eating well made easy with these 3 tips
Everyone wants to eat well but so many people think they don’t have the time it takes to cook from scratch. The popular misconception is that eating real food made fresh every day is too complicated for our busy lives. The truth is that there are many things you can do to make eating well easier than ever. Try these three tips:
prewash
Wash alll of your fruits and vegetables as soon as you get home from the store. I know it’s hard to imagine coming home and washing your fruit and veg right away. I am usually wiped out after being at the grocery store all afternoon and the last thing I want is another job. Still, washing your fruit and veg right away makes using it during the week a lot easier. How many times have you thought Yeah, I could go for a salad only to end up eating something faster because you couldn’t be bothered to wash lettuce, carrots, peppers etcetera? We are far more likely to choose a healthy meal if it’s easy to prepare right when we’re hungry.
make ahead
Pick a day (for me it’s Sundays) to make a few things ahead. Maybe a soup you can freeze or use for work lunches, maybe a batch of meatballs you can freeze and use over the next few months, maybe pizza crusts or healthy muffins to grab as snacks. It’s all about ease. We go for fast food or quick processed meals because the seem easier. It is possible to make healthy easy too.
learn a new recipe
Eating well should be fun and learning new recipes keeps the food fire going. Set a goal to learn a new recipe once a week or, if that seems too often, once every two weeks. There are so many wonderful free recipe sites online. Enjoy scrolling through recipes to find something you think you’d like to try.Keeping your menu fresh and interesting will make healthy cooking fun!
Healthy eating isn’t something we should hope happens and ignore when it doesn’t. Your life matters. You deserve to live the healthiest life possible and while eating junkier foods is fine from time to time (trust me, I’m not about to give up chips and dip!), it’s important for the bulk of your diet to come from quality nutrient rich foods. Eating well is easy! Anyone can do it!
Here’s another trick that has saved me money and, in my opinion, is healthy … make your own vegetable stock. It’s really easy … I just collect all those ends of veggies … the stuff we don’t put into a dish like the ends of carrots, onions, celery, clean potato peelings, tomato seeds/skins, etc. Just toss them all into a freezer bag until you have a full bag and then place them in a pot, cover with water, add a bay leaf and any other herbs you like and simmer, covered, until the veggies are drained of their flavor. I usually boil them for a good two hours. Remove the solids and continue to boil, uncovered, to intensify the flavor. Don’t add salt or pepper … these are better added when you cook with the broth. Once the broth is cooled, place 1 cup portions into freezer containers … or even fill ice cube trays with the broth. Freeze and when your recipe calls for broth, pull it out of the freezer and drop it in.
you are so right – home made broth is excellent! thanks for the recipe!