I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately for quick, easy, healthy food to make, and I’ve kind of been avoiding the topic.
The truth is, when it comes to writing out a montage of recipes and coming up with food ideas, as soon as I hear the words, my brain freezes up. The gears come to a lurching halt, and a loud screeching noise emanates out.
I don’t know what it is about recipes that I can’t handle. I use them from time to time, but I mostly just move intuitively through the kitchen and throw things together as I go along. Whatever’s in the fridge, a meal emerges. It changes all the time, and I can’t remember meals that I used to eat beyond last week.
Plus, I’m not a detail oriented person. The idea of trying to shove my flowing kitchenness into a little box … with all the measurements, and .. ugh… details…… oh dear.
I mean, I can do it. If I have to. I did it for my ebook Ultimate Secrets to Acne Freedom, as well as my candida program, 7 Day Candida Cleanse Challenge – but you don’t want to know how long those sections took me to write. They caught me up so bad with procrastination that it took me 3 times as long as the rest of the books to write them!!!
But, this sucks. Because I know you want them. I know you want to eat healthy, and you want to do it quickly. But I can’t quite tell if it’s the actual food ideas that you want, or if you just want to save time because you’re all very busy folks. Well, it’s probably both but since I’m still trying to be in denial about the whole recipes thing, I’ve decided to come up with a snappy post about the top 7 ways you can save time in the kitchen!!
Wahoo!! Say it with me! Wa – hoooo!!! 😀
So without further adieu, top ten ways to save time while eating a real foods diet:
1. Get a Chest Freezer
Obviously this is not an option for everyone – you need the space, and isn’t entirely ideal if you live somewhere temporary – but we got one this year and it totally rocks. You can get one for cheap or even free on something like Craigslist. Ours cost $80.
The advantage is that has allowed us to buy ethically raised meat in bulk, and freeze all the fresh produce that has grown this summer. And not to mention, it’s now bursting with free blackberries that grow all over the place here every August, and I was able to pick and freeze lots of them. It’s really convenient for my green smoothies.
As a result, I save time shopping, and I can just pull things out of the freezer as I need them. It saves a lot of precious brain power too. I hate thinking about what to buy and how much it costs. If it’s just sitting there in the freezer, I don’t have to think about that. And you can use it for the next tip:
2. Cook in Bulk
The concept here is that you spend a day every once in a while cooking a lot of food. And then you portion it out and freeze it in meal sized portions. Then you can just pull out ready made meals whenever you want. Saves you time and it saves you temptation to eat unhealthy things when you don’t know what to eat.
Yes, initially it does take a fair bit of time to cook during the big cooking session, as there will be lots of chopping, stirring, and watching. But over the long run, it really does save a significant amount of time.
3. Make Huge Meals and Eat Leftovers
If you don’t have much of a freezer, you can still cook in bulk – just every time you make a meal, cook a lot of it! This results in fast food that you can over the next few days without having to prepare a thing.
4. Spend Less Time Shopping
Find out if there is an organic food delivery service in your area. If there is, get them to deliver you fresh, healthy food! They are pretty common these days, and most seem to have items other than produce that they can deliver as well. So even if that means eliminating one trip to the grocery store, or that extra side trip you have to take every once in a while to the organic health food store – well hey. Life is sweet.
You could also try buying food in bulk, if you have the room to store it. It’s great to have the staples on hand, so you run out less often, you aren’t running to the store more times than you need to.
5. Get a Slow Cooker. Use it.
Slow cookers are rad. Just chop up a few things in the morning, throw it in the pot. Turn it on, and voila. When you get home at the end of the day, you have a delicious meal waiting for you. You could potentially even do this in a dorm room (maybe.. lol. I don’t know the rules).
6. Get a Food Processor. Use it.
You can get food processors cheap at thrift stores like Value Village. If you have a lot of chopping to do, it saves TONS of time. Plus, I love to use my food processor to make homemade hummus – which, hey! There’s an easy and quick food idea. Have homemade hummus on hand, and eat it with raw vegetables, and maybe some rice crackers. Yum.
7. Get Creative With What You Already Have
The trick to intuitive, fast cooking is that you learn how to be creative with what you have, and plan for creativeness. This means that if you cooked chicken last night, you should have taken the foresight to cook an extra piece – then the next day, you can chop up that chicken and have a chicken salad! Brilliant! And easy.
If you cooked a bunch of beans, and now they’re sitting in your fridge, you can think – what should I do with beans? Well I could cook some rice… I also have some cabbage… and tomatoes.. and avocado. Well, let’s throw together a quick Mexican meal and call it a day.
