to cook it, rather to tease the skin off. When the skin on the tomato begins to split, remove it from the water and drop it into ice cold water. This change from intense heat to ice cold is called "shocking" and will cause the skin on the tomato to begin to roll up on the edges and separate from the tomato so you can easily pull the skin off using your fingers.

Once this is complete, you can cut the tomato in half and flick out the seeds inside the tomato. Once you remove the seeds and give your halves of tomato a good squeeze, you now have peeled, seeded tomatoes that you can use in any number of dishes. The French call this procedure “tomato concasse” (con-ka-say). It’s peeled and seeded tomato, and a procedure anyone can master in their own kitchen for sauces, jarring, or diced in any dish.

Nutritious food can be found all around us and in learning how to cook healthy dishes, open your mind to the idea of learning some new procedures that will enable you to enjoy your produce in fresh, new ways. Enjoy your healthy eating!

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Every night when you go home, you have to make a decision about what to have for dinner. For the most part, we would like to eat nutritious food, but many of us didn't grow up learning how to cook healthy meals. If you're watching your health, eating out is not the best option, so most people look in their cookbooks for recipes. This isn't always the best solution, because recipes lie. But, if you know the right way, it’s very easy to cook nutritious food every night of the week.

This is the process that many people go through:

1. You come home from work, and have to start planning dinner.
2. You’ve already cooked the 5 things you know how to cook this week.
3. You need more ideas,
4. You look through the pantry, consider calling for pizza…

It’s not only exhausting, but you have to re-educate yourself every single night. It's not going to get you the results you want or deserve for yourself and your family. If you’re looking to cook more nutritious food at home, save time and have endless cooking ideas, you’re in the right place.

There are 5 simple steps to cooking with fresh ingredients.

Step 1: Get Fresh Ingredients

• The first step for using fresh, seasonal ingredients is to actually GET some.
• This could be the most difficult step for many of you that are used to the huge mega-mart grocery store.

There are alternatives. My eyes were opened to more alternatives during my trip to Paris, France. The food culture in Paris is so much different from where I live in the US. There were very few corporate “chain” restaurants there.

Many of the restaurants were small, 10 table places where there were three people on staff, the chef, the maitre d’ and the dish washer. They had their service each night and went home. Each time I asked why their food tasted so good, they all had the same answer. And, not a single person bragged about their recipes.

Instead, I was told that I needed fresh, simple ingredients. I discovered that I needed to examine where my food is coming from. This doesn't mean simply the store where you shop, but what is the country of origin for your food. Think about how you feel about your money going to another country when there are farmers in your community that need your help. Now think about how long ago that vegetable was harvested in the far away country, and what happened to it during its travels.

It might be inconvenient to drive past dozens of mega-marts to find a farmers market. But you may find that there’s a local produce roadside stand near you that you’ve avoided. In my case, I signed up for “The Produce Box” which delivers fresh community supported agriculture to my doorstep. Fresh is important because fruits and vegetables degrade as soon as they’re picked.

• Nutrients are lost
• They become visually unappealing
• Harder to cook successfully
• Loss of flavor!

Step 2: Select the freshest ingredients when you shop

Be aware of what you're choosing, even if you shop at the local produce stand or farmers market. Some items may still be fresher than others and the most nutritious, healthy food is the freshest. You have to be even more aware if you shop at the local mega grocery.

In understanding how to cook healthy, you need to be able to understand the difference between fresh food and food that has been ripened artificially or is not ripe at all. Do you know how to tell a fresh orange or grapefruit? Did you know that color is NOT an indicator of freshness in peaches?

Step 3: Storing Fresh Ingredients

For maximum shelf life, nutritional preservation and budget savings, there are three issues in storing fresh ingredients:

1. Moisture
2. Air circulation
3. Temperature

Not everything can be thrown in to the drawer in the refrigerator and preserve their freshness. In fact, some things will suffocate in a plastic bag. Other produce will need to be wrapped tightly to retain moisture. Other items will need to be kept cold, while others will degrade under the cold.

