Eating and Cooking: Simplified and “Healthified”

Back in my “Cooking and Happiness” post, I mentioned that I wanted to find ways to make cooking less of a relentless chore and more of a pleasure. While taking some of the stress out of the plan-shop-cook-eat process, I also wanted ideas that would reduce the guilt; I wanted to feel good about what I was eating without reinventing my life to do so. And, thanks to various sources of inspiration, here’s what I’ve discovered so far. It boils down to 3 basic ideas.

1. Have lots of vegetables, fruits, and other whole foods on hand.

Having healthy stuff on hand is only part of the solution, but it is a completely essential part. Picking up a bountiful basket (5 fruits and 5 vegetables, see bountifulbaskets.org) at the beginning of each week has been a fun and economical way to get more fruits and vegetables into our house. It’s also helped me branch out and try new foods and new recipes (brussel sprouts in a black pepper sauce, anyone? roasted persimmons?). Another breakthrough has been having David pick up produce on his way home from work (especially now that it’s getting warm enough for him to easily swing by Lee’s Marketplace on his bike). Sending him on a quick produce run after Peter is in bed also works well. Dave tends to shop quickly, stick to the list, and avoid temptation food. Another recent practice that has dramatically increased our intake of whole foods has been keeping the freezer well-stocked with frozen fruit.

2. Actually eat the whole foods that we do have on hand.

Having a bunch of good stuff in the fridge is no guarantee that it will be eaten, so having a simplified and flexible repertoire of breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes has been a big deal for me. Basically, I ‘m trying to eat fruit and whole grains for breakfast (usually a simple combination of frozen blueberries with oatmeal that gets thrown in the microwave or a slice of toast with a piece of fruit). For lunch, a salad or veggie tray or a smoothie with something legume-based on the side (e.g. hummus and pita, bean burgers, a lentil stew). And then a vegetable stir-fry or vegetable soup or some other cooked vegetable type dish for dinner. Of course there is a ton of flexibility in here -especially with dinner- but that’s the basic plan. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to make creamy pasta dishes and juicy roasts (on special occasions) and a whole slew of other adventurous –and sometimes calorie-ridden- dinner recipes, but stir-frying up some vegies with rice make a great “every-day” sort of plan. Having a simple and versatile list of sauces and glazes that can mix-and-match with various vegies is a big help. I’m also collecting favorite recipes in a file in Word so that I can quickly search my list by ingredients (e.g. search “mushrooms”). I’m hoping this will also help with eating things in-season (i.e. buying the produce as it comes into season at the local gardeners’ market and then coming home and figuring out what to do with it.)

Another key piece of this puzzle is finding the time and energy to prep the food. Stir-fries and stews may be easy and versatile, but there is still going to be quite a bit of rinsing, peeling and chopping involved. Putting a salad or mini salad bar together can be especially time-intensive. What’s been working for us has been making a big salad right after coming home from the grocery store and then eating it with lunch throughout the week. I, personally, also do better when I can get things chopped and washed during the first part of the day as I tend to lose motivation in the later part of the afternoon. Dave loves coming home with everything laid out in bowls and ready for him to cook. By the way, heavily enlisting my spouse in this whole process (or maybe he has been enlisting me) has probably been the real reason that any of this has worked.

I also really like the system that my in-laws have developed; on Saturdays, they pick up their bountiful basket of produce, look through some cookbooks on the spot in order to plan a couple of meals based on the basket’s contents, head to the grocery store to fill in the missing ingredients, and then go home to do most of the prep for the following week (i.e. getting the veggies washed, chopped, and stored for the salad bar and for other upcoming meals. It makes for a long morning but also for easy, healthy eating during the remainder of the week.

3. Limit the “goodies.”

This one really goes back to the idea of what foods you have on hand. If peanut butter M&Ms are on the counter, you can bet I’ll be eating those for lunch no matter how many shiny pieces of fruit are sitting nearby. I’ve realized that this idea of pushing out “the bad” by filling up the empty spaces with “the good” has many implications beyond food. But for me with regard to eating it was fairly simple: 1) having healthy snacks on hand and 2) admitting that I am weak when it comes to chocolate (among other things) and having Dave hide the goodies (yes, including the chocolate chips intended for baking). I didn’t want to go without it, but I also didn’t want to get to the end of the day and realize I’d consumed a large bag of chocolate-covered raisins (and not much of anything else). This way, I can look forward to a treat at the end of the day, but I have a better idea of how much of it I’m eating. This plan of attack wouldn’t work for everyone –and it’s not without its drawbacks- but, hey, it works surprisingly well for me. Also, buying things in smaller portions -especially ice cream, which can’t really be hidden in the freezer- helps a great deal (it may not be even close to the best value in terms of price per once, but I sure value the end result of not feeling sick and guilty when the carton is empty).

Whew! So that’s the gist of it –with more details to follow in future posts. This is not a list of rules (or at least I keep telling myself that) but, rather, a list of principles. There’s no “all or nothing” about it. Whenever I’m able to increase the overall proportion of whole and healthy foods in my diet (even if it’s just by a little bit on some days or not at all on others), I win. How’s that for simplified and “healthified”?