[MUSIC] The average person would find it

difficult to cook on a regular basis if they had to shop for

ingredients every single day. So most people who cook frequently have certain basic ingredients

in their kitchen at all times. These basics allow you to

pull together a healthy, delicious meal in very little time, even

if you happen to get home late from work. There are no hard and fast rules for what these ingredients
should be,

but whatever they are they should be ingredients that support the flavors

of the foods you enjoy eating. And they should be foods that

will last in your kitchen, at least from one shopping

trip to the next. In our house,

these six basic ingredients are olive oil, onions, garlic, lemons, sugar, and salt. With these six ingredients
on hand, it's not hard to transform just

about any fresh food into a meal. These ingredients also allow

the cook to correct or customize the flavor of any dish by

tweaking its sweetness, saltiness, or acidity until the cooked

feels it's just right. Having a set of fundamental

ingredients on hand can take a lot of the stress out

of cooking because it allows us to apply some of the same cooking

principals to many different foods. >> Pasta, I think whole grain

pasta is a terrific choice. I actually happen to like it. Some people can't stand it but it's gotten

a lot better in the last few years. So give it another try

if you don't like it. Olive oil is absolutely essential. I always have cans of salmon and tuna. Vinegar is
important in many ways. Soy sauce, essential. I marinate a lot of

the things that I cook. Lemons do wonderful things for

almost everything. And adding a little acid to food

just kind of brightens it and just makes it very special. And then I have a few

things in the garden. I always have parsley in the garden. It's kind of a magic ingredient, too, and

cilantro and in the summer I have basil. >> In many ways, cooking is empowerment. The person stirring
the pot usually ends
up having the final say over how much fat, sugar, salt, and

total calories end up in the foods we eat. Unlike the processed food industry,

we have the long term health and the consumer in mind when

we're preparing our own food. By doing the best we can with the

resources that are available to each of us, we can optimize our nutritional

health and prevent many of the chronic diseases we as a society are fighting

in epidemic proportions. >> The cooking issue is different for

all us, and we have to kind of take a, and make an assessment of where we

are with cooking, what's possible, what's not possible given our lifestyle. But if we share, if we plan, if
you keep

certain basic things in your pantry and fridge so that even if you haven't had

time to stop at the store on the way home or you're out of things,

you can still make a good dinner. For example, our default here very often is we always have some cans

of wild salmon in the pantry. We always have dried pasta, there's always olive oil and lemon,

and there's always frozen spinach. With those three ingredients,

the salmon, the pasta, and the frozen spinach, I can make

a terrific dinner in 15, 20 minutes. And it's very inexpensive. And it's nothing glamorous,

but it's very satisfying and everybody in the family enjoys it. [MUSIC]