These Cooking “Aha!” Moments Make Brain-Healthy Eating So Much Better

3 DIY swaps for store-bought ingredients and 1 savory blueberry dressing

Hello from Mexico! I am wrapping up a week of teaching at La Cocina Que Canta cooking school at Rancho La Puerta. Over the last eight years, I have taught hundreds of students here the Brain Health Kitchen method of cooking. One of my goals is to give them a set of skills that they can use at home to make cooking easier, more fun, and of course, more brain-healthy. I am always amazed and delighted how students react to novel ingredients. This week, nutritional yeast was all the rage. (We used it to make the Walnut Parm on page 184 of my book.)

One of the true joys of teaching is to see a student light up when they grasp a new concept. So for today’s newsletter, I thought it would be fun to share some of the “aha” moments my students had this week. There were many! 

DIY Cauliflower Rice

The Cauliflower and Kimchi Fried Rice was a big hit with students, made even more special by using RLP Chef Reyna Venegas’ housemade kimchi. Cauliflower rice is a brain-healthy swap for white rice, providing fiber, flavonoids, and an important antioxidant—sulforaphane. It’s a brilliant way to squeeze in another serving of vegetables while swapping out a refined carbohydrate. Since it’s easily available frozen or fresh at most grocery stores, most students had never made cauliflower rice from scratch.