Step 4: Master a few basic cooking techniques

At the very least, master the following techniques:

1. Understanding the transfer of heat
2. Saute method
3. Know how to make sassy sauces

But there are so many more. All of the basic methods in cooking are covered in my live cooking classes. Giving you the tools to understand these basic methods is what makes my approach to teaching cooking so unique and why people rave about my Web Cooking Classes. Web Cooking Classes empowers you with a thorough understanding of basic methods which allows you to cook and create without a reliance on recipes. Pure freedom!

Step 5: Finishing the Process with Fresh Herbs

This is the number one question I get during my live cooking classes:
Q: "Which herbs to use and how much to use?"
A: "Use the ones you like."

Seriously! Use your nose to see what it reminds you of, use the ones that you like and use as much as you like.

You want to know my number one herb secret? Herbs go last! Fresh herbs should not be cooked. In fact, just the heat of the finished dish is enough to release the aromas of fresh herbs.

These are the secrets that chefs know about how to cook healthy which are so easy to incorporate into your every day cooking. You can cook nutritious food that you want to eat for your health and for how wonderful it tastes.

You can do it!

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Are You Committing Crimes Against Your Stomach?

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By avoiding cooking healthy and not eating nutritious foods, you have been committing crimes against your stomach. I used to be a repeat offender until I came up with 4 steps that have kept the food police away.

Here's how you can work off the crimes against your stomach:

1. Eat Purposely: Stop, sit down, and it’s time to eat.  Bring back actual meal time, even if it’s at your desk. Don't eat on the run, stop eating in your car, don't eat while you are trying to accomplish other tasks. By not focusing on your food, you are making it easier to eat unhealthy foods. Slow down and you will begin to appreciate better foods as you pay more attention to what you are putting in your mouth.

2. Better Breakfast: Start eating a breakfast of whole grains, granola and fresh fruit every morning. Stay away from the one-handed, on-the-go breakfast as these are usually very heavily laden with salt and calories.

3. Grocery Store Lunch: Go to the grocery store, that’s where the food is! The real, whole food, nutritious food that your body needs. This is where you can get a freshly prepared sandwich, salad, Odwalla juices, nuts and granola bars. Stay away from the drive-thru, fast food restaurants, and the pizza place, all of which will keep you from eating healthy.

4. Methods vs. Recipes: At dinner time, practice basic, simple cooking methods, not complicated recipes.  Complicated recipes have ingredients that you may not be familiar with, are hard to find or may be difficult to understand. By practicing basic cooking methods, you could, for example, make pasta and cook a chicken breast  instead. That's so much healthier than having someone ring your doorbell and deliver your dinner in a cardboard box or a paper bag!

The more you cook and eat nutritious, healthy food, the more you'll crave nutritious, healthy food. You'll sleep better, your anxiety levels will go down and your body will feel healthier overall. Remember, I'm talking from experience and I can tell you that I started craving better foods more, and bad foods less.

You can too! Get over your fear of cooking by learning basic, simple cooking methods. You'll feel better too, and of course, you'll get the food police off of your back.

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So, you’ve been committing crimes against your stomach instead of cooking healthy, nutritious food. Maybe you're thinking that it's not so bad, I mean, what's wrong with eating pre-packaged foods, processed foods, frozen foods, foods with ingredients you can't say, much less spell? What's wrong? Well, it's a crime to treat your body that way! What do you think your body does with all of those ingredients? It's not only unhealthy, I want to know what you think you would do if the Food Police were to catch you committing your crimes.

What would you do?

Well, of course, you would have excuses! Isn't that what we do when we're doing something that we know is wrong? Sure it is! And, I've come up with a list of excuses that the Food Police might hear from you...

The Speeding Excuse:

"Officer, I don’t have the time to cook."
"I'm in a big hurry!"
"It's just quicker and easier to go to the drive-thru."

The Broken Speedometer Excuse:

"Officer, the oven temperature is off, so I can’t cook anything."
"My oven just doesn't work right and I don't have the right pans."
"I just can't cook."

