Meal prep: Saving your sanity, one meal at a time.

It’s a fact of modern life that we are all crazy busy. As a yoga teacher, I could tell you about the value of simplifying, cutting back, and prioritizing, but this is reality. We all have struggles. We all have some combination of demanding jobs, kids, aging parents, social obligations, volunteer commitments, fitness needs, and recreational habits. Plus the stuff we actually want to do. This is what makes it so tempting (and sometimes necessary) to order pizza or stop for McDonald’s on the way home.

When I was a kid, McDonald’s for dinner was a way of life. It was just my mother and I at home during my middle and high school years, and by the time she finished her commute home from work, the lastthing she wanted to do was cook. So we ate a lot of burgers and fries. We ate so much takeout that I actually got sick of it. This is when I started learning to cook. She was the only working parent she knew who could look forward to coming home, most days of the week, to dinner made by her kid—without even having to guilt me.

Things are a little different for me now. When my kids were home, I made good use of my Crockpot to create meals with something for everyone. But now that the kids are mostly gone and it’s just me, my cooking strategy has changed. It’s hard to find the motivation to make dinner every night for just myself, and although I don’t do McDonald’s, there’s the lure of the Thai House just down the street, with their $13 shrimp Pad Thai waiting to destroy my caloric and monetary budgets.

This is where meal planning and prep comes to the rescue. I spend about two hours, one day per week preparing most of a week’s meals. Sometimes I end up with even more than I can eat in a week, like when I make chili or spaghetti sauce, and I can put half away in the freezer for a bonus on another week. I try to portion out each meal in individual serving containers, unless it’s something that needs to be stored separately until eaten, like pita sandwiches. 

If I plan my meals well, there is very little waste when I cook this way, because I cook it all at the start of the week. You know how sometimes, you have great ideas when you go shopping on Sunday, and you think you’re going to make something like salmon en croute, but by Wednesday, you are exhausted and you just end up eating a bowl of cereal for dinner and then all your expensive food goes to waste? Well, if you have already prepped your food, heating it up is exactly as much work as making cereal, and a lot more tasty. 

Here are some of my top tips for meal planning success: 

·     Keep everything simple.Don’t imagine you are going to make five elaborate dishes that each take an hour to prepare. Think quick, easy, mix and match.    

·     Pre-cook one starch per weekand store it as a base to put under your sauces. You can cook one round of quinoa, rice, faro, millet, or whatever else you crave and store it in the fridge for three to four days.

·     Cook one protein, use it multiple ways. This week, I made delicious turkey meatballs that I ate over quinoa with jarred marinara sauce. Another day, they’ll appear on a flatbread with melty fresh mozzarella. For lunch, they will crown some romaine lettuce and cherry tomatoes.

·     Use prepared foods where it makes sense. Rotisserie chickens save you about an hour and a half of cooking time, and you can shred that cooked chicken and use the meat to make salads, pita sandwiches and hearty soups. Jarred pesto and marinara can elevate a quick meal into next-level awesomeness. Hot smoked salmon is amazing on a salad. It keeps perfectly unopened and you don’t even have to heat it. Best of all, for singles, it comes in 4oz packages, which happens to be an exactly perfect serving size. 

Where to find meal prep ideas

If you don’t yet feel comfortable coming up with your own meal prep plans, there are lots of places online where you can find ideas. Many sites will want to charge you, but I say ba-humbug to that. If I am so cheap that I am trying to save money by eating in every meal of the week, clearly I don’t have the cash to spend on pre-arranged meal plans.

So here are a few places I’ve found with ideas. Keep in mind, I am gluten free, but not all of these suggestions are. I made my own GF adaptations.

