What to Cook

by Aaliyah Alexander, Staff Writer March 29, 2020 By now, the threat of the COVID-19 virus has forced everyone indoors and it’s easy to let this abrupt change affect our health. It’s easy to neglect eating properly when you’re lounging at home all day with junk food at your disposal, but before you let this luxury become a routine here are some healthy food habits to adopt while in quarantine with three easy vegan recipes to try out! Healthy food tips Stay Hydrated It’s important to be taking in fluids while in quarantine. Water is noticeably the best way to stay hydrated, but there are ways to make drinking water more enjoyable. One way is to experiment with fruit infused water. There are so many combinations you can try such as strawberry, kiwi, oranges and more. Throwing in mint can also help stimulate your health. Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit To reduce the amount of time you spend in grocery stores, incorporate canned vegetables and frozen fruits into your grocery...

Beyond Meat's new breakfast sausage. Beyond Meat If you love all things plant-based, you'll soon have another meat alternative to add to your freezer: Beyond Breakfast Sausage . The new plant-based "sausage" is to hit grocery store shelves at the end of March at some retailers, including Whole Foods, ACME and Vons.  In 2019, the plant-based "meat" industry saw several new meat-substitute product launches , and Beyond Meat's new breakfast sausage keeps the trend going -- the world of vegan meat just keeps growing (and making forays into  different kinds of meat alternative ).  Just like the Beyond Burger has challenged the traditional idea of a veggie burger, so too does Beyond Breakfast Sausage. I whipped up a few of these breakfast patties to find out what they're like, and in short, they are an easy addition to any morning meal with a decent taste (in my opinion as an omnivore).  Read more: Impossible Burger vs. Beyond Meat Burger: Tas...

Speaker Virginia T. Spell, interim president and CEO of the Urban League of Southern Connecticut, address a crowd of nearly 200 people at the 20th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast in the Branford High School cafeteria Jan. 20, 2020. less Speaker Virginia T. Spell, interim president and CEO of the Urban League of Southern Connecticut, address a crowd of nearly 200 people at the 20th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast in ... more Photo: Mark Zaretsky / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: Mark Zaretsky / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Image 1 of 6 Speaker Virginia T. Spell, interim president and CEO of the Urban League of Southern Connecticut, address a crowd of nearly 200 people at the 20th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast in the Branford High School cafeteria Jan. 20, 2020. less Speaker Virginia T. Spell, interim president and CEO of the Urban L...

ST. LOUIS — Looking for some cute friends to have breakfast with? The St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station has you covered! It’ll host a virtual breakfast on Tuesday morning with stingrays. The aquarium has been hosting virtual tours since it closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many places are taking the creative approach to keep people entertained as a stay-at-home order has been issued in several places in the St. Louis area. The breakfast date will start at 10:30 a.m. on the aquarium’s Facebook. It said viewers can learn about what stingrays eat and other fun facts. There will be a follow up quiz on the aquarium’s Facebook later. On March 26, the aquarium held a virtual dive on Facebook Live. On March 24, the aquarium held an 'otterly' adorable virtual breakfast with its three otters - Thatcher, Sawyer and Finn. Its also held a virtual breakfast with its sloth, Coconut.  The cuteness will continue throughout the aquarium's temporary closure. Fans can keep up w...

Tom Nook, Blathers and all the other denizens of your island community celebrate all your major milestones. Here's how to get to those milestones even faster. Screenshot by David Priest/CNET Animal Crossing: New Horizons  for the Nintendo Switch  just hit its one-week anniversary, and I'm already obsessed with finding the rare fish, bugs and plants that populate the beloved franchise, especially online with friends . In fact, the slow-paced, anxiety-free island life simulator just might be the perfect antidote to the realities of social distancing and quarantine during the coronavirus spread. I've already dug up a few nuggets of wisdom to make the game smoother and more rewarding as you build your life on the island, and I've added more each day as I've explored. If you're unfamiliar with the series, a little direction can help you navigate the game so you're not just collecting everything you see -- there's a little more structure than meets the...

