10 Strategies to Masterful Food Preparation in Minimal Time

Written on 5/19/2008 by Melanie Thomassian, author of the award winning Dietriffic.com.

Image via Creative Commons, Marie’s Flickr photostream. (Source)

There’s no doubt about it, finding time to cook healthy meals has become a major challenge for most families.

Many people feel swamped with the immensity of their daily tasks, and often cooking is seen as a ‘luxury!’ The good news is that sitting down to a home cooked meal even on the busiest of days, isn’t impossible.

With a little planning, you and your family can maintain a healthy diet while keeping your active schedule.

If simple, yet insanely easy ideas are what you’re after, read on!

1. Preparation, preparation, preparation! I know, it sounds boring, but sitting down each week to create a menu plan can make a huge difference to the quality of your families meals, and actually save you time and money in the long-run.

• Stock up the supplies. Coming home to bare cupboards is a ‘great’ way to kill enthusiasm for cooking! Make sure you have plenty of rice, pasta, sugar, flour, tinned foods (peas, beans, lentils, tomatoes, fish) nuts, seeds, spices, seasoning, sauces, and oils. This way you’ll always be able to come up with something reasonably healthy.

• Weekend prep. Spend a few moments on the weekend washing and cutting up raw vegetables. Then store them in airtight containers so you can grab them and get cooking once the work week begins. You could also make a batch of soup, stew or casserole to freeze for lunches or dinner later in the week.

• Tidy your workspace. Don’t allow your kitchen to become the dumping ground for kids toys, homework, and old mail. It’s very difficult to be motivated if your first job is clearing up the kitchen mess, and it’s much less time-consuming if you tidy as you go!

• Find inspiration. If you find yourself lacking in the inspiration department, ask your friends for their favorite recipes. If you want something really simple and quick, try searching on the web for recipes with five ingredients or less.

• Delegate tasks. If your partner or kids get home first, ask them to start dinner for you. Maybe it’s just setting the table, getting recipe ingredients out on the counter for you to begin, or chopping vegetables, but every little helps!

• Easy up on time! If preparing vegetables and meats beforehand takes too much time, purchase pre-cut vegetables, salad bags, and diced meats to speed up the prep time.

• Try to enjoy cooking. If cooking’s not your thing, what can you do to make the experience better? Would listening to your favorite music or podcast help? Think about how you could create a more enjoyable cooking environment and try to implement these ideas over the coming weeks.

• Relax and enjoy your meal. If you normally eat in front of the TV or at your computer, set a new goal to sit down at the table at least once each day. You’ll benefit from the break in distractions and the chance to simply mull over the days events.

• Eat out occasionally. Sometimes our busy lives demand the convenience of fast food restaurants. If that’s the case, enjoy the ‘treat,’ but choose wisely where possible. Opt for lean meats, baked potatoes, and green salads, and try to limit your intake of high fatty foods, such as French fries, fried chicken or burgers.

The truth is if we don’t make time right now for our health, we’ll have to make time for sickness later in life!

What ways do you maintain a healthy lifestyle while keeping up with your busy schedule?

10 Strategies to Masterful Food Preparation in Minimal Time 

Read More

How to Find Time to Cook Healthy Meals

Real food guru Michael Pollan recently penned an article in The New York Times Magazine about the decline of the art of cooking and the rise of food television. As America spends less time in the kitchen and more in front of the TV, our focus has shifted from active cooking to passive viewing (and eating).

Our health has suffered as a consequence.

Cooking for yourself is arguably the most effective way to achieve and maintain good health. Choosing unprocessed foods over industrial foods also has less impact on the environment and can save you money.

But how can a busy person find the time to cook?

As with most things, fitting cooking into your schedule is a matter of priority and organization

As Pollan points out, you are probably wasting more time surfing the internet and watching TV than preparing your own food.

Here are a few strategies you can use to make sure cooking from scratch is part of your daily (at least weekly) routine:

1. Kill your email
   While you do not have to be as extreme as Leo Babauta at Zen Habits and eliminate email completely, you can delegate it to a small part of your day by limiting the time you waste re-reading messages and juggling replies. Resolve to spend only 1-2 hours a day or less on email at specific designated times and do not make exceptions. This is difficult to do at first, but can save you dozens of hours a month if you are able to implement it. 

