Fast Slow Food: 5 devices for healthier, yummier eating

I wrote a feature about my 5 favorite kitchen gadgets, "Fast Slow Food," on Intel's "My Life Scoop" site. I own and use every one of these, and prepare meals (and beverages!) with them each day. In the feature, I explain why.

From the intro:

One of the most often-repeated fallacies about eating healthier is that "it takes too long". Preparing healthier, home-cooked and hand-assembled meals that follow the Pollan-esque credo of "eat [real] food, not too much, mostly plants" is seen as a daunting lifestyle change for anyone who grew up eating TV dinners and microwaveable meals in a box, as I did.

Not true. Over the past couple of years, I've transformed my diet and lifestyle toward something best described as "plant-based" and "mostly slow food," with an emphasis on local, seasonal ingredients. Preparing meals now doesn't take me any longer than when I was eating lots of processed food, refined sugars, and animal products. Slow food doesn't have to be a full-time gig. You don't have to hire a personal chef or quit your day job. Part of what I've found helpful in my own transition are these five tools to cut down prep time and/or bump up the quality of the daily staples in my kitchen. And you don't have to be vegan, vegetarian, or experimenting with raw food cuisine, as I have, to enjoy the results.

Read the whole thing.

Devices reviewed in this piece: Vita-Mix blender (best there is, no other brand is even close), VitaClay electric cooker (has a clay pot inside, instead of nonstick metal), Capresso Burr Grinder (reasonably affordable burr grinder for far better tasting coffee than the kinds of electric grinders most people have in their homes), a Veggie Spiralizer, and a Japanese quick pickle press (you can make other kinds of "quick pickles" with it too, it's not just for tsukemono).

I shared this earlier today on Google+, and an interesting discussion thread emerged over there. Thanks for the image, Adam Fields! Words to live (and cook) by.