Easy & Healthy Food Prep
Over the past few months my mother has been struggling with some health issues and as a result, hasn’t had the energy to prepare as much healthy food for herself.
She lives approximately 30 minutes from me and I’m not able to see her every day so have been teaching her how to utilize some meal prep strategies.
Many of my clients are fully capable of cooking meals for themselves but are really tired of, and bored with, cooking. They also could take advantage of these strategies.
They’re simple, inexpensive, and only require a little bit of preparation 2 - 3 times per week.
Here’s how it works:
Shop in bulk for items that are already separated into individual servings or that you can freeze into smaller portions for easy access (e.g., premade smoothies, ground turkey, fish, etc.)
Do a little bit of menu planning for the week so you have everything you need to prepare your meals with ease.
Cook once for several meals. For example, my mother is able to cook some salmon in the air fryer while she cooks rice and vegetables in her rice cooker. This gives her at least 3 meals from one cooking effort.
Granted, you have to be willing to eat the same meal more than once in order for this to work but you can also be more creative if you have the energy.
If you’ve been following my blogs, you know I love my air fryer and my instant pot. Both of these kitchen gadgets make cooking so much easier, especially when trying to accomplish the following:
Cook two proteins at the same time (e.g., you could cook turkey chili in the instant pot while you air fry some white fish with lemon on it.
Your turkey chili is a complete meal that you can eat more than once and still have leftovers to freeze. And you can make at least 2 servings of your white fish with very little effort.
Make multiple vegetables at once. The easiest way to do this is to simply heat up a bulk bag of mixed vegetables or open a bag of salad mix.
Prep whole grains or starches in advance so you have them ready when you want them.
Again, rice in the instant pot is super easy or you can throw a big tray of root vegetable into the oven to roast with a little bit of olive oil.
If you enjoy cooking and are much more creative than this, kudos to you and please keep doing what you’re doing. If you want some shortcuts however, I’ve found these to be very helpful both for myself and in helping my mother.
Action Steps:
Think about what steps you could take to make your weekly cooking easy and healthy.
Consider incorporating one small change this week.
Every change you make in your daily or weekly habits creates compound interest in your health!