• Turn off your TV
  A little TV time for relaxing and enjoyment is fine, but if you find yourself spending more than 1 or 2 hours a night staring at a box, it may be time to reevaluate your priorities. Cut your TV time down to only what you really enjoy—and be picky. 

• Spend time shopping
  Some of the time you gain by unplugging multimedia should be shuttled directly into food shopping. Let’s face it, if you do not have anything fresh in the house you are probably not going to cook yourself dinner. On the flip side, if you spend money on fresh food you are more likely to cook it. Set aside an hour a week to go grocery shopping and visit a farmers market.

Make this time non-negotiable, if you skip it you are doomed for the week.

• Plan your meals
  Not everyone can follow a strict weekly meal plan (I sure can’t), but you should have a good idea of the kind of meals you will be eating for the week before leaving the grocery store. For example, if you find some nice corn at the market, think of the other flavors you’d like to eat with it and buy those ingredients too. Jalepeno? Cilantro? Tomato? 

iPhone apps like Epicurious and even old-fashioned pen and paper can be incredibly valuable while planning your meal strategy.

• Cook in advance
  For some people cooking dinner every day is not a realistic option. If this is you, learn to think in bulk. 

Roast an entire chicken Sunday night and eat off of it for a few days, being creative with your reincarnations. Soup is simple to make and easily scalable to any volume. Whole grains can be made in advance and frozen in individual servings. These can be reheated in 1-2 minutes in the microwave. Ditto for beans and lentils.

When planning your large batches, remember you can cook either complete meals or individual ingredients to be combined in creative ways throughout the week. The main goal is to cut cooking time down on any given night to 30 minutes or less by prepping components of your meal or the whole thing ahead of time. Your imagination (which you can extend to the internet) is your limit for saving time with batched cooking.

• Use slow cookers and pressure cookers
  Slow cookers (aka crock pots) work by adding a bunch of ingredients to a pot on low heat and cooking them slowly over many hours until they are ready. This is a simple and effective way to make complete meals in large batches. Set it up right and your meals are magically ready when you get home from work. 

Pressure cookers are exactly the opposite. Rather than low heat, pressure cookers use high pressure to increase temperature and rapidly cook foods that normally take hours. That may sound crazy, but once you taste beans from a pressure cooker you will never go back to canned. It can also be used for grains, meat and vegetables.

The idea of a pressure cooker can be scary to kitchen novices, but the actual mechanism is very simple. Once you get used to it your pressure cooker will be one of the best time-saving kitchen tools you own.

• Recruit help
  Cooking for two people is much more efficient than cooking for one. Likewise two people buying, prepping, cooking and serving food together can dramatically cut the time it takes to get from the front door to the table. 

If nothing else, you should at least convince your dining partners to pitch in and help with clean up!

At the end of the day, it is possible to set up your life so that coming home and whipping something up is the quickest and easiest way to eat. Ordering takeout, waiting in line and going to a restaurant easily take as much time as a quick stir fry if you have everything on hand and ready to go.

Cooking for yourself can also help you avoid the constant worry and confusion over what is healthy and what you should and shouldn’t be eating. Make your own food from real ingredients for the majority of your meals and you are well on your way to a better healthstyle.

How to Find Time to Cook Healthy Meals 

Read More

Learn How to Cook and Prep Healthy Meals at Home

The lazy way out won’t work here my friends; you can’t consistently purchase healthy food at a restaurant. Sure, you can get their house salad (dry, oil on the side) but aside from that, I have a hard time believing that the food is made with your health in mind. Therefore, in order to really get moving on a healthy lifestyle, you have to prep yourself and your kitchen.
























This is something I failed to do. I knew the freezer held the peanut butter and chocolate ice cream and I knew the microwave would heat my Hot Pockets. Aside from that, I was a helpless fool in the kitchen.

In typical fashion, I found some resources that I now constantly refer to. While it’s only been four months since the big diet change, I have learned a ton from these sites. In fact, each of these are bookmarked on the laptop I have in the kitchen.

I am actually hoping that you all leave some good tips in the comment section so we can learn this one together. In the meantime, here’s to good cooking!

• 45 Cooking & Baking Tips – A Collection Of Timeless Wisdom : There are some unhealthy items here but very cool tips nonetheless. I just noticed this site has a part 2 as well. 

