This week I want to dispel another common myth — eating healthy takes too much time. You see, although it can be lovely to spend time growing, preparing and cooking your meals not everybody has that kind of time. So I am going to offer you a few time-saving tips so that you do not have to compromise your health in order to eat within your time constraints.
10 tips to save time without compromising healthy eating
1) Menu Plan
This one is a time and money saver. Plan your week, breakfast, lunch and dinner, create a list to cover the foods for that menu and shop straight from that list, nothing more. Do this planning and prep at a point in the week that you do have time, maybe one evening per week. Do one shop for the full week which will save you time in itself. Having a menu plan means you do not have to give any headspace to deciding what to eat that day. Just check the plan and off you go.
2) Use an online shopping platform
This will save you the time to drive or public transport to the shop, the time you would spend in the shop looking for the ingredients that you need, the time in the checkout and the time to get back home. It is a huge time saver. Plus it allows you to add things to your order as you run out preventing you from having to pop to the shop for anything.
3) Invest in a time-saving kitchen appliance
There are two kitchen appliances that have been worth every penny of the investment I made in them, my slow cooker and my Thermomix. Both save me loads of time and headspace. I love that with a slow cooker you can just throw everything in the morning and leave it for the day only to come home to a house filled with delicious food aromas just in time for dinner. Amazing! I use my slow cooker on the days of the week that there are multiple or late after school clubs. This allows us to breeze in the house with a nourishing meal waiting for us, ready to eat. I know that pressure cookers are popular in North America and that they can cook your food quickly. I don’t have one or know much about them but that might be something worth investigating. The Thermomix is an amazing device that makes so many of my meals so much easier. I use it every day, year round. I use it for full meals but also to blend, chop, sauté, as a kitchen scale, etc. I love it. If you have ever had the bad luck of getting in a conversation with me about my Thermomix you will truly understand my passion for this appliance. It has changed my life.
4) Prep your meals ahead of time
I like to take one Saturday morning a month to load the freezer with meals to pop in the slow cooker. I take them out of the freezer the night before and pop them into the slow cooker before heading out the next morning. This saves me huge amounts of time as the Saturday morning prep takes only a couple of hours but means that I have 6-8 evenings free of dinner prep. If you do not have a lot of freezer space you can still prep your meals on a weekend morning and store them in the fridge to pop in the slow cooker or oven in the week.
5) Batch cook
Whenever I make something like lasagna, soup, pasta sauce, stew, casseroles, pasta bakes, etc, I make at least a double recipe. That way I have one to have the night in which I cook it and one to have one other night that week or one to pop in the freezer for a mid-week no prep meal. It is so much quicker to make a double or triple batch of something labour intensive than it is to make it two or three times. If you do not have a lot of freezer space you can just pop them in the fridge to be used the same week if you don’t mind repeats.
6) Love your leftovers
Along with batch cooking, this is my favourite way to do the work once and reap the rewards more than once. If we are having rice, roasted veg, chopped salad, soup, chilli, or anything else that can be easily eaten as a leftover I make too much. We will either eat it for lunch or for dinner another day that week. I love leftover rice as fried rice, roasted veg cold on my salads at lunch or leftover soup any old time. I actually prefer leftover soup to freshly made, if it is on the menu for lunch I often make it the night before while I am prepping dinner and just warm it in the morning before popping it into our flasks for lunch. Just last week we had black bean and sweet potato burritos for dinner so I prepped 12 instead of 4 so we have one lunch and one dinner in the freezer for another time. I love leftover salmon or chicken on a salad for lunch the next day or leftover chill in a jacket sweet potato. The possibilities are endless.
7) If it fits in with your budget buy pre-prepped veg
Buy a bag of chopped sweet potato and butternut squash to pop in a stew or keep a frozen (or fresh) bag of soffrito (chopped onion, carrot and celery) handy to start your soups, stews, casseroles or pasta sauces. Buy frozen veg, it is already pre-prepped and, as I mentioned in my money-saving tips for healthy eating post, it is often higher in nutrients than the fresh produce in the grocery store, depending on how long it has been since the ‘fresh’ produce has been picked. I have a friend who uses part of her weekend to chop all the veg she will need for the recipes in the week. She stores them all in glass containers in the fridge and then when dinner time comes her meal making is super quick as the chopping is all done. A bag of pre-cut stir fry veg with some pre-cut organic chicken (or tofu if you are a vegetarian) sautéed in coconut oil with garlic, onion, and ginger and served over brown rice vermicelli with tamari is a super quick, delicious, healthy meal and it will only take you 10 minutes to make.
8) Have you tried a traybake? If not they may be your new best friend.
I love a traybake although in this house we need two trays to make enough to feed us all with two hungry teens in the house. There are some great cookbooks out there with traybake ideas but basically you whack a load of veg, some protein and some herbs and/or spice to make it tasty on a baking tray and pop it in the oven. There is little to no prep time if you are using pre-prepped veg and you can make too much so that you have another meal for another time in the week. We love a pesto traybake in this house. I literally clear out the fridge of all the veg that will roast nicely, I am not sure there is such thing as a vegetable that doesn’t taste good with pesto on it. The best thing about a traybake (aside from the ease of cooking) is that there is only one dish to wash (or two in our house).
9) Buddha bowls, Poke bowls, Nourish Bowls, whatever you call them, try them.
We love these at our house. Choose a grain, top with a protein and some grated or chopped raw veg add some flavour and presto, dinner in a jiffy. The family favourite combo in this house is brown sushi rice with chopped pak choy, grated red cabbage, grated carrot, chopped spring onion, avocado, grated kohlrabi, matchstick beetroot, lightly seared salmon, shredded nori and drizzled with a delicious sauce made from tamari, sesame oil, fish sauce, lemon and a little mayo. As the rice does not need to be hot I make it ahead of time and leave it to cool. You can then quickly stir fry it before adding it to your bowl. These bowls can be put together in under 30 minutes depending on what grain you are having with them.
10) Use your Sunday roast as a springboard for a few weekly meals
An example would be, roast a chicken on a Sunday, use some of the leftover meat for a chicken fried rice on a Monday, pick the carcass clean, reserving the last did bits of meat, pop the bones into a slow cooker with veg, herbs and a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and leave it to cook all Monday night and all of Tuesday. At dinner time on Tuesday, your broth should be ready (and still hot in the slow cooker), follow your soup recipe, add in the last chicken bits then add your broth to simmer and create a delicious and nutrient-dense soup.
What time-saving tips do you have? I am always looking for more.
Happy time-saving, healthy eating.
To wellness!
April
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