I know. Frozen Food Month. It’s not exactly the occasion to get your pulse racing. But maybe that’s because you still remember those mushy mixed veggies that sometimes showed up in your nightmares or on your dinner plate when you were a kid?

Forget them. You’re all grown up now. “Frozen” and “soggy” are not synonymous. Or at least they don’t have to be. To avoid mushy vegetables, the key is not to boil them. – Steam or microwave works best.

For most vegetables, especially tender ones like peas or corn, you don’t even need to thaw them. The water they already contain is more than enough to steam them to tender deliciousness. If you don’t have a steamer, you can use a metal colander or strainer. The key is to keep the veggies above the water, and cover the pot as much as possible to keep the heat in. You can also set a bowl or plate with a single layer inside a pot, (leave room around the edges for the steam to rise.) The plate must remain above the water. If you have small custard cups these can work to suspend your plate. Food52 suggests you can even crumble up aluminum balls and set them in a couple of inches of water to set your plate or bowl on!

To prepare veggies in the microwave, a couple of tablespoons of water in a covered microwave safe container will produce warm, ready to eat mixes,  – or greens for your favorite dips, quiche or other dishes.

In soups, frozen vegetables are a healthy cook’s best companion. This is the one time that boiling works to your advantage. By adding your frozen vegetables at the finish, you end up with tender fresh tasting meal that provides a nutrition rich punch, and pleases the palate as well.

So, if you have a tendency to hurry through the frozen food section, it may be time to grab a sweater and rethink that strategy. In addition to being better for you than fresh (see Linda Bonvie’s Blog on Frozen Foods from last month), the convenience and ease of those cool little packages of veggies, fruits, meals and snacks should place them firmly at the top of your shopping list.

In most frozen food aisles you will find a remarkable selection of totally not boring ethnic mixes and trendy takes, such as rainbow chard and purple cauliflower florets, to brighten up your meals and bring new energy to your table.

If you want to make the most of these items however, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

• Read your labels. The best frozen foods have no additives like sugar or salt.
• In the case of frozen meals sodium should be under 200 mg.
• To avoid unnecessary harmful chemicals, choose organic over conventional.
• Frozen is not forever. If your freezer is working right and the power has been constant, food can generally remain stable and tasty for about three months.
• Put dates on foods you freeze yourself and partially used packages as well.
• Avoid freezer burn. Get the air out. A vacuum sealer is great, but if you don’t have one, press as much air out of the bag as possible. If your vegetables look like they have been lost in a snow storm, or the edge of your chicken is white, it’s freezer burned. Food that has freezer burn is not technically “bad” but it will not taste good, and the nutritional value has been degraded.

Frozen vegetables offer the ultimate in convenience, ease of preparation and year round nutritional benefits, without the carbon cost of many fresh imported fruits and vegetables. Celebrate this month with a new recipe, revisit an old favorite, or check out some of the links below for cool new ways to love Frozen.

Here are some more great Frozen Food Ideas:

4 cheese pasta kale bake

25 ways to use frozen mixed vegetables

Food52 – How to cook with frozen vegetables

Dr Oz healthy frozen food guidelines

Surprising benefits frozen fruits and vegetables

Coming off the Natural Products Expo, I’ve realized one thing in a big way. We, as humans, where never meant to experience the type of emotional and business stimulus that comes from bringing 70,000 passionate people together. Even if it is for a good reason… health and wellness. It creates what I call Natural Products Stimulus Fog.

Let me tell you what I mean.

Last night, in a post-expo haze, I drove to Palm Springs for a meeting with Dr. Steve Gundry.

Gundry is one of the most incredible doctors I know. He is humble, brilliant, and has done incredible things like reversing my vitiligo. He’s helped more than 50 friends break the cycle of statins. He’s healed them without anything more than a blood test.

But, even though he’s an amazing doctor — and a friend — I didn’t feel up to meeting with him. My mind was fatigued. The blurry mind I had as I drove to Palm Springs was because I was not focused on health and wellness — I was focused on the transactional part of the show. And that is what creates the fog, the mental exhaustion.

So why am I going down this path? It is simply this, health and wellness are attributes that you can’t buy, you can only experience them. And coming off the show, it was clear to me… It’s not the products, it’s not the money, it’s not the business acumen that is the most important part of an experience like Natural Products Expo. It’s the spirit, its the love, that’s what’s really important.

The emotion is what matters, which brings me to the part that I lose sight of all the time — just forget the transactional part. Do something nice for someone.

In other words, just forget all the business/transactional part of all of this and do something nice for someone today.

Ok, I will tell you a story (but maybe I shouldn’t.) There was a woman at the show, a beautiful woman named Sally. She is in the industry and I ran into her at the Expo. We were talking and she asked for some info from me. I said, “I will text you right now.” I jokingly said her name was under Sexy Sally. Well, she lit up like a light bulb.

I really didn’t have her in my phone that way, but she was so excited I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t true. It made her feel so good, and I thought, yes, its the emotion that matters.

Doctors, like Steve Gundry, who know that everything we experience and everything we eat impacts us — impacts our health and wellness — understand the total impact of all experiences on us. It’s not numbers and dollars, it’s the emotion that matters.

USDA photo by Lance Cheung

This past week at Expo West, I had the pleasure of attending a dinner thrown by the Organic Center, at which Anna Lappé was the Keynote speaker. Of the many ideas and ingenuities I encountered over the course of the convention, it was an old refrain Lappé echoed that resonated most: standing up for organic is standing up for farmers.

In her speech, Lappé shared her experiences interviewing farmers with Real Food Media, and hearing repeatedly that the move to organic was motivated by illness in the family.  This is an experience shared in common amongst those that grow and harvest our food worldwide. Pesticide exposure is irrefutably dangerous, and prolonged exposure puts farm workers at risk on a daily basis. My colleague Dave Carter has shared his personal experience here, and it’s well worth a read.

Studies from the National Cancer Institute have found higher rates of many types of cancer (such as leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma.. the list goes on) among agricultural workers. They also point to other environmental exposures farm workers face- engine exhausts, solvents, dusts, animal viruses, fertilizers fuels and microbes. Whichever way you slice it, farming is incredibly hard work. Making the environment toxic to workers is an inhumane added burden.

Organic agricultural practices create safer and more sustainable environments for workers, as well as consumers, by reducing pesticide exposure. Choosing organic, whether it be at the shelf or at the poll, demonstrably improves quality of life for agricultural workers. Growing demand for organic produce and products is driving the Industry to expand, and this in turn creates a need for more organic acreage. More organic acreage means more organic farms and farmers operating in better working conditions.

Groups such as Farmworker Justice, Farm Aid, United Farm Workers, alongside a host of others at both the State and National levels, tackle the broad range of challenges that matter most to our food supply, from the ground up. The Organic Trade Association, Organic Consumers Association, and Organic Center advocate, educate, research and/or disseminate to address the same challenges with an organic perspective.  They are all great sources of information and insights on how to stand up for both farmers and organic.

I thank Anna Lappé for reminding me of this truism, an idea worth sharing. Here’s to standing up (and eating delicious organic food to keep up our strength!).