• Don’t Be Boring: Here are links to perhaps thousands of videos showing you how to cook new stuff:
  • FoodTube: Find a Video Recipe, or Add Your Own!
  • YouTube: Searched for recipe within the How To Category.
  • Videojug: Same thing, tons of videos.
  • Google Video: Anything not covered above, is covered here. 

• Over 100 Quick and Easy Recipes: WOW. All of these dishes take 30 minutes or less to prepare. 

• 10 Healthy Snack Ideas Under 100 Calories: Note to everyone! Low Calorie doesn’t mean low fat. 

• 13 Simple, Timeless Kitchen Hacks (Banish Tears, Cuts, Burns, Smells & Stains!) 

• Kitchen Timesavers That Speed Up Dinner 

• The Ultimate Eat-Out Eat-Healthy Guide: Cooking will not always be an option. Go out prepared! 

Seriously, if you have some favorite tips on healthy eating or navigating the kitchen, please tell us about them in the comments section. Because I am mildly obsessed with this topic, the most practical, insanely useful commenter gets a copy of a good but over-the-top book named, Skinny Bitch. Here is a preview of of the book and yes, it totally applies to men. Just don’t bring it to work, your card game, in public etc.;)

Learn How to Cook and Prep Healthy Meals at Home 

Read More

Snack Makeover: 5 Healthy and Cheap DIY Snacks

Written on 6/17/2008 by Garrett Whelan who writes about cooking for men or anyone trying to kick the fast food habit at FatBastardEats.com.

I was at my brother’s house this week with his 2 kids and I noticed something disturbing. 90% of what this family eats comes from a box or a restaurant. There’s nothing wrong with convenience per se, but it seems so unnecessary, expensive and simply unhealthy.

In 15 minutes per week, you could prepare most of these things at half the cost. Making them yourself also allows you near-total control of what you and your children eat.

Have you ever looked at the sodium content of snacks out there today? Kids get 3 times the recommended daily allowance of sodium before noon!

The true cost of packing up these snacks yourself seems to be in the time and effort, which many people treat like a very precious commodity. If you can spare a few minutes each day in an effort to push some healthy foods down your kids throats, you can be on your way to saving money at the grocery store and at the doctor’s office as little Johnny becomes healthier.

Here are 5 easy ways that you can get moving in the right direction and I challenge you to open your pantry or cabinets and identify other ways you can whip up some Do-it-Yourself magic and come up with healthy alternatives to your snacks.

Kids Snacks
I’ve priced it out and buying a tub of pretzels and parceling them into snack bags is literally 3 times cheaper than buying the individual bags. No coupon in the world will save you what 20 minutes will.

If that weren’t enough of an incentive, this also allows you to customize your kids snacks too. Make Chex Mix without the sugar, take the raisins out of the trail mix since your kid doesn’t eat them, etc. Perhaps the best part is these snacks last just as long when you pack them up yourself as they do in their individual packs.

Rice Crispy Treats
Yes I know pre-made rice crispy bars are awesome and while no one eats them for their health benefits, have you looked at sodium content? Wow.

If you make them yourself and keep them in Ziploc bags, they taste better, last just as long, and have much less sodium. As a bonus you can substitute brown puffed rice so you actually get a little fiber.

Microwave Popcorn
Regular microwave popcorn costs about $1 a bag. Bulk popcorn costs about a nickel a bag. There isn’t even a choice here. All you have to do is drop a 1/4 cup of kernels in a paper bag with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Then staple the bag shut and microwave it just the same as you would any other bag of popcorn (no, the staples will not cause sparks if your microwave was built after 1986). Cheap, fast, and 0 cholesterol or artificial flavors.

Fruit Cup
Tupperware and similar sealed container companies have been striding forward at a remarkable pace; especially in the area of smaller containers. There’s no reason you have to buy pre-fab fruit cups anymore. Dicing your own fruit means your kid isn’t drinking down the high fructose syrup that most fruit is packed in.

DIY fruit cups last about a week so you can do up a batch Sunday night and you’re good for school. If you’re using apples or some fruit that browns, just sprinkle in a little lime juice.

Yogurt
Have you seen how much sugar is in yogurt these days? My nephew’s literally, I’m not making this up, had M&Ms in it. I found that interesting since my sister-in-law is one of those semi-self-righteous moms who would never let her kid eat a candy bar.

The same little Tupperware that worked for fruit cups can be filled from a tub of vanilla yogurt with the exact amount of fresh fruit, jam and honey you want your kid to eat (yogurt, strawberries and honey is the best thing ever). If not, you may as well give the kid a candy bar – the sugar levels are nearly the same!

