Whipping up flavorful, nutritious meals at home doesn’t have to
be difficult
– just make a plan and stick to it
n By Kelly Savio Staff Writer
A meeting ran late at work and now you’re dashing home, picking up the kids from day care on the way. The last thing you feel like doing is cooking a nutritious dinner for the family before helping with homework, doing a load of laundry and taking the dog for a walk. The easy option would be to pick up a pizza or fast food, but a niggling inner voice reminds you how unhealthy that habit can be. What’s a parent to do?
Cooking a healthy meal doesn’t have to be time-consuming, said Elizabeth Bailey, a registered dietitian and the food and nutrition manager at Kaiser Permanente Santa Teresa Medical Center. Rather, nutritious meals can often be prepared faster than most people think. The key to fast, healthy meals is planning ahead, she said.
“If you haven’t planned ahead, you’re much more likely to get fast food,” she said. “Most people have more time on the weekends, so take that time to plan the week ahead of you. Look at a few recipes, go shopping and maybe even make a couple of meals that you can reheat later in the week.”
Along with planning your meals for the week, keep a few healthy staples – such as brown rice, frozen vegetables, olive oil, garlic, pasta and canned beans – on hand at all times. These items can make up a healthy meal in a pinch, Bailey said.
“When you do take the time to prepare a meal, it’s a good idea to cook enough to stretch for two meals,” she explained. “For example, if you’ve made a chicken, you can have a chicken breast, some brown rice and vegetables for dinner one night. The next night, you can shred up the leftover meat and put it in an entree-sized salad, or mix it with some canned beans and make a burrito.”
Many South Valley businesses are making fast, healthy meals easier, too. At Running Rooster in Hollister, customers can swing by and pick up entrees such as wood-roasted rosemary chicken, wild Pacific salmon with dill or an assortment of salads to take home. Entrees can be taken home hot or cold for reheating.
“We have something called HMR – that’s home meal replacement– that helps people put healthy dinners on their tables at home,” said Elaine Stoddard, co-owner of Ragoots restaurant in Morgan Hill. “People can bring home a whole rotisserie chicken, gourmet meatloaf, soup or one of the other things we have prepared and waiting for customers to pick up. They can pick it up and have it on the table in 10 minutes.”
The regular fare at Ragoots is planned with nutrition and health in mind, too. Nothing on the menu is fried, many meals are made with flat breads rather than regular breads, salad dressings are served on the side, extra-virgin olive oil is used in place of butter and soups are mostly broth-based rather than cream-based.
No fried foods are on the menu at Mainstreet Bistro in Hollister, either. Instead, vegetables and meats are grilled, said owner Megan Ward.
“We also spend a lot of time preparing in advance,” she said. “We make all the salad dressings from scratch, so we make up large batches, and we have a mixture of extra-virgin olive oil, herbs and fresh garlic that we use as a base in a lot of things, and we have that made up, too, and waiting in the fridge. I do that at home, as well. That way, if I want to make up some pasta or a salad really quickly, I’ve already got a sauce and dressing prepared in the fridge. It’s so much healthier than having things like store-bought salad dressings, which often have sugar, corn starch and all kinds of stuff that isn’t good for our bodies.”
Both Ward and Bailey encourage people to wash fruits and vegetables as soon as they get home from the grocery store, and chop them up to include in a recipe planned for later in the week.
“If you have the produce washed, then it’s ready for whoever is hungry,” Bailey said. “If you’re on the way out the door, you can grab a piece of fruit and it’s ready to eat. If the kids are reaching into the fridge, they’ll have vegetables prepared for them to snack on. Doing these things makes it easier to eat healthier foods. It’s all about simplifying.”
Buying foods at the grocery store that require minimal preparation also helps speed up the cooking process, Bailey added. She mentioned using grape tomatoes, which can be tossed in a salad whole rather than needing to be chopped up, as well as dried cranberries or raisins, pre-chopped walnuts, shredded carrots, and bagged salads, which simply need to be washed before preparation. Heads of lettuce, on the other hand, need to be broken apart and chopped up.
Fish is another healthy food many people shy away from because they think it’s complicated to prepare, Bailey said, but the opposite is true. Fish often requires only a few minutes of cooking.
“It’s important to think about what you buy when you’re in the grocery store,” she added. “Look for low-salt versions of soups or canned vegetables. Buy low-fat or fat-free products. If frozen casseroles or dinners aren’t labeled as a healthier choice, they’re probably loaded with salt and fat. Grocery stores often sell pre-cooked rotisserie chickens, which aren’t as expensive as people may think and are a great, healthy dinner option. Be committed, plan ahead, and you’ll probably be surprised at how easy fast, healthy cooking can be.”