·     The Kitchn: Meal Prep Plan: A Week of Easy 1500-Calorie Days. The turkey meatballs recipe here is amazing, and it really gets into the details of how to prep and pack everything. https://www.thekitchn.com/meal-prep-plan-for-1500-calories-261270

·     Eating Well: 14 Day Gluten-Free Meal Plan 1,500 Calories. This list is more about meal planning than prep ahead, but still some great ideas that capitalize on reusing the same ingredients to save you money and simplify prep. I love the Salmon with Chimichurri. http://www.eatingwell.com/article/289222/14-day-gluten-free-meal-plan-1500-calories/

Don’t want to try a whole lot of new things? That’s ok, just keep it simple. Stick with your favorites. Try to think of things that hold well in the refrigerator or freezer, like veggie chili, spaghetti sauce with ground turkey, and grilled chicken. One day when you have some time, make a big pot of chili, another of spaghetti sauce. Grill a family pack of chicken breasts (or pull apart a rotisserie chicken). When the chili and the spaghetti sauce are done, portion them out into two-cup containers and cool them in the fridge. Cut up the chicken and store it separately in two-cup, freezer-safe containers.  Evaluate how much you think you can eat in a week, and put the rest in the freezer (use a strip of masking tape and a sharpie to label and date the containers).  Wash, dry and tear some lettuce into salad-sized pieces. Portion the salad greens into two-cup containers. Put some cherry tomatoes, beans, and whatever other sturdy vegetables you like into the containers. Prepare as many salads as you think you can eat in 2-3 days.  

And there you go. On any weeknight, you can come home and toss some chicken onto a bed of lettuce for an instant salad, or heat up your chili, or put on some pasta for spaghetti in 15 minutes. Ta-da.

Personally, I love having my prepped meals to look forward to, and knowing that I don’t need to exert any effort to make them, except heating them up. I also love knowing that it only costs me about $100 to buy all of my food (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and coffee) for the week.  That is less than $5 per meal, and includes coffee! And snacks! And I know all the ingredients of my food, so I can manage my salt, sugar and fat intake as necessary. So even if you don’t go all-in and make a whole week’s worth of food at once, I do hope that maybe you are a little inspired to spend about 20 minutes planning the week’s meals before you shop, and that you adhere to the concepts of keeping meals simple, using similar ingredients so you don’t spend a ton of money or waste a lot of food, and using prepared foods where it makes sense.

Have a healthy and prosperous day!

Crock-Pot Pork tenderloin with acorn squash and apples

Sometimes I jest that I feel like every night in my kitchen is an episode of "Chopped." I have 30 minutes, a can of tuna, box of quinoa, and an orange. Now go! I actually enjoy those opportunities to be creative with what I have on hand. Although I seem to have to stop at a store nearly every day to pick up something (deodorant for the boy, conditioner for the girl, milk for everyone), I really don't like running out to get a specific item just for dinner. Sometimes that's just not possible: I may really have only 15 minutes between the time I get home and the time I have to leave to take the kids somewhere, and I need to start something that will be edible by the time I get home.

Last night was a Chopped night. I had a pork tenderloin, but I was out of my usual accompaniments: gluten free soy sauce and onions. I took a look around the kitchen and I spotted an acorn squash and a few apples that were a little too mature for lunch boxes, but still perfectly edible. If you don't have an acorn squash, you could substitute any winter squash (butternut, turban, etc.) or even sweet potatoes. And if you don't have fresh apples, I think dried apples would work well with a little extra water.

So, in about 15 minutes, dinner was in the crock pot. I didn't measure things out to create a real recipe. What I have here is more of a general idea. This should probably serve three, if you do not make total pigs of yourselves like my husband and I did.

1 tsp olive oil
1 pork tenderloin
1 acorn squash, washed, seeded, cut into wedges. leave the skin on.
3 tart apples (preferably the firm kind that hold up to cooking, like Jazz). Peeled, cored & sliced.
2 tbsp Craisins
1 tsp. Balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
1/8 tsp. Cardamom
Dusting of Black Pepper

Set your crock pot to low.
Use a paper towel to rub the olive oil around the inside of the crock pot.
Place the pork tenderloin on the bottom.
Top with the squash, sliced apples and Craisins.
Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and honey.
Add about 1/4 cup water.
Sprinkle cinnamon, cardamom and black pepper on top.
Cook in the Crock on low for about 4-5 hours while you are out running errands and attending PTO meetings.
Return home to find a delicious pork dinner waiting for you.