Figure out which foods you generally like to eat, keep them stocked, cook specific things every once in a while so that they are pre prepared (say, a big batch of beans, or a thing of rice), and figure out creative ways to combine the available things in the fridge and cupboard – it saves a heck of a lot of time (and money on wasted food) when you don’t have to follow an exact recipe every time.
I know, I know – for some, intuitive and creative cooking is a monumental task – almost as monumental as I feel about writing these creative processes down – but I feel it can become second nature with time 🙂
BONUS – Okay, I Thought of Some Quick Meal Ideas
- Stir fries – Some combo of veggies, meat or beans, rice
- Mexican plate – some combination of rice, beans, (or any meat, or eggs for heuvos rancheros), avocados (guacamole), salsa, plain yogurt, cabbage, lime juice, cilantro. Healthy Mexican meals are my go-to fast food meals.
- Salad – Combine lettuce, raw veggies, and anything substantial in the fridge – meat, beans, grains, cheese if you eat that, nuts, etc
- Yogurt bowl – berries or fruit, coconut oil, chia seeds, nuts
- Buckwheat porridge – Cooked buckwheat (soak it if you can remember to soak it) combined with anything you want – nuts, berries, fruit, coconut, coconut milk, even an egg yolk
- Hardboiled eggs, with some salad – maybe even some fried potatoes if you want
- Green smoothies – fruits or berries, greens, mine usually involve milk kefir as the liquid. This is especially fast if the contents are already frozen. The greens just crumble, no need to cut them up.
One of my ten minute Mexican throw-downs
Watch This Article in Video Form
Help me out – share with us your favourite quick and healthy meal ideas! And also your favourite healthy lunches too, please. People also want to know about that.
Trey says
September 18, 2012 at 1:26 pmThis is exactly the advice I need right now since I’m just starting my journey! Can’t thank you enough for all your help, Tracey 🙂 Have a wonderful day
Trey says
September 18, 2012 at 1:27 pmaaaand I spelled your name wrong oops. 😛 **Tracy
Tracy says
September 18, 2012 at 7:32 pmGreat! I’m glad this helped you Trey! 🙂
Nathan says
September 18, 2012 at 1:27 pmAvocado and Pimento stuffed olives. Boom!
Seriously, this is a very, very helpful post. One of the reasons I get lazy is because I just don’t have the time/effort to cook each meal from scratch everyday. Cooking 2 lots of chicken is quite regular for me, but I think I need to expand this a bit more…
I have a few Paleo/Primal recipe books, but I don’t really use that often because of the measuring, timing etc. but I think once you have made that particular meal a few times, it’s super quick. I’m also getting back into green smoothies again, which are proving to be a really time saver and pack a LOT of goodness 🙂
Thanks Tracy! I’ll post more if I find any really good recipes which can be made in bulk. (soup is a good starter as it’s getting colder here in the UK)
Tracy says
September 18, 2012 at 7:34 pmYeah, I think everyone gets lazy! I know I do… but I was lazy before I ate healthy, so I can’t blame it on healthy eating. Even if you don’t eat healthy, you generally still have to cook….. or at least I used to. I guess some don’t. Either way, it helps to be at least kind of organized, but also be able to improvise 🙂
Janel says
September 18, 2012 at 2:00 pmI cook the same way. I also have a few go-to meals, but one I forget and is great is the fratatta. I have major anemia problems and this one is great because of all the protein you can pack in. I do a quinoa base, whatever meat is leftover from the day before, eggs and a mix of veggies.
Tracy says
September 18, 2012 at 7:35 pmAh Frittata! That’s a good one. I forgot about omelettes too.
Annemarie says
September 18, 2012 at 2:31 pmI have found it helps to find a couple blogs you trust, (this one, wellnessmama, which looks to have a bunch of good recipes, butter believer) as well as a couple books. Nourishing Traditions is amazing, and covers any health-related recipe out there! I love how it has recipes for foods we normally eat, (and even condiments and things!) transformed into something healthy.
Tracy says
September 18, 2012 at 7:36 pmI do agree it helps to have some recipes, if only for inspiration. Lately I’ve been making a lot of dishes from a book we have called “World Food Cafe”.. it’s a vegetarian cookbook with recipes from all over the world. It’s pretty cool 🙂 Nourishing traditions is great too
Annemarie says
September 18, 2012 at 2:37 pmOne of my favorite go-to meals is: cauliflower cooked in skillet, topped with some fresh fish, avacado, cucumber. Seasoning: soy amino/coconut aminos, butter, and a little yogurt! Easy, delicious! And it doesn’t really matter if you don’t have one or two of the ingredients.
