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Healthy on a budget: cooking ahead
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Whether you are an office mom or a work-at-home mom (this includes stay-at-home moms!) it can be challenging to get a healthy, made-from-scratch meal on the table every night of the week. Cooking ahead may seem difficult, so for many moms, that means relying on take-out, restaurant meals, or pre-made frozen/packaged foods to just get you and your family fed. Eating whole foods (that means eating foods that are as close to its natural source as possible, not eating from that particular chain of organic food stores) is much better for our bodies. Our stomachs know how to digest foods that our ancestors learned to digest—foods that were not created in a laboratory and produced in a factory. The food breaks down easier and the vitamins are more easily able to assimilate into your system.
But how can you possibly carve more time into your day to cook from scratch when your schedule is already packed? Try choosing a day of the week you do not work or you have help from a partner, family member, or friend and spend several hours in that one day cooking and freeze ahead. In doing so, you will provide your family with the ingredients to quickly throw together healthy meals throughout the week. And since cooking from scratch is cheaper than eating out, you’re on your way to spending less on your grocery budget. So pull out your favorite CD’s and get ready to get cooking “big.”
Large batch of salad: Making a fresh salad every night can feel time consuming, but eating fresh vegetables every day is SO worth the effort. Make a large salad with dry ingredients at the beginning of the week. Then each day, just take portions of the already made salad from the big bowl, add some any additional wet ingredients you desire and toss with your favorite dressing and you’re ready to go. Just make sure you don’t add wet ingredients like sliced tomatoes to your large salad because it will make the salad soggy. Try: spinach or other dark leafy green (washed and VERY well-dried), sliced mushrooms; cherry tomatoes; carrot sticks (to save money, buy whole carrots and slice them into sticks on your batch cooking day); broccoli heads or broccoli slaw; green or red pepper strips, and really any vegetable you like that wouldn’t render the greens soggy.
When you’re ready to serve it up to your family, you can add wet ingredients such as sliced tomatoes; cucumber slices; fruits such as strawberries, oranges and grapefruit segments, and avocado chunks; and any additions such as hard boiled eggs, cooked beans and chickpeas; and your salad dressing of choice (hint: fat free is NOT the best way to go in salad dressings—our bodies assimilate the vitamins from the vegetables better if there is fat in there. Try making your own vinaigrette with 1 part olive oil to 3 parts balsamic vinegar—add a few teaspoons of Dijon mustard and shake vigorously.)
More salad recipes (not all great for this large salad concept, but a good link to get you out of a salad rut)
Whole Grains: Moms rave about stores like Trader Joe’s that carry healthy convenience foods such as frozen packages of whole grains like brown rice that are easy for quick healthy meals. But did you know that you can make your own frozen packages of brown rice (or any other whole grain) that you could use for quick healthy meals at a fraction of the cost? Buy brown rice, quinoa, barley, or any other whole grain in the bulk food aisle to get the best price. Cook them in a pot, or rice cooker, or you can even bake them and when the grains are cool, place 1-2 cup portions of the cooked grains into quart-sized freezer bags, flatten out the grains and try to remove as much of the air as possible. Seal the freezer bag and then you can stack the flattened bags in the freezer. If you are going to have several different cooked grains in the freezer at once, make sure to mark the type of grain on the bag. To defrost, simply put the bag in the refrigerator in the morning and it will be thawed by dinner time. If you have decided to use the grains last minute, you can run the bag under hot water to thaw the grains or you can use a microwave (but take the grains out of the bag and place in a microwave safe bowl first). You can use these grains under a stew or stirfry, in a soup, on a salad, seasoned as a side dish, in burritos, or any other way you would use rice.
Beans: Black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, lentils, chick peas—they are packed with fiber and protein and are a perfect way to complete a filling a meal without breaking the bank. A bag of dried beans cost anywhere from 79 cents to about $1.50 and with that one bag, you can make at least 8 servings, if not more—it doesn’t get any cheaper than 10 cents a serving! You can cook them over the stove, in a pressure cooker, or even in a crockpot. Once your beans are cooked, you can scatter them on a tray and freeze them, then put the frozen beans in a bag so that you have frozen beans for scattering on salad, or you can freeze them in individual containers with or without cooking liquid. Just defrost by putting the beans in the fridge the morning before, running warm water over the bag, or using the microwave (but remove beans from bag and put in a microwaveable safe bowl first). Then they are ready to add to soups, stews, stir-frys, salads, burritos, scrambled eggs, quesadillas, or season and eat by themselves.
Cooking Meat: If you see a sale on organic meat, stock up! You can either split it up and freeze the meat raw in individual servings for quick thawing and cooking later, or you can cook the meat ahead of time and then freeze the cooked meat for the future. Make sure to place the cooked meat (after it has cooled) in freezer bags and try and take out as much of the air as possible to prevent freezer burn. This works well with chicken, beef, and turkey. You can even cook ground meat ahead of time and freeze for later. But whatever you do, once you thaw frozen raw meat, you must cook it right away—do not refreeze. Use chicken, beef, or turkey on a large dinner salad, in strifries, casseroles, soups, or anywhere you need a little extra protein.
If you spend 1-3 weekend days a month and a few extra hours of work, the payback of cooking ahead will be significant. You will be able to throw together healthy meals more quickly and easily, you will save money by buying in bulk, and you will have more time to spend with your family. Don’t forget that kids who grow up involved in the kitchen are often more willing to try new foods and become cooks themselves, so get them an apron and give them little jobs to help you--you can't lose!
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