I truly believe that no matter how busy you are and how many kids you have; everyone can have healthy, yummy, home cooked meals during the week. As my coworker Lynne and I begin our 90 day challenge to ourselves to eat right and exercise regularly, I invite everyone else to do the same. I’m going to give you my biggest secret for being able to cook every night without pulling out your hair: plan ahead. With proper planning, anyone can be a weeknight gourmet!
The first step is to sit down and plan your week. Review what activities you have going on that week and try to match the level of difficulty against how busy a day is. If you have a particularly busy day, plan an easy/quick meal for that night. On the evenings that you have more time, you can plan a dinner that may take a little longer to prepare and cook-ahead for the next day. My friend Shannon has a whiteboard on her fridge which she uses to plan what she is making every night, which gave me the inspiration to start doing the same. I use this little calendar specifically designed to plan your weekly menus (that I found at Michael’s for $1!). Whatever your method is, take some time on Saturday or Sunday to sit down and plan your week. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, and you can switch your nights around depending on what you’re in the mood for, it’s just important to pick 5-7 meals and write them down, creating the plan is half the battle. Executing the plan is the other half.
I just went through my cookbooks (handwritten and purchased) and reviewed a few websites. Since my goal is to cut carbs, calories and fat, I spent a lot of time on www.eatbetteramerica.com. If you’ve never seen their website, you must check it out!! One of the things I pride myself on is my ability to take the traditional foods that I grew up with and substitute a few ingredients to make them healthier. Eat Better America does all that for you in their “healthified” section, it’s fabulous.
Here is my plan for the week. First, I lay out what I want to have for breakfast, lunches and snacks all week:
•Breakfast – healthy muffin
•Morning snack – nonfat light yogurt
•Lunch – lentil and tomato chicken soup or leftovers from the night before
•Afternoon snack – whole wheat pretzels w/ reduced fat peanut butter or reduced fat cheez-its
•Evening snack - healthified carrot cake
Then, I plan my dinners ... WEEK 1: no red meat, boooo :(
•Monday Dinner – chicken and zucchini w/ garlic
•Tuesday Dinner – spicy black bean tostadas (I’m going to be extremely busy on Tuesday so I chose a dinner that I could make in 20min or less)
•Wednesday Dinner – chicken marsala
•Thursday Dinner – turkey burgers and whole wheat mac & cheese w/ broccoli
•Friday Dinner – chicken pesto pizza on homemade whole wheat crust
Once I have decided what to have all week, I go through my freezer, fridge and pantry then sit down to create my grocery list. Lynne gave me a great recipe for apple bran muffins, all you need is bran flake cereal, rolled oats, unsweetened applesauce and things you typically have in your house already (cinnamon, baking soda, vegetable oil, egg, baking powder, skim milk and brown sugar). If you’re a coupon clipper, definitely visit www.bettycrocker.com for coupons on the new Yoplait non-fat light yogurts that taste like dessert and Progresso soups if you’re not going to make a vat of homemade.
Here is the list of everything you could possibly need to pick up at the store to make homemade muffins, homemade soup and all 5 dinners listed above. I’ll post the muffin recipe, soup recipe, carrot cake recipe and Monday dinner recipe tomorrow, along with my Sunday evening tips for getting ready for your week.
Grocery list:
All purpose flour
Whole wheat flour
Baking powder
Baking soda
Sugar
Brown sugar
Pumpkin pie spice
Cinnamon
Basil
Parsley
Salt
Black pepper
Walnuts or pecans
Vegetable oil
Olive oil
Rolled oats / dry oatmeal
Bran flake cereal
Whole wheat pretzels
Reduced fat Cheez-its
Lentils
Unsweetened applesauce
Reduced fat peanut butter
Light cool-whip
Non-fat vanilla yogurt
5 non-fat light yogurts
Non-fat or Neufchatel cream cheese
Bag of Carrots
Bag of Onions
Kale
2 Zucchini
Head of garlic
Tomato
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Yellow bell pepper
Eggs
Skim milk
Monterrey Jack, cheddar and mozzarella cheese – reduced fat or made w/ 2% milk
Reduced fat grated parmesan cheee
Reduced-sodium chicken broth (4 cans)
No-salt added diced tomatoes
Reduced-fat pesto
Pizza sauce
Black beans
Corn tortillas
Whole wheat elbow macaroni
Chicken, chicken and more chicken
Frozen turkey burgers
I do hope you'll follow along and at least enjoy some of these healthy recipes!
No comments:
Post a Comment