In my last post I began discussing how to simplify eating healthier by literally planning to do so. Simply putting together a meal plan is a huge step towards achieving the goal of eating a more balanced, nutritious diet. Today I will be continuing the discussion, so if you haven’t read my last post, I encourage you do so in order to get the most out of today’s post.
Last time I explained that once you have your recipe list and your meal plan established, separating out the pre-prep (by far, the most time-consuming and tedious part of cooking) from the actual cooking takes much of the time pressure away; preparing healthy meals then takes only a fraction of the time it once did, making frozen dinners and take-out meals the exception rather than the norm.
With meal plan in hand, the next area of your life that can be simplified is grocery shopping. Personally, I enjoy spending time in the grocery store even less than I enjoy cooking. There are far more things I’d rather be doing, so I try to plan to shop only once per week. That means I need to pay close attention to what I’m planning to make for the week ahead. What that means is, before you head to the store, you should carefully go over your recipes to determine what you will need for them to save you from needing last minute trips on the day of.
If you find that not all of your produce will last a full week before going bad, consider tailoring your meals so that the fastest spoiling veggies get used early, like mushrooms or bell peppers, and then later in the week, prepare meals with hardier vegetables, like carrots and cabbage. Or you can even plan on using frozen vegetables once the fresh veggies are used up. A little bit of advance thought can save us from wasting time on multiple trips to the grocery store, and from wasting money on unused vegetables, while simultaneously making it easier for us to eat healthy meals on a regular basis.
And life can be simplified while at the grocery store if we plan our list right. If you’ve been shopping at the same store weekly for months (even years), then chances are, you know the layout of the store quite well by now. Use that to your advantage! We all follow our usual path to the store…maybe we go to the vegetables first, then the breads, dairy, meats etc…whatever it is, we tend to take the same route each time. When you are crafting your grocery list, instead of haphazardly writing down everything as you remember it, do a mental trip through the store and write the foods down in the order you are likely to pick them up. (You may want to just get it all down first, and then rewrite it before you head out). With a random list, you’re more likely to miss foods on the first pass, having to then backtrack through the aisles, or to forget about them entirely. An organized list gets you in and out fast.
This kind of planning takes a little getting used to, but once you get a routine developed, it gets easier and easier. I’d be lying if I said that home cooking will become less time consuming than eating takeout or from frozen, but with the reduction in effort required, the healthier option finally feels much more worth it.
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