Meal Time-Saving Tips
Eating healthy is a challenge for many, myself included! It’s often a matter of time, energy and having the right things on hand when you need them. Today I wanted to go through a few of my helpful tips to find time efficient tips to make healthy eating a little easier.
Batch cooking
It usually doesn’t take that much more time to double a recipe than it does to make the original, so even though there’s only two of us to feed, we’ll have leftovers for either lunch or dinner the next day, or we’ll freeze portions of leftovers in meal sized portions to make for a quick defrost the next time we want to eat it.
My favorite things to batch cook are soups, stews and curries.
I’ve also had great success with making 3 days of salad lunches at a time and storing each separately in a large mason jar. This was great for working at the office, but also working from home! It meant I wasn’t spending a ton of time trying to figure out lunch between patients. The trick to it is to store in proper layers so that the lettuce stays crisp and doesn’t get soggy. See here for my salad formula and how to batch make salads!
Pressure Canned Meals
Pressure canning is a form of food preservation that I did a whole bunch more of this last year. Basically, it enables you to can and store food on a shelf like meat, soups, spaghetti sauce and veggies! It’s pretty amazing and saves a ton of freezer space for other things.
While pressure canning takes more work up front, it allows you to literally pull things off the shelves that are either already full meals or more than half way there WITHOUT needing to thaw anything.
One of my favourite pressure canned meals is using our spaghetti sauce, that then all that’s required is cooking up my favourite pasta to go along with it. I also tend to add in some of my home made organic greens powder for extra nutrients, and if I’m feeling super energetic, will add in more fresh chopped veggies to cook in the sauce while the pasta cooks (like mushrooms, etc). We also up the nutrition level by adding fresh spinach at the bottom of our bowl, then adding the noodles and spaghetti sauce.
The other thing that’s been great for lunches or as a side dish are our pressure canned carrots. Admittedly when I first tried them I was disappointed, because they were pretty mushy by themselves, but then I realized I just needed to reframe my thinking about their use, and figured out that they make a DELICIOUS blended carrot soup either on its own, or with a can of coconut milk added. This goes very well with our home made sourdough bread that we slice and store in the freezer for optimal freshness. Super quick, delicious and healthy!
Meal planning
I’ve also personally found that meal planning and figuring out what we’re going to eat ahead of time limits my stress levels around food SO MUCH! It helps to figure out when things need to be pulled out of the freezer for the week, and gives us the option for easy meals on days that we know are going to be crazy.
It’s also really important to do your meal planning as a two-phase activity. Figure out what you’re going to eat for the week, then plan to go grocery shopping for all the things you need on that list that you don’t already have at home. We like to do our planning on Saturday evenings, and get groceries on Sundays.
What are your favourite time saving meal tips? I’d love to hear what’s helped you be more successful at eating healthy food at home!