Nutritious choices made simple®
Guiding Stars Expert Chef Erin Dow balances three food worlds. As a mother of three young children, she’s fighting the battle every parent faces: how to keep her kids interested in the foods that keep them healthy. As the chef and owner of her catering company Eatswell Farm, she utilizes original recipes and techniques--focused on enhancing the enjoyment of locally-sourced ingredients--to best interpret the client’s vision. And as Consulting Executive Chef for Falmouth-based Professional Catering Services, a business specializing in production and backstage catering for concerts, she develops and executes menus that accommodate the strict nutritional requirements of the music industry elite. Erin and her family raise their own chicken for meat and eggs, have dabbled in pastured Narragansett turkeys, and have a very weedy but very large and productive garden.
If you live in a northern climate like I do, you’ve probably already accepted the sad reality that there isn’t much green coming out of the ground in February. And that’s a shame, because dark leafy greens help us combat the stress that cold and flu season, shorter days and a more sedentary approach to life can take on our bodies. We can use the extra boost of vitamins A, C, and K, calcium, folate and potassium during the very months they’re impossible to grow.
I’ve been consulting with public school lunch programs here in Maine for several years now. My goal is to help my clients improve the healthfulness of lunches served to the children by implementing scratch-cooked recipes that are appealing to children, cost-effective to make, and feasible for the programs to incorporate into their regular menu cycles.
Whether you’re hosting this year’s Thanksgiving meal at home or you’re lucky enough to be hosted elsewhere, you’ll probably be contributing something to the meal. There’s no time like the present to bone up on your appetizer-making skills and expand your recipe collection.
While sweet treats are always on the menu for Halloween costume parties, people still appreciate the chance to offset their chocolate and candy consumption with a little roughage, so I usually bring some veggies and dip. I figure if I’m going to be the one to bring the healthy snacks, I might as well make them fun.
IDEXX is a Maine-based multinational company that provides research, diagnostic, technology, and treatment solutions to the veterinary and food/water safety industries. With a worldwide workforce of over 5,000, IDEXX has firmly established itself as an organization that cares for the health of its employees so to that it can best provide for the health needs of its clients. And to that end, IDEXX partnered with Guiding Stars almost four years ago.
Kimberly Cassella is the Dining Services Manager at IDEXX, and I asked her a few questions after a recent wellness event at the company’s main Westbrook campus.
With the end of the garden season approaching, I thought it would be a good time to share my list of produce substitutions. My hope is that, by looking through these lists, you will find inspiration to try new variations on your favorite recipes. Who knows? You might find that you prefer the new version over the old!
When I see food commercials or ads aimed at men, I usually see visions of shredded cheese raining down on a plate of nachos or a 1/4 pound sausage slamming onto a flaming grill while someone with an impossibly deep voice is suggesting that masculinity is directly proportionate to the number of calories in one’s meal.
The Fourth of July is right around the corner, and if you’re like me, you can’t even hear the name of the holiday without seeing the red, white and blue colors associated with it. For me, they’re inseparable.
Because so many delicious and healthy foods share the colors of our flag, I thought I would share some recipes from our recipe collection that would complement your Fourth of July menu. Below you’ll find my top ingredient pics for each color and an easy recipe to serve your guests.