How to Put a Healthy Meal on the Table Each Night

… without spending all of your free time in the kitchen.

Hi! I hope that your week is moving along smoothly. I am getting excited because I’ll be teaching a healthy cooking workshop this Friday at the health center where I work. The focus of the class is on fresh springtime greens. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Today I want to focus on something that is very important to me: home cooked dinners. It is so nourishing to sit down at the table with your family, significant other or roommate and enjoy a home cooked meal. The ritual of preparing the food, sharing it with others and unwinding from the hustle and bustle of the day is very special. I find that I’m happiest when I turn on some Frank Sinatra, maybe pour a glass of Cabernet and chop my vegetables in peace. However, there is not enough time in our busy lifestyle to casually prepare dinner each night. Therefore, I am sharing with you my tips on how to streamline your dinner preparations each week.

1. Make a giant salad without the dressing and keep it in the refrigerator. Each night take some out and toss with your favorite salad dressing. I prefer either fresh lemon juice with olive oil or I make a weeks worth of salad dressing and store it in the fridge. In my opinion, the best way to start your dinner each night is with a fresh, green salad. By making a large batch, you save on time by not having to prepare a fresh salad each night.

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2. Cook with a crock pot. I try to use my crock pot at least once a week. I throw in the ingredients in the morning and come home to a healthy, delicious meal. This cooking method saves me about two hours each week because we heat up the left-overs the next night. With 20 minutes of prep-time (chopping veggies, measuring out ingredients and spices) we have two nights worth of dinners. Add your fresh, green salad and you have a well-balanced meal.

This was a roasted vegetable dish with feta and pine nuts

3. One Dish Meals. This is another of my favorite cooking methods. I try to make a lot of one dish meals to save on clean-up time. I might make a risotto on the stove, a casserole in the oven or skewers on the barbeque. Any way that I can cook all of my ingredients without using more that one dish is a time-saving winner in my book. Recently I cooked a fillet of salmon with a bunch of asperagas in parchment paper in the oven. I also threw a small loaf of bread in the oven while the fish was cooking and rounded out the meal with a green salad. Plan a meal that uses one cooking dish to save on clean-up time.

4. Cook once, eat twice. Obviously, cooking twice as much as what you need is a great way to stretch one cooking session into two meals. You can also get creative by roasting an organic chicken with vegetables and potatoes one night and then using the leftover chicken to make soup, enchiladas, or your favorite dish with shredded chicken the next night. This also works well with cooked meat in the crock pot or large batches of quinoa or brown rice. Try to cook more than you need and then incorporate that into the next night’s dinner.

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5. Plan your meals on Sunday. Each Sunday, I sit down with my stack of Bon Appetite Magazines, cookbooks and recipe clippings and I plan out our meals for the week ahead. When selecting meals I plan ahead for left-overs and make sure to always have a protein (usually fish, chicken, beef or lamb and sometimes quinoa, tofu or eggs,) a starch (usually rice, sweet potatoes or bread for Blake,) vegetables (steamed, sauteed, roasted or stir-fried) and of course a large, green salad. I then write out my shopping list and stock up on all of the ingredients for the week. This may seem overwhelming, but I only cook about four meals each week. The other nights dinners are either left-overs, eating out at a restaurant or family members house or random meals of food from the fridge.

Once I’m home from the grocery store, I’ll wash my vegetables and chop or slice any that I’ll be using in the next few nights. I freeze any meat that I won’t be cooking and make sure that I have all of the ingredients that I need for the week. If I’m out of one, I’ll try to find a replacement (black beans instead of kidney beans, frozen broccoli instead green beans, etc.) that will work instead. This saves me another trip to the store. By planning out my meals ahead of time, I save a half an hour each night by not having to go to the grocery store after work.

My dinner plate tonight: green salad, baked sweet potato fries & baked chicken

I hope this helps you avoid the fast-food, pizza or take-out that you might rely on on a weekly basis. With a little planning and prep work, you can have healthy dinners on the table each night. What other tips do you have on saving time in the kitchen?