— Mel Dorling

Well, I think, Mel, you make a sort of a conscious, engaged effort to include ingredients that match those macronutrient categories and build your dish. And keep in mind that you have macronutrients in the way of proteins and fats that you mentioned, and then you have vegetables as a food category. So, healthy fats, think about the sources of that. So, like nuts and seeds. Also avocado is a commonly used one. Avocados can then be presented as a sauce, as a chunky puree, as a diced addition, small dice, large dice. There's some different ways to incorporate that. Nuts come in very different sizes and visually interesting pieces. They can be whole. They can be broken. They can be chopped. With nuts, I usually recommend toasting them. I generally recommend toasting them whole. Do so on a sheet pan in the oven, 350. Keep an eye on it. Well, actually, keep your nose out for it. When you start to pick up on the aroma of the toasted nuts, then pull the sheet pan out, let that cool completely at room temperature. Okay? And then you can move forward with your chopping or breaking them however you want to process them.Same thing with seeds, whether they're pepitas or pumpkin seeds or sesame seeds. I recommend doing all of your toasting in the oven rather than a pan on the stovetop, because invariably, they're going to be toasted unevenly on the stovetop because the nut has one hot edge that it's coming in contact with, and you're going to get hot spots or dark spots at those points of contact. Whereas in the oven, the product is going to be enveloped by even heat and therefore toast more evenly. All right. Still, in the oven, it could be a good idea to do a shake or to turn those nuts to promote even more even cooking, but you certainly do not get the hot spots and brown spots that you do as when toasting in a pan on the stovetop. Okay? Proteins, keep in mind that, generally speaking, all of your vegetables will contain amino acids, which are the building blocks for the protein that your body will build. And it's through the variety of foods that we eat that the intelligence of our body will pick and choose the amino acids that are needed to build the protein for our bodies. Certainly, some foods are higher and more concentrated with certain amino acids versus others. And then there are some plant-based foods that are complete proteins in themselves, like soybeans. But otherwise, beans, generally, the beans and legumes category as well as nuts are a good source for proteins or these building blocks for the proteins that our body will use. And then as far as vegetables are concerned, take a look at beautiful colors and textures and shapes that will create interesting presentations for your diners. And I think as you sort of engage with these different components that are important to you and then look at the sources of these fats and proteins and all the beautiful plant-based foods in our environment, you're going to come up with an incredible array of options. And you can look at a recipe and then you can manipulate that in a way that you choose to increase fats or proteins or some other aspect of that preparation. All right, so have some fun with it. Another thing you might give a try is to run your favorite recipes through one of these sort of nutrient/calorie counter online apps in order to look more specifically at the profile of that recipe to see how it fits what it is that you want to do. All right. Thank you.