Living a mindful and balanced life is about connecting the mind and body and that includes our relationship with food.

It's called mindful eating and it's about being present and intentional with what we eat, which can have a big impact on our overall wellbeing.

Joining me now to share more about that is author and wellness coach Rebecca Kastin.

You are also an integrative nutrition specialist.

We're so lucky to have you at FAU.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So what are we looking at right now?

What are we cooking today?

Today we're going to make a very hearty, nutrientdense lentil stew.

It has full of protein, it's got lots of vitamins and minerals, B vitamins, and it's a great, easy hack for busy moms, people who are trying to be healthy during the new year.

Why lentils?

There's so much to it.

Hm.

So lentils is a great protein source, especially for like my non meat eaters.

I love lentils.

It's full of iron, protein, folic acid, B vitamins, so I love lentils.

All the beans are great, but in this stew like lentils really gives it a nice, warm kind of homey feeling.

It really is.

It's going to not only be healthy, but you can add all these wonderful things and maybe make it your own.

Tell us why you picked some of these specific ingredients.

[Rebecca] Okay, so I love teaching to eat the rainbow, right?

And when we eat the rainbow, first of all, you're getting all the different nutrients and vitamins and minerals.

Each different color fruit and vegetable, there's a reason for it.

They each offer our bodies something different.

The great thing about these stews is that you can use any vegetable, right?

Anything that you have in your refrigerator.

[Arlene] Perfect.

[Rebecca] Whatever is on sale at any of the local supermarkets and you can throw anything in that, change up the, the, the vegetables, change up the spices and create just like a whole new flavor, but in this dish, you're getting like a very protein rich meal that's really good for your health and it's good for your brain and it's great, easy to feed the kids and it's great, has great leftover, you know, capacity.

[Arlene] Value.

Value, yeah.

We love that as moms for sure.

So what is mindful eating?

I guess we can start cooking and talk about what it is to be mindful because there's a mindful element in even cutting the vegetables.

[Rebecca] There is, so when we talk about like mindfulness just in and of itself, we're just fully immersed in the experience of, you know, creating the recipe, shopping for it, picking out the beautiful vegetables and then when you sit down with your plate, like using all of your senses, the smells, the taste, the textures, even like listening to like how a particular food, like may crunch in your mouth, right?

And if you take that time and eat it really slowly, like your body gets that full experience, which is so much better than that everything's fast, fast, fast, fast.

[Arlene] Right.

Your body doesn't know what to do with all of that fast food that you're consuming.

Like if you're eating in the car or eating standing up.

Exactly.

Or just rushing through the meal 'cause you're at work.

Exactly, it's just creating more stress in your body and the body kind of stores it and this is where we start to see metabolic disease and weight gain.

So if we sit and we are just really enjoying it with our family.

Right.

Right?

You also get that family time, right?

Sitting with them.

[Arlene] Absolutely.

And really just slowly enjoying a meal and then your body knows what to do with every nutrient and uses it for energy and helps with your brain and helps with weight loss and digestion, so.

Love that.

Just slowing, mindfulness is just slowing it down.

[Arlene] Yeah.

And just being aware.

Even like one meal at a time.

Yeah.

Just trying to slow it down a little bit.

Exactly.

So okay, so for those of us who don't cook a lot, what would be sort of the first thing we start making?

What do we put in the pot first?

Okay.

And then after So we're gonna chop all of our vegetables.

Love that.

And we're gonna put a little bit of olive oil, maybe about a table spoon or two.

Olive oil is really good for you, it's good for your brain, so we need olive oil, but if you're not doing oils you can, you could start it with a little bit of broth.

[Arlene] Okay.

[Rebecca] So we have our olive oil in there.

The first thing we're gonna add is our onions.

[Arlene] Love that, it's a lot of flavor.

[Rebecca] Right?

Its one of like the best smells in the whole world.

[Arlene] I, I smell it in here.

[Rebecca] Smell like onions and, and garlic.

So we have our onions in the pot and then we have three cloves of garlic.

You can either dice them, chop them, or use our garlic press, which is my favorite easy hack.

Love that.

And the prep of all these vegetables literally took me, I don't know, less than 15 minutes.

And the cost, it might look like this was very expensive, but it's really not.

10 to $12 max depending on where you're shopping.

So this will feed a family of eight or a smaller family with lots of leftovers and it averages out to under $2 a serving and then just put a little bit of rice.

Then you've got a complete protein, a little green salad, and you've got like this beautiful meal and leftovers to take the lunch the next day, so it's fabulous.

And a mom hack that I have, and this is for anybody, you know, college student in a rush, someone busy trying to practice mindful eating is maybe some frozen vegetables, 'cause in case you buy them raw, you don't make them in time.

You don't wanna lose the vegetable or the money, so frozen vegetables are okay too.

Frozen vegetables are great.

I always say I'd rather you eat a frozen vegetable than no vegetable at all, right?