Tracy says
September 18, 2012 at 7:37 pmYum.. I’ll have to try that! What sort of fish do you use?
Annemarie says
September 19, 2012 at 7:25 amUsually Wild Alaskan Salmon, if I can get it in season when its on sale :). Otherwise I sometimes don’t even use fish if I don’t have it. I found a list in a magazine with low-mercury seafood though, oysters, haddock and sardines. I found a good brand of sardines and sometimes throw those on there instead of the salmon. Cod, Halibut, and Lobster are not the lowest, but are medium on the list of usually most contaminated. I use the Braggs brand of soy aminos, I never really cared for soy sauce, but love this stuff! I just want to put it on everything! Its organic and non-GMO soy, but it isn’t fermented, which kind of worried me.. but the packaging puts it out as being superior to regular soy.. Is it still bad..?
Tracy says
September 19, 2012 at 9:47 amHi Annemarie – I haven’t done enough research on soy aminos to say!
Karen says
September 19, 2012 at 10:32 amTry coconut aminos. Soy sauce flavor, but soy free! And inexpensive.
LJ says
September 19, 2012 at 12:15 pmCut, peel and chop a butternut squash into bite sized chunks, lightly coat with the healthy oil of your choice (extra virgin olive oil is my preference) and fry on a moderate heat for 10 minutes – this is one of my favourite healthy winter foods because it’s so quick, filling and versatile. You can eat it with Swiss chard or any other greens, with steak, chicken, cheese etc. It’s just so warm and yummy, and spicing it up is great too!
Another favourite recipe is a hot and sour soup: use good quality chicken stock/veg stock/bone broth, add lemongrass, chillies, lime juice and zest, prawns (or leave out if veggie), beansprouts, any greens you want in it – absolutely delicious, low calorie, warming soup.
I love the recipes you’ve done so far – the quinoa tabbouleh and the cauliflower rice especially. I really want to get more into intuitive healthy eating once I get back to Uni in about a week, so this post has come at a perfect time!
Tracy says
September 19, 2012 at 4:51 pmAwesome! Great suggestions. So it really only take ten minutes to fry butternut squash till its soft? I thought it would take way longer than that! Interesting
Heather says
September 20, 2012 at 11:27 amI like intuitive cooking too, though my husband is always suspicious when I “make things up.” If I tell him it’s from a recipe it goes over better 😉
My quickie cooking routine is to just pick something from 3 categories – whatever fresh veggie(s) need to be used from the fridge; any available protein (a meat or fish from the freezer or beans); and then whatever sort of grain/pasta/potato seems to go with that.
If this leads me down a path like Mexican or Italian, I go with it and add a few supporting ingredients. If not, I just cook it all with some olive oil and salt… can’t really go wrong in my opinion. Last night I ended up with salmon along with sauteed leeks and potatoes and loved it.
Tracy says
September 20, 2012 at 12:56 pmYes! Exactly! It just doesn’t always have to be that complicated… just put whatever is there on a plate 🙂
Ollie Pearce says
September 24, 2012 at 10:10 amLove your site as well as your youtube videos. I’m 30 and have just started struggling with acne and various unpleasant issues. All the information you provide is great and your genuine personality is great. Keep up the great work!
Tracy says
September 24, 2012 at 3:37 pmThanks for reading and watching Ollie 🙂 Hope you find something here that leads to a resolution of the new found issues. Sorry to hear, but at least you know there are things that can be done. Good luck friend!
Ann says
November 12, 2012 at 5:30 amI’m exactly the same! I just throw whatever I find in the fridge or my closet ( I usually hide my non-cold food things like noodles and bamboo shoots- absolutely yummy in stir fry- in there so my mom doesn’t use them in her cooking). And I hardly ever measure. Not that I don’t don’t like recipes, just laziness 🙂 Mostly I like stirfrys, salads and corn. If only I could make bread without measuring. And after lots of experimenting, the BEST dipping sauce for Japanese noodles is: low sodium soy sauce, pomegranate juice and nori seaweed flakes. Mix about the same amount of soy sauce and juice, stir in a tiny scoop of seaweed, and let it sit for a while, so that the flavors mix together. I don’t know if I’m just kidding myself about that last part but hey, it’s delicious. And I don’t use salad dressing either, usually I put balsamic vinegar and grapeseed oil ,or avocado oil and rapeseed oil, or avocado oil and rapeseed oil and balsamic vinegar, or olive oil and lemon juice. Wow, all this about food made me hungry!
Tracy says
November 12, 2012 at 12:32 pmYum I’m going to have to try that Japanese dipping sauce, sounds delicious!