Clean Eating and the old Clean Plate Club

Clean eating is like a trip to the past, cooking your food from scratch as grandma used to call it. It's an adventure, and some people take it to the next level, collecting cookbooks from fifty years ago or more, reading the recipes that used yeast, sugar and salt and flour to make homemade bread, caramelizing your vegetables to add a certain browned flavor.

Yes. Grandma could take a little bit of butter, and some onions, peppers and celery, toss them in the pan and get them frying. In another kettle, she'd have boiling water, to which she added strips or balls of cut flour dough, and she'd have noodles or dumplings in a matter of minutes. In another kettle, she'd have the juice that was leftover from cooking a turkey, and perhaps a bag of frozen mixed vegetables.
Mix everything together and just let it merge on a simmer for hours and, you'd have a nourishing, hearty comfort food that warmed from within and made you feel the love invested in the dish.

Just before adding your onions to your clean dish, If you take butter and heat it on medium and place your minced onions in it, until the onions start to turn brown on the edges and translucent, your onions will enhance any casserole. The browning pulls a certain sweetness from onion and the onion becomes more palatable.

It is a good plan to do the same with your celery, or your bits of minced sweet pepper.

Making a pie, from scratch, is easier than you would think. Crust - flour, water, oil and salt. Inside: frozen fruit, a package of fruit flavored jello on the fruit. Bake for an hour. Let cool overnight.

There is a certain amount of moisture in most foods. The trick to pulling the moisture from each ingredient and letting that collection of moisture form and fuse with others is the process of clean food.

Having the cover on your pan, ensures that this moisture does not escape while you are cooking. Either way, if you don't cover, the fluid will cook out and the food will brown, adding another spectrum of flavor.

Controlling the amount of water controls the final flavor. You can add additional water later to incorporate more ingredients.