Sweet Potato Fries

A lot of excellent Lindy-friendly songs talk about food. Maybe this is why I like jazz so much—because I love food as much as I love to dance. The songs get stuck in my head, and then I have to go home and make the food. This week’s food song is “Sweet Potato Fries,” By Gordon Webster, off of their Live in Rochester CD.

Sweet Potato Fries
with Montreal Steak seasoning
and ketchup

We saw Gordon Webster perform at the International Lindy HopChampionships last year, and bought three of his CDs. I love almost every song on these CDs. There is so much excellent instrumentation, and they all just seem to beg for improv while dancing.

I have included the “Sweet Potato Fries” lyrics below, and you can give the band a listen here. After listening to this song, you may want to make your own sweet potato fries, which is an excellent idea, because they are very healthy if you make them yourself. Not so much if you buy them in a restaurant, deep fried and smothered in fat, and not as tasty if you buy the big frozen bag at the store.

Tips for making sweet potato fries:

Use one sweet potato per person. Scrub and peel the outside of the potato. Cut the potato in fry-sized strips. (Sweet potatoes are very hard, so use a large, heavy, sharp knife) Place the cut potatoes in a mixing bowl and drizzle olive oil or melted coconut oil over them. Add one of the following seasoning combinations (or improvise your own):

• Salt and pepper
• McCormick’s Montreal steak seasoning
• Crushed rosemary, salt & pepper
• Crushed mint and salt
• Cinnamon and pepper

Stir to combine. Pour the seasoned spuds in a shallow baking pan (like a jelly roll pan) and arrange so they are in  one flat layer. Bake in a 400-degree oven for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the taters are brown and crispy.

Serve hot, with ketchup.

Sweet Potato Fries

By Gordon Webster

Live in Rochester

When men come and dine, they get to feelin’ full just fine

The dining’s in the timing with my sweet potato fries

When men try my spuds, they claim the other gals are duds

Does wonders for the hunger, o my sweet potato fries

When they come and meet, looking for a treat, they get taters

You can take a seat, then you’re bound to eat

A dish that’s just delish if it’s for now or for later

Take your appetite, down to the table, grab a bite

You’ll never have no better than my sweet potato fries

Well, I ain’t got much to show, but I can peel ‘em fast or slow

My sweetie loves to eatie all my sweet potato fries

Don’t got time, don’t got money, but I got a dish to try

Cause I’m a yammy mammy with my sweet potato fries

I can hardly wait, looking for a date with my honey

He knows where to look, when he needs a cook

I’ll fix him up a dish and never charge him no money

Dinner is served tonight, come get your fill and feel just right

You’ll never have no better than my sweet potato fries

Get the salt, pepper too

That’s all the flavor that I’ll add for you

You’ll never have no better than my sweet potato fries

5 Swingin' Ways to Eat Spinach, in honor of Julia Lee

In 1949, Julia Lee did a song with her band, the Boyfriends, called "The Spinach Song," or "I didn't like it the first time." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax4tVzuN52U)

Not only is this song fun to dance to, but it is a cunning extended metaphor for either marijuana or sex, depending on how you interpret the lyrics:

Spinach has vitamin A, B and D, but spinach never appealed to me

But one day while having dinner with a guy, I decided to give it a try

I didn’t like it the first time, it was so new to me

I didn’t like it the first time, I was so young, you see


I used to run away from the stuff, but now somehow I can’t get enough


I didn’t like it the first time, oh, how it grew on me!

I didn’t like it the first time, I had it on a date 


Although the first was the worst time, right now I think it’s great


Somehow, it’s always hittin’ the spot, especially when they bring it in hot


I didn’t like it the first time, but oh, how it grew on me 

I didn't like it the first time, I thought it was so strange

I wasn't getting much younger, so I just made the change

No longer is the stuff on the shelf, ‘cause now I make a pig of myself

I didn't like it the first time, but oh how it grew on me 

I didn't like it the first time, when I was just sixteen

I didn't like it the first time, guess I was mighty green

But I stocked up, cause I've gotten wise, I've got enough for two dozen guys

I didn't like it the first time, but oh how it grew on me

I didn't like it the first time, but oh how it grew on me!