CLOSE As we close in on three weeks without live sports, things on the surface may seem bleak to sports fans. But hopefully, you're still taking care of you. That's really the most important thing. You may be stuck at home, but there are still plenty of ways to do whatever you can with whatever you've got. And we want to help. Moving forward, Good Sports is also going to bring you tips, tricks, advice and fun ways to stay fit and active while staying home and #socialdistancing.  We start it simple. We asked the National Athletic Trainers’ Association for some advice and these are its five safety tips on how to keep muscles working effectively and reduce the risk of injury while working out.  And make sure to check USA TODAY Sports each morning for a new tip on how to stay active while staying home. Now that you're winding down from the workout, check out a few ways the sports world has come together this past week. Here is the good (and goo...

Special Report Colman Andrews March 30, 2020 5:24 pm Last Updated: March 30, 2020 5:35 pm The diner is a uniquely American institution. Historians trace its origins back to the horse-drawn lunch wagons that began appearing on the East Coast in the 1870s . These evolved into restaurants on wheels, complete with counters and bathrooms, and by the 1910s into permanent structures.  Soon entrepreneurs were manufacturing prefab structures, characterized by stainless steel siding and brightly colored booths , that could be shipped around the country and set up almost anywhere. At their peak in the 1950s, there were about 6,000 diners across America. Today there are more like 2,000, some 600 of them in New Jersey, the nation’s undisputed diner capital . Diner historian Richard Gutman once defined the diner as “[A] friendly place, usually mom-and-pop with a sole proprietor, that serves basic, home-cooked, fresh food, for good value.” Establishments that fit that def...

Local News Dinner will be available for pickup from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 71 school locations Graham Media Group photo JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Add dinner to the list of services Duval County Public Schools is now providing for students. The school district is now serving dinner to students at 71 participating schools, district spokesperson Laureen Ricks announced in a news release Monday afternoon. RELATED | Free meals for students during coronavirus outbreak Like breakfast and lunch, dinners may be picked up curbside at participating schools between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Students can collect meals at the school nearest them. The district has posted menus online for each set of meals. Students and parents can view the complete list of participating schools on the district’s website. Copyright 2020 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.

Today’s pantry dish is a hearty one, built on a solid foundation of lentils and rice topped with golden fried onions. Adapted from a Middle Eastern mujadara, this streamlined version is brothier than the original, somewhere between a soup and a stew. Simmered together in one pot, it’s faster and more flexible, using any kind of lentils, rice and allium you’ve got on hand. To make it, heat a slick of oil or other fat in a medium saucepan. I used a combination of olive oil and duck fat. Add sliced onions, shallots or leeks — the more the merrier. The browned onions are the best part of this dish, so you really can’t overdo it, but just know that the more onions you add, the longer they will take to caramelize. I used two shallots and two small onions, because that’s what I had, but in a perfect world, I’d use one giant white onion, thinly sliced. Add a pinch of salt, and sauté until the onions turn golden brown, 15 to 25 minutes. Watch them carefully, especially toward the end of co...

This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative news organization. In the best of times, the United States wastes 40 percent of its food annually, amounting to 70 billion tons. The collective response to the coronavirus pandemic, from panic buying at grocery stores to restaurant closures, is bound to inflate that percentage, food loss experts say, at a time when food insecurity is on the rise. The biggest source of food waste in America is households, where produce wilts, milk spoils, and leftovers lurk at the back of the fridge until they are tossed. Now, anxious consumers who have been hoarding food may discover there’s no way they can eat everything they’ve bought. Says Frank Franciosi, of the U.S. Composting Council, “We may see municipal curbside collection of food waste go up as more people eat in or take out.” Indeed, San Francisco, which has long collected both residential and commercial food scraps from cur...