Frozen vegetables are frozen right as they're picked so you know, in the perfect world, I would love everyone to eat organics, but it's sometimes it's not affordable.

So you can always get frozen vegetables.

Frozen organic vegetables are a lot cheaper and you can use those in, in the stew.

Also, this is great for when you have vegetables at home and they're starting to go bad.

[Arlene] Right.

Don't throw them out, like throw out like the icky parts and then just chop 'em up and just throw away the rest.

[Arlene] Cut around it, save it.

That's it, cut around it.

Don't, don't leave it, okay.

So we've got our onions and our garlic.

We're gonna cook those down for a few minutes.

We just want them to be really soft and fragrant.

Low heat, we don't want them to burn.

Perfect.

And then after that we're gonna put in all of our carrots.

[Arlene] Good for your eyes and celery for [Rebecca] And our celery.

[Arlene] Love that.

[Rebecca] And we're gonna cook this again for like another five minutes or so and what we wanna do is just really have everything just nice and soft.

[Arlene] And the potatoes can be peeled or not peeled as well, right?

[Rebecca] Potatoes peeled or not peeled.

The potatoes give it more fiber, more vitamins.

All the skins on the vegetables actually boost the nutrient profile.

So as long as you're washing it very, very well.

Especially if you're buying conventional veggies, you may want to soak it in some baking soda, or get like an organic like vegetable wash. [Arlene] Oh wow.

And just really, really scrub and make sure all the dirt's off and then you can keep the skins on.

[Arlene] Okay, that's a good tip.

So you also teach at FAU.

I do.

Tell us about that.

I do.

So I teach an integrative cooking class at FAU and it is free to the community.

We actually have a lot of classes on Oh wow.

Cooking, mindfulness, breath work that's free to the community and what we teach is holistic living and how to just be mindful in everything that you do and you know, one of the greatest things is knowing that you have a breath, which is like your best tool and you take it with you.

So people can come there and learn all kinds of things on how to support like holistic wellness.

Some moms don't have time to like meditate, but something like this could even be meditative.

Like how you're chopping your vegetables and, and stirring the pot and, and this is also great to enlist your kids, right?

Your kids can help.

Absolutely.

If they can use a knife.

So then we're gonna put in our spices.

We've got teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of paprika, some Italian seasoning, or you can use thyme and some salt and pepper.

[Arlene] That looks amazing, and some of these diced tomatoes as well.

[Rebecca] And that's gonna give it some flavor.

A little bit.

Yes and then we're putting in one can of diced, chopped tomatoes.

[Arlene] That goes all right in together, looks really good.

[Rebecca] Right?

It smells so amazing and then we're going to put in our broth.

Okay.

Okay.

And how much broth do you need?

So about one and a half of these, so we're using about six cups.

So, which this is about four cups, so about one and a half of these are gonna go in.

[Arlene] And we haven't even put in the lentils yet.

Then we put in the lentils.

Last is the lentils.

So the thing with the lentils is you always want to rinse them.

Okay.

To get any excess starch.

Right.

And sometimes you'll find little rocks.

Okay.

So you always wanna like rinse and check your lentils.

Rinse the lentils.

[Rebecca] We're gonna put that in, right?

[Arlene] Love that.

[Rebecca] We're going to stir that up.

[Arlene] It's from the earth.

[Rebecca] And that is it and then you're gonna take your cover and just cover it up and it's gonna sit for about 30 to 40 minutes.

You just want the lentils like nice and soft and the vegetable's not mushy.

They'll have a little bit of bite and you can get that started and then just, you know, set the table, help the kids with homework and then we have our finished product.

I love that and you can have this, you said with a salad.

Lemme put this right here.

Yeah, so What could you, can you pair this with?

[Rebecca] This would be great with, you know, over some rice.

If you wanna put some white rice or some brown rice, you can make like a little green salad and it's just such a hearty meal.

Show the cameras how good this looks and it smells so good, nice and steamy.

Can you see my bowl?

Can't wait to try it, I don't wanna spill it.

This is, this is great for our Florida winters, but Yes.

Anytime.

Here you go.

And then thank you and then we can also, a little garnish, right?

A little cilantro.

Make it look pretty.

Make it look a little beautiful.

[Arlene] Love that.

[Rebecca] Right?

'Cause we wanna [Arlene] I can't wait to try this.

[Rebecca] We wanna look at all of like the colors and the, and the smell.

This is mindful.

That's part of mindful eating is, is like getting the sensation and the aromas and stuff.

It smells so good.

Well, I hope you enjoy it, cheers.

I know let's, I'm so excited to try this, 'cause I've been looking at it and smelling it, so good.

That is delicious.

All the spices come through.

Yeah.

Nothing's overpowering, everything blends in well together.

Thank you so much for being here, Rebecca.

Oh, you're so welcome, thank you for having me.

And of course, and I'm gonna try to keep mindful eating at each and every meal.