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Helping you on your journey to your best self!

meals

Making Cooking Easier

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How to Make Cooking Easier

Making the actual cooking of your meals easier is the best way to avoid many of the mistakes that are made when  people try to plan their meals ahead of time.

Make use of easy cooking methods

Whether it’s one-pan oven meals, quick and easy meals on the grill, or my personal favorite, the slow cooker, easy cooking methods make cooking less laborious. Using the oven and the slow cooker might result in longer cooking times, but you don’t have to watch over them or stir. Just set a timer, and when it goes off, dinner is ready. Many grilled dishes take a bit more attention, but they are often done very quickly. Fill out the form below for three of my go-to easy recipes!

Pre-prep what you can

Mornings are often a rush. Even if you plan on making a fairly simple slow cooker dish, chopping up veggies can take time. Do some of that preparing ahead of time. Chop up those veggies and put them in containers or labeled baggies so when the time comes to use them you just have to dump them in. This is also a strategy I use whenever I buy grapes to make sure they get eaten before they turn into raisins. Buy washing them and removing the stems right away, whenever I need a snack, I can just grab a handful and they’re ready to eat. There are many recipes you can find for “freezer meals” where you do all the prep but the cooking, and then freeze the food. The day you want to eat that meal, take it out of the freezer in the morning and put it in the fridge to thaw. Then, that evening, all you have to do is cook. Many of these are even set up for slow cooker meals as well.

Make bigger batches

It can be tough to carve out a big chunk of time to prepare your food, but if you do, then the process of making those meals during the week becomes significantly easier. Take the time to prepare all your lunches for the week, so that during the week it’s just grab-n-go. If you are going to make a marinade, quadruple the recipe, and store the rest in a bottle in the fridge. Next time you make that meal, you already have the marinade made, and can just pour it on to whatever meat or veggies you are making. If you are making a soup or stew, again, double the recipe, and then freeze half of it for a couple weeks later. Multiplying a recipe takes very little extra time now, but will save you a ton of time in the future!

Be sure when freezing things to label what it is and date it! Hopefully these tips will help you stay on course to reaching your goals!

For more tips on making cooking easier, check out my Ultimate Guide to Meal Prep.

Meal Prep Mistakes

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Are you making these meal prepping mistakes-

After taking all that time to plan out your meals for the week, I want to caution you about a few meal prep mistakes I’ve seen others make.

Wasting Food

You need to commit to this meal prepping thing. If you buy food but then when the time comes you don’t follow through and cook it, the food will spoil and you’ll end up just throwing it away and wasting food and money. And then you’ll have to buy something else to eat, which wastes even more money. And it is likely that in the moment, you’ll order take out or make something that’s not as healthy as you would have otherwise.

Trying to be too fancy

One of the ways to avoid wasting food is by NOT getting too fancy with the recipes. Roast leg of lamb with an apricot reduction and a side of zuppa toscana sounds a-maz-ing. But it’s not really practical for an every day dish. Keep your weekday meals simple and quick and you will be far more likely to stick to your plan. See the end of this article for three recipes you can download that are quick and easy to add to your meal rotations.

Not knowing “thine self”

In our household, when we prep our lunches for the week, it’s the exact. same. meal. And it’s the exact same meal for months at a time. In colder months we have steel cut oats with ground turkey. In warmer months it’s salad with grilled chicken. That’s it. Keeping it simple lowers the barrier to preparing those lunches ahead of time. And that works for us. However! If you can’t handle eating the same thing for lunch for months on end, DON’T. Don’t prepare a week’s worth of salads, and then on Wednesday decide you’re sick of them and make a run up to Chipotle instead. If you need some variety, try making extra food when you make your dinners so you can have enough left over for lunches during the week.

Keep a backup meal handy

Even the best laid plan only lasts until the first arrow leaves the bow. Maybe despite the planning, you forgot a critical ingredient. Or perhaps due to traffic you are running late and don’t have time to cook the meal you had previously planned on. Or you’re just having a horrible day and spending time cooking is NOT what you want to do. This is when having a backup meal is really handy. A backup meal should be something that you can cook up quickly, but also lasts a decent amount of time should you not need it right away. On days we are “not feeling it”, we turn to chicken sausage that we heat up on our Foreman Grill. Just grill them up for a bit, and eat with ketchup. Not the healthiest meal in terms of micronutrients, but because it is chicken, it’s lower in fat than bratwurst, and much lower in calories. Still super delicious and satisfying though!

Hopefully these tips can help you stick to your meal plan. Don’t forget to download your free recipes!

For more tips on avoiding meal prep mistakes, check out my Ultimate Guide to Meal Prep.

Meal Planning for Healthier Eating

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Meal Planning for Healthier Eating

Success in just about any endeavor where you are trying to make a change comes down to honesty, consistency, tracking and planning ahead. Planning ahead makes it much easier to honestly stick to your plan, be consistent about it, and also easier to track since you’ve thought about it ahead of time. Planning out your meals in advance is a great way to get ahead of the game. I’ve written about preparing meals ahead of time, but this is about planning things out before you even get to the grocery store.

Promise me something

I want you to make a vow right now to never again head to the grocery store without a list. No more just “winging” it. No more just buying whatever you feel like. Even if you are only going in for a couple things, make a list. I find that when I only need a few things, I think I can remember them all, and also since my list is short, I figure I can pick up a few random extra things, and then I inevitably forget one of the items I actually meant to buy. Make. A. List. Decide what meals you will make for the week, and add the ingredients you don’t already have in the pantry or fridge to the list. You can use a pen an paper list, or one of the many list apps out there. There are even apps that will store your ingredient lists for meals, so you simply select which meals you plan to make, and it automatically adds what you need to your list for that shopping trip.

Make a meal list

This is different from your grocery list, but will help you tremendously in planning your meals for the week. Make a master list of easy to prepare, healthy meals. (To help you get started, fill out the form below to get three free recipes!) This list also keeps your meal rotation from getting too boring, as you can reference it for a meal you haven’t had in a while. Pinterest is a great place for finding easy meals for the slow cooker, or one pan oven meals. Keeping the recipes for these meals is handy when it comes time to make your shopping list so you can be sure you don’t forget any main ingredients. It also gives you the opportunity to be sure you have enough of a particular ingredient on hand rather than getting to the store and trying to remember if you have lentils at home or not and if you do, if you have enough to cover the amount the recipe calls for.

Don’t over complicate it

While your meal list can help you with keeping your menu fresh, don’t try to make it too complicated by trying to come up with too many different meals. It’s a great idea to have at least one go-to meal that is super simple each week. In our household, we alternate between chicken thighs and wings each week, but we have them every single week. (I’ve included this one in the recipes below) Also, try to keep most of the meals themselves relatively simple. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible to cook a healthy meal at home rather than going out to eat. The easier a meal is to prepare, the more likely you are to choose that option.

Plan ahead with the sales flyer

If you live near a supermarket, you likely get a flyer from them in the mail each week. You can also use this flyer to help you plan out your meals, especially if you are on a budget. Just cross-reference what’s on sale with the meals in your lineup, and then add those items to your grocery list.

Stick to the list

I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, but once you’ve consulted your meal index and the store flyer and created your shopping list, ONLY BUY WHAT’S ON THE LIST. For one, this will get you in and out of the grocery store faster. Also, if you avoid buying extras, then you won’t be tempted by having them in the house. Healthy eating starts in the grocery store. If you don’t put it in your cart, you won’t put it in your mouth.

For more tips on planning out your meals, including how to build a Meal Library, check out my Ultimate Guide to Meal Prep.