In honor of the clever Miss Lee, I have put together a few of my favorite ways to eat actual, garden-variety spinach. I hope you will enjoy them while dancing to this song in your kitchen.

• Spinach salad: Best with baby spinach leaves slightly chopped up. I like mine with some kind of fruit, like dried cranberries and/or sectioned oranges and pecans.
• Wilted, with bacon: Don’t tell my fitness friends about this one, but when I am feeling rather naughty, I chop up a few slices of real, authentic pig bacon, cook it until crispy, then dump an entire bag of spinach into the skillet right on top of all that bacon fat. I wilt the leaves, tossing them carelessly around in the pan for about a minute, then add a half-teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and a sprinkling of black pepper.
• Wilted, healthier-style: This is the recipe I do tell my fitness friends about. In a nonstick skillet, I heat up about a tablespoon of low-sodium, gluten-free tamari mixed with about ¼ cup of water. Then, over medium heat, I stir-boil one clove of crushed garlic, and then add a bag of spinach and a dusting of red pepper flakes, stirring until wilted, about one minute.
• Spinach omelet: First, I chop up about a half an onion and sautee that in a nonstick skillet until it is translucent. Then I add some chopped sun-dried tomatoes and a handful of chopped fresh spinach, stir long enough to wilt, and then pour in two scrambled eggs (or egg whites if you are being very virtuous). After a minute or two, I stir the eggs to break up the curds and add about a tablespoon of crumbled feta cheese, then allow the omelet to finish cooking.
• Spinach in tacos. I wouldn’t really want an all-spinach taco/burrito, but we do use spinach instead of lettuce sometimes. It adds that extra boost of dark green leafies.

You can sautee a little spinach right along with your eggs for breakfast.

Winter’s day chili

It is a snow day for us today, which means the kids haven’t changed out of pajamas for two days and we are all stuck around the house because the roads are slushy and icy.

Ground-chicken chili topped with
greek yogurt and cheddar cheese

When this kind of weather rolls around, it is chili, soup and stew time. Today, I’m making chili and I am sharing one rendition of our chili recipe here. One great thing about this dish is that the only actual requirement of chili is that it contain chili powder. Anything else is optional. It can be made with chicken, beef, vegetables, beans, pork—although there are always purists who will argue that their concoction is the only thing that really deserves to be called chili. For me, it’s all about not having to go to the grocery store on an ugly day, so I like to make do with whatever I have on hand.

In general, we serve this chili with cornbread. I like mine with a bit of shredded sharp cheddar cheese and perhaps a few dices of raw onion on top. Some folks enjoy their chili over rice and others, who I will never understand, put it on top of spaghetti noodles. It’s also very nice atop white or (especially) sweet potatoes. Unconventional, yes, but the combination of sweet and spicy is delicious.

Recipe

1 lb ground chicken (or leftover cut-up chicken, or ground beef)

1 onion, diced

1 red pepper (or green or yellow)

Brown the meat, onion and pepper in a large soup pot over medium-high heat until the meat is cooked though and the onions begin to soften. If you are using ground meat, break up the meat chunks as you stir.

Add to the meat/onion/pepper mixture in the soup pot:

1 clove fresh garlic, minced, or ¼ tsp garlic powder

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp Chili powder

¼ tsp dried ground Chipotle Chili Pepper

¼ tsp black pepper
28 oz can crushed tomatoes

Stir until combined. Add one 28-oz can crushed tomatoes and one 28-oz can full of water to the pot. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low, or pour the chili into a slow cooker on low.

If you are cooking on the stovetop, allow the chili to simmer for about 30 minutes. If in the slow cooker, you can let it simmer on low for 4-5 hours (or longer).

