The husby does a lot of cooking around here. You would think that I would have more time to do so as a stay at home Mom but no. I have filled our “plate” with activities, adventures, fitness, blogging and personal training….. sometimes, that doesn’t always leave me time to make the meals. Fortunately, my husband fills in when needed, alot! And, he is very particular about how he likes his food prepared and what he wants to eat. Not picky in the “I don’t like broccoli” sense. Picky in the “health and longevity” sense.
For example, all dressings must be homemade with healthy oils, all sweet potatoes must be organic, all veggies must be steamed, all good local meats rare, and so on and so forth. So yeah, I have the tendency to over cook meat and I don’t make the dressings, well, because he does it, so I get lazy ;D (love you honey)… Or I just get stuck in a rut making meat and veggies, meat and veggies, meat and veggies. Boring!
At any rate, our time is getting to be a a precious commodity the older our children get and the more endeavors we venture on but we won’t budge on healthy eating. That also means we don’t go out to restaurants out of convenience. When we go out to eat, it’s a few times a year and its is going to be high quality like The Bachelor Farmer, Heartland or Travail. OMG… YUM! If you are in the Twin Cities, MN area… you haven’t really eaten until you eat at these amazing restaurants.
Meal planning and prep are key but that can take a back seat sometimes so, the hubby has devised some simple and easy ways to spice up our plate to keep us from getting bored as hell with the same stuff. So I will hand it over to my husband Thaddeus….
I like eating good food. I love to cook. These days I have no time to cook, but I still want to eat well.
I have developed an amazing set of meal plans for myself and my family to eat well and absolutely minimize the time we spend in the kitchen.
No, we don’t pay someone else to prep our meals. I would love to do this and just not have to spend any time in the kitchen. Even though I love to cook, I like having time to work out and to be with my kids even more. (Ahem, Heather here, may I cut in to add- “spend time with wifey,” okay, done)
But even if someone else prepped our meals, we would still have to heat them up and wash the dishes.
The techniques I have been using take about the same amount of time as if someone else prepped our meals. That’s how fast they are.
One of my favorite is blended vegetables.
I love vegetables. I understand the health benefits of eating a lot of vegetables. I would love to eat an entire head of broccoli. But I can’t because after eating a third of the cooked head of broccoli I’m just tired of eating broccoli. I still want to get all those phytonutrients and get in my 5-10 servings of vegetables a day!
I solved this in a way that allows me to eat way more broccoli, or any other vegetable, than I usually would be able to do and it tastes better too.
You can do this with virtually any vegetable. I have used broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, bok choy, kale, spinach, and combinations of all of those.
Here’s how you do it.
Grab your veggies. Fresh, frozen, canned, whatever.
Boil or steam them.
Drain the water and dump the veggies into your blender, or Bullet, or food processer.
Add some butter.
Add anything else that will make you enjoy them even more.
I usually add turmeric, apple cider vinegar, and butter.
You could add curry, hot sauce, olive oil, the sky’s the limit.
Dump them out onto your plate.
Add salt and/or pepper.
Enjoy.
Check out some of these websites for great recipe ideas!
What are your thoughts? Comment below.