Healthy Meals for Busy Peoples

[AeroChica]

My challenge in eating well is that I don't have much time to fool around with food. Prepping meals is a chore, and if I don't have the healthy stuff handy it's off to the cafeteria for a bagel I go. I generally eat breakfast and lunch plus two snacks at my desk every day, so I try to pack my meals and snacks in advance to make sure I have good choices. I've found some good methods to make many meals at a time, and I thought I'd share. I also want to hear about other folks fast solutions - I can use all the help I can get.

I will preface this by saying, it doesn't bother me to eat the same thing for several days. I like to have go-to meals that I know I like, I know the portions are right, and I just don't have to think about it. So I usually make one week of breakfasts the same, have two or three choices for lunches, and save my culinary creativity for dinner.

You'll also notice they are very light in starchy carbs - I am experimenting with cutting the starches way down in my diet and so far I am happy with the results.

Breakfast

On Sunday nights, I make 6 breakfasts at once. Each portion is two eggs, 1/2 ounce meat, 1/2 ounce cheese, and 1/2 cup veggies. I know real men don't eat quiche (it has too much fat in it anyways), so make this fritatta instead:

12 eggs
1/4 cup milk
3 oz lean meat, diced (ham or turkey bacon)
3 oz light cheese, grated or crumbled (light mozzarella or feta)
1.5 cups of chopped veggies (onion, green onion, peppers, spinach, tomato, whatever you have)
salt and pepper
1 cup salsa

Crack and scramble the eggs, add the milk, salt and pepper. Add in the meat, veggies and half the cheese. Pour in to a deep dish pie plate sprayed with cooking spray (it's got to be a deep one, otherwise use a caserole dish) and top with remaining cheese. Put it on a cookie sheet and bake at 350F for about an hour, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. It will be all puffed up when ready, but it will settle down when it starts to cool. Cut into six equal portions and put each into a plastic container in the fridge. When you are ready to eat, grab a container, heat for 1 minute and top with salsa. I like hot salsa because I have discovered there is nothing better than starting your day with a hot-pepper induced endorphin rush.

If you need to add some fibre to your diet, leave off the cheese topping, bake for aboout 10 minutes, then stir in some FibreSure or other quick-disolving fibre supplement, then add cheese topping. I think 2 tablespoons total gives you 3g of fibre per serving.

Combos to try: go Greek with feta, spinach, red pepper, tomato, or Western with green onion, mushrooms, ham and mozzarella.

Another option to make 3 breakfasts:

1 large tub of light cottage cheese (they are 750g size here, I don't know what they would be in the states)
1 small can mandarin orange segments
Roasted Almonds

Divide the cottage cheese into 3 containers, top each with 1/3 can of mandarin oranges, and a small handful of almonds (about 10). You can crush up the almonds a bit if you like or just leave them whole. The cottage cheese I use has 200 cal and 28g of protein per cup, so I think with the addition of the oranges and almonds, each breakfast is about 320 cal and around 34g protien.


Okay - your turn. How do make healthy food fast and easy?

[indy007]

Broccoli Soup

Fill a pot with water, season it, and bring it to a boil.
Chop some broccoli crowns off of the stalk.
Add them to the boiling water, more seasonings, and cover it (covering is important to get it back to a boil fast).
Wait 4 minutes.. you know the broccoli is done when you can easily cut through it with a knife.
Fish out the broccoli and throw it in the blender.
Add a bit of the water you just cooked the broccoli in to the blender. (I fill it half-way up the stack of broccoli). Season with salt & pepper.
Puree it.

Now you're pretty much done. If you want to get fancy, add some crumbles of goat cheese (I prefer gorgonzola) and some walnuts to the bowl before you pour in the soup.

Quick, easy, healthy, tastes great, good presentation. It's the same recipe Gordon Ramsey uses in his fine dining restaraunts.

To store it and re-heat it later, let it cool, and pour individual servings into zip-lock bags. You can put the bags directly into hot water later on to re-heat them before serving.

Total time, including prep, AND clean up.. usually under 10 minutes.


ahh here we go..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFc6o2m9mMQ

[YvetteSavage]

Wow-some good prior planning there! I keep fruit and nuts around-add some protein like skim milk and you have about as healthy meal to the max! :)

[PirateJon]

How do I make healthy food fast and easy? Foreman grill + boiling water.

Grill:
Meats of all animals - chicken breast-isis, pork, steak (i know. whatever.)
sliced veggies

Water:
blanched veggies
boiled eggs

Meat gets thrown in a freezer bag with a spice rub or a marinade (goya mojo sauce) overnight or two. I buy the bags of broccoli floretts and carrots for ease of use. that's literally 50% of my diet. I eat the same thing a lot. Add some fruits, egg whites for more protein and milk.

With the meat and veggies ready to go, dinner goes from fridge to belly in about 20 minutes.


I also use my rice cooker for quinoa. Google that - it's probably the best grain you can eat and is _awesome_ with siracha sauce or sofrito. Awesome and stores well for a few days.

[AeroChica]

Cool ideas - I am going to have to try that broc soup.