Luscious GF Quiche

Spinach, red pepper, onion and feta quiche

This is a luscious, crumbly-crust, whole-egg, cheesy and satisfying quiche that works great with a wide variety of fillings, is very forgiving of mistreatment, and can be cooked ahead of time. It's a nice dish to take for a lunch, brunch, breakfast or tea. It holds up relatively well, but the exposed parts of the crust will shatter easily, so pack it protectively in a pie box if you are taking it somewhere.

I strongly recommend using the food processor for this crust, but you can also use a pastry blender to cut in the fat.

For the crust
You can use Bob's Red Mill gluten-free pie crust mix OR, you can make your own pie crust with the following recipe (makes two pie crusts. If you are only making one quiche, halve the recipe).

2 1/2 cups white rice flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
15 tablespoons cold butter (that's two sticks minus one tablespoon). Cut each stick of butter into about 16 cubes

6 tablespoons ice water

In the bowl of a food processor with the cutting blade at the bottom, combine the rice flour, salt and butter cubes. Pulse about 10-15 times until the mixture takes on the texture of small pebbles or coarse sand.

Pour 6 tablespoons of ice water into the food processor bowl, one tablespoon at a time.

Pulse the mixture until it comes together in a ball.

Turn out the ball of dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper. Wrap the dough tightly and refrigerate for half an hour.

Divide the dough into two equal parts. Shape each into a disk about five inches in diameter. Working with one disk at a time, place the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap and roll it out until it's about 10 inches in diameter, or large enough to cover your pie plate.

Peel off one sheet of plastic wrap, and place the dough exposed-side down in a pie plate. Remove the other sheet of plastic wrap and fit the crust into the pan. Flute the edges with your fingers. Prick the bottom of the crust about 15 times with a fork, and precook the crust in a 425F oven for about 15 minutes. (Note: I would ordinarily line the pie shells with tin foil and fill with pie weights or beans when I pre bake, but the foil tends to stick to a GF crust. If you do line the crust with foil, be sure to grease it first)

For the quiche
You can fill a quiche with just about anything, but below are a few suggestions. If you are using fresh vegetables, be sure to cook them first or they will shed their water into the egg mixture, preventing it from setting properly.

Lay the filling in the bottom of the crust, then pour the egg mixture on top.

• Spinach, red pepper, onion and feta cheese: Sautee one small diced onion and a small diced red pepper until the onions turn translucent. Add about 1 cup fresh chopped spinach and cook until the spinach wilts. Pour the vegetables into the bottom of the crust. Add about 1/8-1/4 cup feta cheese.



Ham & Cheese Quiche

• Ham and cheddar: dice about 1/3 cup ham and place in the bottom of the crust. Sprinkle on about 1/8-1/4 cup cheddar.

For the egg filling:

In a large bowl, whisk together 4 eggs, 2 cups of milk (or half and half, or cream) and 1/4 tsp black pepper. Pour the egg mixture over the filling in the pie crust.

Bake

Pop the quiche into a 350F oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown.

Spaghetti sans pasta

Every time I go to the grocery store, I see more and more gluten-free pasta products. I am glad there is an increasing variety of gluten-free food, but it's also expensive and high-carbohydrate.

Spicy tomato sauce oer a baked sweet potato

One of the great health benefits of going wheat-free is that you have the opportunity to fill the void left in your diet with more vegetables.

I used to love making spaghetti. I went through a few months after I quit wheat, where I did not make it at all, because I didn't want to spring for the gluten-free spaghetti noodles. Eventually, I got creative and started putting delicious tomato sauce on top of any vegetable that would stand still for a few minutes. Here are some of my new favorite bases for spaghetti sauce:

• Slice zucchini and sautee in olive oil, butter or coconut oil until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Top with sauce.
• Prick a sweet potato all over with a fork, wrap in foil, bake at 400F for one hour (or microwave). Cut open and fill with sauce. (This is particularly good with a spicy tomato sauce--or chili)
• Bake a white potato. Fill with sauce.
• Make mashed potatoes, top with sauce.
• Cut an acorn or butternut squash in half and scrape out seeds. Place cut-side down in a baking dish. Add just enough water to fill the bottom of the pan. Bake at 350F for 1 hour. Top with sauce.
• Using the same cooking method, bake a spaghetti squash. When cooked, scrape out the stringy pulp and place in a colander to drain for about 5 minutes, pressing down on the pulp with a rubber scraper from time to time, before plating and topping with sauce.

