Slow-cooking is a great way to cook a healthy and savory meal with minimal effort. I do this a lot during the colder months; the heat from the long, slow cooking process warms the house and fills the air with mouth-watering aromas. Those cold-weather outdoor chores are easier to bear when I know there's a hot pot of meat and veggies slowly simmering in the kitchen.

Slow-cooking is gourmet cooking for people with busy lives. None of us is perfect but there's a whole lot we can do to make ourselves healthier while also supporting a sane and local food system. The most important thing? Keep it simple. How do we break the cycle of being too busy to eat healthy food but being too tired to find the time or motivation to prepare it? Break out the braising pan, of course!

You can be sick of traveling, but there's just no need to travel sick.   I was in Tampa for a few days and didn't want to risk eating restaurant food...so I hit up the local supermarket and got to work.  I say work but I'm that oddball who actually enjoys a challenge like clarifying butter in a hotel bathroom.

The whole process took about 15 minutes and left me with two cups of clean grass-fed butter to get me through a busy long weekend.

Clarified butter just might be the single most important food I added to my healing diet, and it's also in the running for most delicious. I can't seem to handle dairy too well, but clarified butter is all of the fat with none of the milk solids--no milk protein, no problem.

As Dad loves to say, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to clarify butter and he eats fried fish for a lifetime." Alright, I might have taken a liberty there, but I think you get his point. Grab yourself a slow-cooker, and let's get started.

To me, there's no food more satisfying than a hearty soup. When I was a kid, Mom made 'em all the time and I had several favorites.  From the old-fashioned potato soup to the classic chicken broth, I have many fond memories of returning to the house on a cold winter day to hunker down over a hot satisfying bowl.

Our bodies and our diets change, but we never escape those memories of comfort food--and why should we?  The idea is sound: hearty ingredients, balanced flavors, soothing textures. This was my soup revelation and I'm here to share it with you.