I meant to get back to this earlier and post the lunches too, so here goes...

While my man-friendly quiche is cooking (see first post) I make all my lunches for the week. It goes faster if you are doing a bunch at once, and they keep well. Here are some of the ones I do:

Salads

Sometimes I will do salad for lunch all week - just vary the ingredients. For me to have a salad for lunch though it has to be filling, substantial and tasty. If it's just rabbit food, forget it. So here is what I do to make a weeks worth of meal-salads. I buy a clamshell of prewashed mixed greens and divide it up into 5 containers - about 2 to 3 cups into each container, and I make sure the containers are large enough to add toppings (more on that in a minute). Those containers go in the fridge as is, and I get out 5 smaller containers and put the toppings in them for each salad.

For the toppings, I want to have the protein, dressing and flavourings all in one container that I can just open and dump over the mixed greens. I start by chopping a bunch of green onion, celery and pepper and dividing it among the containers, with about 2/3 cup to 3/4 cup in each. Then I toss in the protein and dressing. Here are ones that work for me:

Tuna Salad - in one container, put in a drained can of tuna (about 4 ounces), a squirt of mayo, a little olive oil and vinegar. Mash with fork.

Bocconcini - Put in a few ounces of bocconcini balls, a little olive oil and a good helping of balsamic vinegar. I usually add a few black olives and extra onion to this too.

Curried Chickpea Salad - Rinse a large can of chickpeas and divide them between two containers. Give a good squirt of curry mayo and a little vinegar or lemon juice. If you can't buy curry mayo, make your own by adding 1 tsp curry powder to 1/4 cup mayo and let sit overnight.

Chicken Ceasar - Use the pre-cooked and frozen chicken strips (I get Jane's from Costco). Put in 3-4 ounces of chicken, a dollop of ceasar salad dressing and an almost equal amount of lemon juice, and about 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese. You don't have to thaw the chicken - just throw it in frozen and it will thaw and marinate in the fridge.

Honey Mustard Ham and Swiss - cube up some ham and swiss (total about 4 ounces), toss in a good squeeze of honey mustard (or make your own by mixing half and half honey and mustard).

Mandarin - cube up some ham (about 4 ounces). Toss in half a tin of mandarin orange segments and a few tablespoons of the juice from the can. Squeeze in some hoisin sauce and a little sesame oil.

Corn and Black Bean - Rinse and drain a can of black beans and another one of corn. Divide among three containers. Dice one avocado and toss that in, then add salsa. If you have fresh cilantro, this is the place to use it.

I haven't given any measurements for the oils and dressings because I think that's about personal taste and personal dietary needs. I keep the fat portion for each lunch under 1 tablespoon, but you will need to adjust for your own diets. Anyways, hope that gives you some ideas, and I'd love to hear yours.

My other favorite lunch is veggies with hummus. I'll cut up about 6-8 cups of fresh broccoli, cauliflour, celery, peppers, etc and put them in a large container. Then I buy a large tub (about 1 pound, or two cups) of roasted garlic hummus. This makes two lunches, with each one being about 3-4 cups of fresh veg and 1 cup of hummus. With the brand I like (President's Choice) the hummus totals around 380 cal per meal, and I've never counted the veggies but I don't suppose they add a lot. The only thing I recommend here is that you always have broccoli in the mix because it's very filling - if you only have the more watery veggies like celery, it's not very satisfying.

OK - what are your go-to healthy lunches?

[The Question]

How do I make healthy food fast and easy? Foreman grill + boiling water.

Grill:
Meats of all animals - chicken breast-isis, pork, steak (i know. whatever.)
sliced veggies

Water:
blanched veggies
boiled eggs

Dude, dude, that's how I roll too.

Also, quesadillas. And pasta. With marinara sauce. From the bottle. A lot. Like all the time.

[CharlesTC]

Dude, dude, that's how I roll too.

Also, quesadillas. And pasta. With marinara sauce. From the bottle. A lot. Like all the time.

Pasta +marinara is delicious!

That isn't a bad thing to have?

[AeroChica]

Pasta +marinara is delicious!

That isn't a bad thing to have?

Depends on how you handle your carbs. Make sure the pasta is whole wheat and the marinara has no added sugar, add some protein or healthy fat (like olive oil) and keep the portions reasonable (like no more that 1.5-2cups pasta).

[JMass]

I just made the scrambled egg dish from the top post with Spinich, cheese, onions, and turkey.

It came out great and will last me until Sunday for breakfasts. THANKS!

[bitparity]

Btw, if you live in the Toronto area, have some money, and are extremely lazy...

www.healthyheartmeals.ca

Roughly $500 a month, quite filling, relatively tasty (slightly better than microwaved store dinners, but with no preservatives) and calorie portioned out to about 1600-1700 a day. I've actually lost 15 lbs in the last 2 months with it. Course, I'm doing MT 3-4 times a week, only drinking water, and weighed 215 at the start.

For some of you, $500 sounds like a lot, but before that, I was spending roughly the same amount of money eating out and eating crap every day. But something worth checking out.

(not an ad, though it sounds like one)