How to get to dinner in 3 easy and healthy steps
With back-to-back-to-back holidays finally behind us, our bodies are looking for a break from 2 solid months of indulgence. Every January 1st, we tell ourselves, “This year, things will be different.” “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” “New Year - New Me.” and believe it to be true. Timing-wise, though, nothing’s really changed — we’re still as busy as we were in November and December — and mealtime never gets a break.
If you’re anything like me, you tend to swap nutrition for convenience. It’s so easy to mindlessly order delivery or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after a busy day. Being intentional with your eating is just that — intentional. But it doesn’t have to be so fraught or precious or overly virtuous. It does, however, take a little extra effort on the back end in order to make it easy, accessible, and nutritious on the front end, i.e. dinnertime. This is where a little meal-prep strategy and some extra room in your freezer comes in.
Step 1: Carbs
When I’m pressed for time, my default carb is crusty bread because it’s delicious and I’m Italian. But it lacks the kind of nutrition found in whole grains like farro, barley, wheat berries, bulgur, quinoa, or brown rice. I like to make double batches and freeze them in single-serving portions. After cooking, just spread them out on a baking sheet, cool completely, then package and freeze. Refresh them with a quick pop in the microwave or skillet with a tiny bit of water.
Step:2 Vegetables
A wide variety of fresh vegetables — studies recommend 30 different types of plants per week for a healthy gut — is awesome if you remembered to get to the market. But if you’re cooking for one or two, it’s often really hard to get through all that beautiful produce before it needs to go into the compost bucket. Frozen veggies like green beans, spinach, corn, peas, edamame, squash, and vegetable medleys (that’s more than 7 right there) are nutritionally equivalent to fresh and you can stock up on all of them to keep plant-based nutrition within reach at any time.
Step 3: Protein
Having some healthy ready-to-heat protein options on hand makes dinnertime easy and tasty, thanks to our terrific marketplace. The miso sablefish is as good as any I would make from scratch (shhh, don’t tell anyone) and can go into the oven without thawing first in a pinch. However, if you are a homemade foodie like I am, try making a batch of sesame-ginger salmon meatballs, fish cakes, tuna burgers, or seafood wontons for the freezer. They thaw in minutes or in most cases, can go directly into the oven, pan, or pot from the freezer.
Put it all Together
When it’s dinnertime, simply grab a scoop of grains, vegetables, and protein and turn it into a grain bowl or stir fry. Seems easy enough.
I periodically go into a freezer frenzy, cooking furiously for an entire weekend just so I can see my freezer fully stocked. The obsessive-compulsive in me actually loves portioning (yes, I use a scale and measuring cups), packaging, labeling, and organizing. Thanks to my early days in food service, FIFO (first in first out) is indelibly marked in my DNA.
The beauty of single-serving portions is that there’s something new and delicious every day and little chance of having leftovers that molder in the back of the fridge. Plus it makes it so easy to make healthy food choices every day — not just on January 2nd. Wins all around!
Intentionally yours,
Grace