The Impending Event Excuse:

"Officer, It’s an emergency, I’m a pregnant woman and I have to get to the drive-thru!"
"My kids have basketball tonight and this fast food place is on the way."

I have to tell you that just as with real policemen, none of these excuses would soften the food police. However, there are some changes that you could make to your eating habits that might grant you some leniency from the food police.

If the food police are watching you:

Whole Fruit Breakfast: Eat an apple or your favorite piece of fruit each morning instead of your favorite muffin or other baked goods.

Whole Food Lunch: Instead of walking under the golden arches, if you were seen walking into the grocery store for lunch, returning with a salad, cooked chicken breast, or whole fresh fruit juice, the food police just might look the other way.

Healthy Dinner: If your house is bugged by the food police, you’ll want them to hear the sounds of a basic sauté method, the sizzle of a sauté pan, the oven opening and closing and the timer going off.

Cooking and eating more nutritious foods will help you to keep the food police at bay and even if they catch you committing the occasional crime against your stomach, you'll be more likely to have the charges dismissed in open court.

In my next blog post, I’ll tell you how the charges against me have been dismissed.

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People will see me or write to me and say, "But, Chef Todd, how can you possibly understand my fear of cooking? You cook beautiful, nutritious foods for thousands every week." First of all, I haven't always eaten or cooked nutritious food because healthy cooking wasn't on my agenda and as far as the fear of cooking...well, I certainly do understand it, because I still have it.

Let me tell you a couple of stories that developed my fear of cooking:

Story #1 - I was the executive chef at a very large hospital, I was also a chef at the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington D.C. and we fed 15,000 people breakfast and lunch every day. Talk about a moment for fear of cooking! In fact, on my first day on the job at NSA, I had to grill cases and cases of chicken breast (remember, 15,000 people!!). I had the non-stick spray in one hand and the chicken breast in the other and began to spray the chicken, put it on the grill, spray the chicken, put it on the grill (you get the picture) until I began to smell something foul. I looked down and to my shock and horror, I was spraying the chicken with stainless steel grill cleaner! I had to throw about 100 chicken breasts into the garbage on my first day on the job.

Story #2 - This is my catering horror story that could strike fear in anyone that cooks (professional or not). I was catering a very large wedding with approximately 450 people in attendance. I had a warmer loaded with food for all of the wedding guests and placed it in my catering van using a big lift gate. Everything was great, we took the first turn and there was a sound from the back of the van, but we continued until we got to the event. We opened the back of the van and the warmer was tilted on its side with gravy pouring out of the bottom and all of the food smashed against the front of the warmer.

My fear of cooking is on a professional level, and I can’t avoid it. If I tried, I would be out of business. You, on the other hand, you can avoid cooking, but it would be a crime. It would be a crime against your stomach and your entire body. How do I know? Well, because I used to avoid cooking for myself at all costs.

I would cook all day long, beautiful nutritious food for my business, deliver my healthy cooking and think to myself, "Wow, now I'm tired and hungry!" And you know what I would do? I would pull my upscale catering van through the drive-through at McDonald's and commit crimes against my stomach. I would be cooking healthy all day long and then not eat healthy myself.

And do you know how I know that I was committing crimes against my stomach? Because keeping myself from eating healthy, nutritious foods left me feeling badly, sometimes I would even feel depressed and lethargic, and on top of that, I didn't sleep well. How embarrassing! To cook healthy foods all day long and then choose not to cook for myself and eat less than nutritiously sound foods. Even though I was cooking great food for others, I was committing a crime against myself.

Fast food, packaged foods, heavy-salt frozen foods are all ways to avoid being able to understand and handle whole foods. I have committed these crimes against my own stomach and now I want to help you with some community service on your intestines and start giving a few ideas to fill your stomach with more wholesome food, whether you cook or not.

“Burn Your Recipes” and Cook Like a Chef at Home with my cooking DVDs!

The Complete cooking DVDcollection for cooking without recipes.