Tomato-poached fish and vegetables on mashed potatoes

At dinnertime, I like to imagine that I am on a Food Network show like Chopped, in which I have to come up with an awesome meal based on a strange assortment of foods. Of course the strange foods are just whatever happens to be in the kitchen that night. I have a thing about making last minute trips to the grocery store—I don’t like to do it—since that’s at least a half-hour venture.

For that reason, I like to think of ingredients as interchangeable parts. Instead of viewing a recipe as a rule book, I look at it as more of a guideline. So I provide this, our dinner, which was created based on what I had in the cabinet tonight: Frozen tilapia, leftover homemade tomato sauce, potatoes, some goat cheese, an onion and a zucchini. From zero to eating, this dish took me just about 29 minutes to prepare. I provide it to you in the hope that it will provide you with some ideas, but that it will not prompt you to run to the grocery store.

Tomato-poached fish and vegetables on mashed potatoes

Serves 3-4

6 individually wrapped frozen tilapia filets (or any mild, white fish)

4 redskin potatoes

1 onion, preferably Vidalia

1 zucchini

1 clove garlic

1 ½ cups leftover or 1 can Muir Glen Organic tomato sauce 

Olive oil or coconut oil

Black Pepper

Garlic powder

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp goat cheese

¼ cup milk

Remove from the freezer and run under cold water to thaw:

6 individually wrapped frozen tilapia filets

Start mashed potatoes

Fill a medium saucepan ¾ full with hot tap water. Place on the stove over high heat, and cover the pan.

Wash and scrub four redskin potatoes. Leave the skins intact and cube the potatoes.

Add the potatoes to the hot water. Once the water reaches a boil, lower the heat to medium-high to keep the water from boiling over. Set a kitchen timer for 12 minutes.

Begin the vegetable sauce

Coarsely chop one Vidalia onion. Heat on medium-high about ½ tsp. olive oil in a large, nonstick skillet with lid. Add the onion.

Coarsely chop one zucchini and add to the skillet with the onion. Sautee until the onion softens, becomes translucent, and starts to brown, about 8 minutes. Add 1 clove minced garlic and cook about 1 minute. Season with black pepper. Add ½ teaspoon dried or fresh oregano. Add 1 ½ cups organic tomato sauce (I had some homemade sauce leftover in the fridge, but you can use canned organic sauce like Muir Glen). Stir the vegetables and sauce together.

Poach the fish

Remove the fish from their individual wrappers and slide them into the tomato-vegetable broth. Nestle the fish down into the sauce, spooning sauce and vegetables over the top to cover the fish. Cover the pan and set the heat to medium. Allow the fish to cook in the broth until opaque and flaky, about 7 minutes.

Finish the potatoes

Into the bowl of an electric stand mixer, drop 2 tablespoons of butter, cut up, and 2 ounces of goat cheese (or Greek yogurt, or cream cheese, or sour cream, or feta). Add ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Season with garlic powder.

Use a colander to drain the potatoes. Add the potatoes to the butter & cheese in the mixer bowl. Beat on low for 30 seconds. Add about ¼ cup milk (or buttermilk)—just enough to make the potatoes fluffy without turning them into soup. Beat on medium-low speed for about 2 minutes. The potatoes should retain some of their texture.

Cover the whole mixer, including the bowl, with a towel to keep the potatoes warm.

Check the fish

The fish will be opaque and flaky when done.

Plate the dish

Spoon 1/4 of the mashed potatoes onto each plate. With the back of the spoon, smooth the potatoes out so they form a bed for the sauce. Top the potatoes with ¼ of the fish and vegetable mixture.