How much time do you spend in the kitchen cooking meals? Or maybe you hate cooking and tend to grab the first thing you see? I used to spend a lot f time in the kitchen preparing meals for the family. I believed the more time spent slaving over the stove the better the meal was! Boy have I changed my thinking on this. Exceptions to every rule, good sauces need a day of simmering and tending to, but thats not to say cooking all your food to death is necessary nor the healthiest. My food journey has led me to more assembling and less cooking. Heres why it works for me.
More Assembling Less Cooking
Meal planning and meal prep just aren’t my thing, I have talked about this before. I love to stock my fridge with my all my standard grocery goods and just wing it all week. This works for me. I like to listen to my body throughout the week and feed it what it is craving. You can read more about that here if you like. I know, its all the rage to meal prep today because we are all sooooo busy. Well, I think you are too busy if you have to plan every meal out for the entire week, just my opinion. Slow down, breathe, listen to your body, stop trying to tell it what to do.
Honestly, if I stocked my fridge and cabinets with chips, cookies and other manmade crap, I would eat it at first because I would be hungry. Then I would get sick, tired, grumpy, bloated and craving real food. So stock your house with real food, you will eat it when you get hungry, I promise. The cool thing is, the more you eat real food and less of the processed man crap, you begin to crave it! Trust me here. Vegetables will begin to taste so sweet to you. I will never forget walking through Costco one day and my mouth began to salivate when we passed the huge veggie trays. Yep, I knew then I had broken my sugar addiction!
So when assembling meals its as easy as this
- Opening your fridge, pulling a rainbow of real food out.
- Next grab a bowl or plate and get to assembling that beautiful rainbow. It doesn’t always have to be a salad either. You can make a wrap with greens, coconut tortilla wraps or sprouted grain wraps, whatever floats your boat.
- Tune in and listen to your body, it will guide you to what it needs. Somedays its hard to hear because you’re so hungry or tired. This is where you just have to rely on what you know you need to eat to fuel your body properly.
- Usually a dressing or dip is needed. This is where keeping your kitchen stocked with all the basics is absolutely necessary. You don’t want any preservative or sugar laden condiments here. A few of my favs are always having mayo and spicy mustard around. Lemon, apple cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, coconut aminos, fish sauce, sesame oil, nutritional yeast, tahini and ginger juice are things I use almost daily. Herbs are a great addition to any sauce or dip, a chance to make it your own. Feeling lazy, throw some kimchi on a wrap with veggies and meat or an egg and call it a day.
Balance is important
Eating something warm is just so comforting sometimes and really good on the belly. Warm foods can be assembled without much effort too. Perfect example was last night I made a soup and salad. I honestly had no interest in the salad when I made it, all I was craving was a warm bowl of soup with some protein. So, I prepared both, ate the soup, stashed the salad and dressing in the fridge. Waited until I got hungry later and went back for the salad, and man was it good! So balancing when you should eat and when you need to eat can be just as important. Don’t get hung up on 3 square meals a day and they have to be certain foods at those times. Your body could not care less if it ate an egg at 8am or 6pm.
Let me go back and talk about the soup I assembled. It simply was 1 bag of Nona Lims Thai coconut lime broth poured in a sauce pan. Brought to a boil and added organic black rice noodles. Cooked for 4 mins. While it was cooking I threw pieces of my organic rotisserie chicken in my cast iron skillet with garlic ghee. Seasoned with s&p and curry. Cooked until slightly crispy. Poured broth and noodles in a bowl and topped with crispy chicken. Assembling done in a matter of minutes and might I add, so FREAKING delicious I am drooling typing this.
More Assembling Please
Lets recap this whole assembling thing I got going on. 1. keep your kitchen stocked with a rainbow of real food and staples for dressing and dips 2. Listen to your body 3. cold and warm foods can be assembled.
Last thing that helped me, I let go of what traditional meals look like. CREATE YOUR OWN RAINBOW!
Love & Be Well,
Natalie
