All blog posts from Dr. Allott are provided for educational and informational purposes only. As Dr. Allott is also a licensed medical practitioner, we must make it clear that nothing on the blog is intended to constitute medical advice, consultation, recommendation, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are concerned about your health, please seek appropriate care in your area.

Short Cuts: Use a hand blender to support physical and mental health

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The key to eating better is having the right tools to prep food quickly and deliciously. To get my clients to eat more veggies, I often encourage salads. For the busiest individuals, they can buy a package for pre-washed lettuce, add a tomato, a couple of canned artichoke hearts, and ½ avocado, plus a link of sausage cooked over the weekend or a can of skipjack tuna. Add salad dressing and it is good to go.

Making my own salad dressing keeps me from getting bored of salads. One day it is apple cider vinegar, garlic, mustard and olive oil. Another day, it is tahini, apple cider vinegar or lemon, tamari, garlic, graded ginger from a jar, and water. Great with baked cauliflower. Third options is red wine vinegar, olive oil, handful of cilantro, garlic. All of these come together in less than 5 minutes by having a hand blender.

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The short cut that makes the biggest difference for me is using a plug-in hand blender. I tried the cordless blenders and then I never had power when I needed it. I have had the Cuisinart version for years, but you can buy cheaper ones - they all seem to work. What’s awesome about hand blenders is that it takes 3-5 minutes to make the best salad dressing, so quick that you can easily make a different one every time. As a bonus, hand blenders help make great soups in the wintertime too.

How a hand blender helps support mental health:

  • When cooking is easier, we do the self-care of feeding ourselves well more often. Eating at home generally offers healthier choices, particularly if we make it ourselves.

  • Ideally we should be eating 5 or more cups of veggies every day to nourish our bodies; Salads generally have 3-5 cups, and we’re more likely to eat them with good-tasting dressings.

  • Cooking for ourselves is a chance to decide if we like something or not. We get to experiment. We set our own standards for the day. We get to practice creativity and how to recover from small failures (by learning which combinations of ingredients we don’t like). Salad dressings are a cheap and recoverable place to start. You can try a new dressing quickly with the hand blender and if you don’t like it, throw it out and try again.

  • Hand blenders cost $20-40 and is a tool for self care.

Again if we are going to cook more, we have to make it easier.

Here is an example of what I am taking about:

Be sure to write in your questions on how to do the self-care for better mental health. Feel free to write anonymously ("I have a friend…")