Nutrition and Cooking Strategies for Sheltering in Places

COVID-19 has ushered in strange and unfamiliar circumstances for people and families everywhere. Not only are we all remanded to stay mostly at home for our own safety, most of our go-to food sources are not readily available. With no restaurants or take-out available, and with lines for our own safety turning routine trips to the grocery store into an interminable chore, we’ve had to get back to cooking basics. These four culinary and nutrition professionals will share ideas and strategies that work for fitness pros and clients who may be slicing, dicing and sautéing regularly for the first time ever.

Listeners can expect to learn the following:

• Strategies for home cooks and non-cooks to plan healthy, satisfying meals with a limited pantry and limited cooking skills.
• Creative and delicious ways to use canned and dry beans as well as whole grains.
• How to balance meal planning and cooking with working at home, homeschooling kids, etc. Also, how to get the family to take part in meal prep.
• How to feed ourselves and our families enough fresh fruit and vegetables with sometimes limited supplies.
• Snacking strategies; examples of healthy snacks
• Nutrients we might be missing because of sheltering in place and how to get them through food.

Panelist Bios

Moderator: Sandy Todd Webster, Editor in Chief, IDEA Publications

Chef Abbie Gellman, MS, RD, CDN, is a spokesperson, recipe and product developer, and educator. She creates, produces and hosts cooking and nutrition videos and works with a wide variety of food companies/brands/commodity boards, foodservice operators, health professionals, and private clients. She also contributes to many publications. Her first cookbook, The Mediterranean DASH Diet, was published in November 2019. She is the consulting “Better for You” R&D Chef/RD for the private company Happi Foodi and has created two lines of healthy frozen meals for them under the WalMart Better For You Great Value brand and the Happi Foodi brand; both can currently be found at WalMart. Abbie lives in NYC with her daughter, Olivia, and many shelves of cookbooks. Learn more about her at ChefAbbieGellman.com and connect with her via @ChefAbbieGellman on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Matthew Kadey, MS, RD, is a James Beard award-winning food journalist and registered dietitian who researches and writes IDEA Fitness Journal’s monthly “Food for Thought” column. He also writes for dozens of magazines and online sites including: Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Bodybuidling.com, Bicycling, Runner’s World, Vegetarian Times, Bicycling, Men’s Journal, Shape, Prevention, Gluten Free and More, Natural Health, Alive, Fit Pregnancy, Health, and Muscle and Fitness. He calls Waterloo, Ontario, Canada home, but he is a world traveler, adventure cyclist, nutrition consultant and recipe developer who has written and published three cookbooks. Matt’s eating philosophy? “Stuff yourself on whole foods and get plenty of exercise so you can eat more of them. And always leave room raspberries, halloumi and peppadews.” His cycling adventures have taken him to numerous countries including Ethiopia, Syria, Myanmar, Jordan, Ireland, New Zealand, Belize, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, Chile and Vietnam. Contact him at www.matthewkadey.com/.

Ashley Koff, RD, CEO of The Better Nutrition Program, helps people identify and make better nutrition choices, more often. After two decades as an integrative practitioner, Koff began creating better nutrition assessment tools to make it easy and efficient for practitioners like her to evaluate current total nutrition—food, supplements, medication—as well as clients’ health and lifestyle factors. This led to the creation of The Better Nutrition Program which currently offers The Shop of Tools featuring over 100 practitioner-developed assessments, menus and guides to support practitioners and their patients. Koff is a leading national media expert, author, advisor, speaker and hosts the Alexa skill “My Better Nutrition.” After decades of city living, Koff returned home to Columbus, OH where she’s relearning the trumpet, getting outdoors with Rerun, her dog, and honing her skills as a professional basketball 6th (wo)man. Contact her on LinkedIn

Chef Steven Petusevsky is a pioneer of flavor-first, plant-forward cooking. As an early leader of vibrant, healthful cooking, Steve created foundational recipes for Whole Foods Market—many of which continue to brighten the shelves and deli counter in stores throughout the country. As the retailer’s National Director of Creative Food Development, Steve quite literally wrote the book on natural foods, authoring The Whole Foods Market Cookbook—A Guide to Natural Foods with 350 Recipes. He has continued to influence modern diets and dinner tables, reaching millions of readers as a celebrated cookbook author and columnist/contributing editor for many of the nation’s top food publications including Food & Wine, Health and Cooking Light. Fast forward to today. Steve’s deep understanding of food trends and expertise in modern, plant-centric, Mediterranean-inspired cuisine continues to be sought out by leading retail stores, restaurant chains and institutions, including Google, Lettuce Entertain You, Mariano’s, Native Foods, UCLA and many others. Contact him at www.stevenpetusevsky.com.