Packing your own food for your family has a ton of advantages. It’s cheaper, healthier and it gives you total control over what you eat. As I showed here, it’s also pretty easy. A hidden value to all of this is that your kids will actually see what you’re doing and learn healthy habits early in life.

If everything they eat comes shrink-wrapped, zip-topped and in individually wrapped portions, how will they ever learn to cook for themselves? How will they even understand the concept?

Read More

How to Strip 10 Years Off Your Age in Just 10 Days

Aging is fact of life that is beyond our control. However, our reaction to aging is something that every one of us can change. We all know people who are in their forties, fifties, or beyond – and who still retain a certain youthfulness.

Here’s an inspiring example of reverse aging.

Bob Hayes took up running when he was 60. After a little while, he decided to enter a 5km fun-run and his son gave him his first pair of trainers. He said afterwards,

“I wasn’t feeling as fit as I would have liked to. Perhaps age is catching up on me?”

So far there is nothing out of the ordinary about Bob, right?

But look at Bob twenty years later:

Now at age 80, Bob has just completed his tenth 50-mile ultra-marathon in Montana and has made running history.

Bob now says: “I’m in the best shape of my life.”

It’s extraordinary that Bob is fitter at 80 than he was at 60 and can endure feats of running that most 20 year olds wouldn’t survive! What’s his secret? It is his indomitable spirit and it’s something that we can all conjure up. I want to help you to tap into this hidden wellspring in order to strip 10 years off your age in just 10 days.

Here are the 10 steps of rejuvenation:

Take stock
Sit down and complete this sentence: “I would feel younger if I …..”

Simple right? Well, make sure that you focus on positive goals and that the result is measurable. Examples of measurable goals are: “I would feel younger if I could run for half a mile without stopping,” or “I would feel younger if I could fit into size 14.”

Boost motivation and commitment
In order to commit to change, we need encouragement. Tell your best friend about your 10-day plan and ask her or him to contact you each day and cheer you on.

Start Exercising
Exercise has huge benefits. Focus on getting your body back into gear. Your goals are to get fitter, more flexible, and to lose weight. Plan to attend at least two exercise classes. These exercise classes could be yoga, tai chi, aerobics, martial arts or anything else that you might enjoy. As well, go for a brisk walk each day. Start with a 10 minute walk on day 1. Then add 5 minutes each day until you reach 30 minutes.

Drop weight
Are you overweight? Shed some weight in these 10 days and you will look and feel better. Losing weight fast is the jumpstart many people need to begin and continue a diet. Remember that slimming down completely is a long-term project. Read this post for inspiration and guidance.

Change your look
Go to a beauty salon and have your eyebrows tidied and maybe indulge in a facial – yes, even if you are a male! Learn to apply makeup. If you don’t feel confident about that, get some advice from a pharmacist or a beautician about what to use. Go to a trendy hair salon and get a new hairstyle. Ask for a young hairstylist to attend to you and ask him or her for advice on what styles are cool at the moment. Be daring!

Buy some new clothes
Ask a young friend to accompany you on a style mission. (My best style advisors are 11 and 13 respectively!). Forget about the style and colors you usually wear. Try something new and cool. If you have budget constraints, go and shop in a second-hand clothes shop. Flaunt the New You!

Get your creative juices flowing
Being creative makes us feel alive and dynamic. Attend one creative class in these 10 days. Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn potting? Or painting? Or wood-working? Or writing? Now is the time to start! ( Here’s a video by Deepek Chopra on creativity).

Meditate
Take up meditation to rejuvenate body and spirit. Check out these 10 important tips on how to start meditating.

Have fun
Laughter and enjoyment peel back the years. Maybe you could host a dress-up dinner or take up dancing. Why not try salsa, belly dancing, hip hop, or Argentine tango?

Improve your posture
How is your posture? Here is a simple exercise to improve posture. Stand about one foot away from a wall. Place your hands on the wall beside your shoulders. Slowly bend your arms and try to touch the wall with your chest bone. Striving to do so will straighten your spine. Do this exercise a few times each day for a regal posture!

If you follow this program for 10 days, you will find a new, younger person smiling at you in the mirror. You will feel deeply alive and ready to experience life at its best.

How to Strip 10 Years Off Your Age in Just 10 Days 

Read More