The Real Cooking Competition: Ellie’s Real Good Food

Ellie with guests at her launch party

Television abounds with cooking shows: chefs making Instagram-worthy meals and reality shows where amateur and professional chefs compete to remake processed food or combine ingredients that should never been in the same home, let alone the same plate (salmon cupcakes anyone?).

What I’ve not seen till now is a chef who is also a nutritionist making real food that busy parents or grad students can throw together quickly. Ellie Krieger, a New York Times best-selling author, has a new show, Ellie’s Real Good Food on public television.

At the launch party for the show, Ellie described her approach as “the sweet spot where delicious and healthy meet.”

Talking about Real Good Food

In fact, in Episode 2, Say Yes to Chocolate, Ellie shows how a little good chocolate goes a long way. Keep her hot chocolate recipe in mind for when the weather turns cool (or for cool nights at the beach this summer). She uses just 3 ingredients: good quality cocoa powder, a bit of sugar and low fat milk. You can make this vegan with soy or almond milk, or spice it up with some fresh ginger; this is far superior to the fake chemical laden packets most of us reach for.

Busy Mom AND grad student

My daughter is in graduate school and has very little free time; imagine also being a new mom! Ellie shows a mom who is also a grad student that whisking together your own salad dressing takes just seconds, and it keeps for a week. No more high fructose corn syrup in dressing, or cheap oil.

And for breakfast; I’ve always soaked steel cut oats in milk overnight for cold weather breakfasts, but I never think about oats in summer.

Ellie has a recipe for rolled oats soaked in milk and plain yogurt, with blueberries and chia seeds. It’s a delicious, healthy breakfast, and since you mix it up the night before, you can just grab and go in the morning.

Now that’s Real Good!