Day 31: Food Preparation
Finding the time to prepare a healthy meal or snack is hard, especially with tons of other things to do on our list.
What worked for someone may not work for another person.
When I still worked full-time in the hospital, I usually cook for more than one meal. The good thing with me back then was that when I was stressed, I vented it out in the kitchen and would usually end up cooking 3-5 dishes at one time in 1-1.5 hours. I’d cook at 5 pm, and we have dinner at 6:30 pm. The next day, we pack the left-overs for our lunch.
Some people I know would cook over the weekend and freeze portions for the weekdays. I couldn’t do that. Why? Because I de-stress in the kitchen! I can’t de-stress just once or twice a week.
Another thing my mom taught me well was how to re-purpose dishes. She doesn’t want to serve the same dish over and over again. So I’ve learned to adopt her style. If I cook veggie chili bean for tacos, for example, the next day, it can become a burger by just adding egg and pan-frying or meatloaf by baking. Sometimes the veggie bean chili can end up as a filling for a burrito or steamed cabbage leaf roll with tomato sauce. It can also end up as a meatball. It depends on how the spirit leads. I call it chi-cooking. 😂
Creativity is the name of the game. And where to get these ideas? Just watch tons of Youtube videos and adopt some of the techniques and own it.
Another way to beat the time challenge is to pre-chopped veggies or frozen ones for longer storage life. I also prep most of my produce in bulk and freeze them so that cooking is faster.
Some would subscribe to food-prep vendors. You choose your recipes for a week, and they send the boxes on your doorstep pre-packaged and ready to cook. Some needed to be chopped, while others are ready to sizzle on the pan.
I like to have canned beans and pasta on hand for busy nights. I’m pretty surprised how the food industry has adapted to the signs of the times. I found tofu, chickpeas, and lentils shaped into pasta. The bean vermicelli is a personal favorite of mine.
There are pre-packaged zucchini noodles. It’s just zucchini spirals that you can make using a spiralizer.
Today it’s easier to incorporate veggies into your regular favorites. It just needs an open mind and a big room for creativity. When I find a brand that seems to adhere close to the Mediterranean principles, then I stick with that brand, so I don’t end up reading the label for each dry good I pick. That’s why I tend to linger more in the produce section of the grocery. I freeze even fresh spinach if it’s in danger of not being used immediately or when I buy too much produce more than I can cook in a week.
The pandemic has helped me learn these hacks because back in 2020, we only went to the grocery every two weeks to limit our environmental exposure to the virus. In a way, this has helped me to become more efficient. For instance, I would put a Napa cabbage in a bowl with a small amount of water and snip off the leaves as needed. That Napa cabbage can sometimes live for weeks and even grow roots. A quick sautee with pre-shredded carrots, pre-sliced mushrooms, frozen chopped french beans, garlic, onion, and bean thread vermicelli, and voila, you have dinner. This sauteed noodle can be transformed into a noodle soup by adding miso to a vegetable broth the next day. That’s repurposing for you.
Of course, on nights that are truly busy or when you want to relax, we have our Friday take-outs and to-go. We usually order from restaurants that serve complicated vegetable dishes that I don’t have the time to prepare, like Thai, Vietnamese, and Indian cuisines. Pizza nights are rare feast days. I buy specialty frozen pizzas from the grocery, usually thin-crust and made with cauliflower and such, and add more mushroom toppings and serve with roasted broccoli or cauliflower in buffalo sauce.
What about you? How do you deal with time challenges when it comes to preparing healthy meals for the family?
What worked for someone may not work for another person.
When I still worked full-time in the hospital, I usually cook for more than one meal. The good thing with me back then was that when I was stressed, I vented it out in the kitchen and would usually end up cooking 3-5 dishes at one time in 1-1.5 hours. I’d cook at 5 pm, and we have dinner at 6:30 pm. The next day, we pack the left-overs for our lunch.
Some people I know would cook over the weekend and freeze portions for the weekdays. I couldn’t do that. Why? Because I de-stress in the kitchen! I can’t de-stress just once or twice a week.
Another thing my mom taught me well was how to re-purpose dishes. She doesn’t want to serve the same dish over and over again. So I’ve learned to adopt her style. If I cook veggie chili bean for tacos, for example, the next day, it can become a burger by just adding egg and pan-frying or meatloaf by baking. Sometimes the veggie bean chili can end up as a filling for a burrito or steamed cabbage leaf roll with tomato sauce. It can also end up as a meatball. It depends on how the spirit leads. I call it chi-cooking. 😂
Creativity is the name of the game. And where to get these ideas? Just watch tons of Youtube videos and adopt some of the techniques and own it.
Another way to beat the time challenge is to pre-chopped veggies or frozen ones for longer storage life. I also prep most of my produce in bulk and freeze them so that cooking is faster.
Some would subscribe to food-prep vendors. You choose your recipes for a week, and they send the boxes on your doorstep pre-packaged and ready to cook. Some needed to be chopped, while others are ready to sizzle on the pan.
I like to have canned beans and pasta on hand for busy nights. I’m pretty surprised how the food industry has adapted to the signs of the times. I found tofu, chickpeas, and lentils shaped into pasta. The bean vermicelli is a personal favorite of mine.
There are pre-packaged zucchini noodles. It’s just zucchini spirals that you can make using a spiralizer.
Today it’s easier to incorporate veggies into your regular favorites. It just needs an open mind and a big room for creativity. When I find a brand that seems to adhere close to the Mediterranean principles, then I stick with that brand, so I don’t end up reading the label for each dry good I pick. That’s why I tend to linger more in the produce section of the grocery. I freeze even fresh spinach if it’s in danger of not being used immediately or when I buy too much produce more than I can cook in a week.
The pandemic has helped me learn these hacks because back in 2020, we only went to the grocery every two weeks to limit our environmental exposure to the virus. In a way, this has helped me to become more efficient. For instance, I would put a Napa cabbage in a bowl with a small amount of water and snip off the leaves as needed. That Napa cabbage can sometimes live for weeks and even grow roots. A quick sautee with pre-shredded carrots, pre-sliced mushrooms, frozen chopped french beans, garlic, onion, and bean thread vermicelli, and voila, you have dinner. This sauteed noodle can be transformed into a noodle soup by adding miso to a vegetable broth the next day. That’s repurposing for you.
Of course, on nights that are truly busy or when you want to relax, we have our Friday take-outs and to-go. We usually order from restaurants that serve complicated vegetable dishes that I don’t have the time to prepare, like Thai, Vietnamese, and Indian cuisines. Pizza nights are rare feast days. I buy specialty frozen pizzas from the grocery, usually thin-crust and made with cauliflower and such, and add more mushroom toppings and serve with roasted broccoli or cauliflower in buffalo sauce.
What about you? How do you deal with time challenges when it comes to preparing healthy meals for the family?