Kids Dish

Delaware Online’s article about quick, healthy meals got me thinking. I don’t generally cook anything quickly. The majority of my meals take a minimum of half an hour unless I’m eating something unhealthy or eating something that’s primarily leftover based. Part of the problem may be that my definition of healthy may be a little different than most. For example, many quick recipes call for the addition of rotisserie chicken purchased cooked from the supermarket. I’ve bought them in the past and I don’t think there’s much that’s healthy about them. They’re salty and soggy and the chickens used come from factory farms. You might get a slightly better chicken from a market like Whole Foods, but it’s still supermarket chicken. Other quick recipes ask for store bought sauces and dressings. Unless you’re good at reading labels and know how to choose the healthiest options, most sauces, no matter how healthy and organic they claim to be are full of extra sugar, sodium and added oils. I prefer to make my own sauces, stocks and dressings which often adds to my total prep time.

So how do you make something healthy quickly? The article suggests stocking up on canned beans, chick peas, couscous and frozen vegetables and using the stove top instead of the oven and recommends purchasing a cookbook for quick and easy recipes. Focused grocery shopping, crock pot meals, and actually using leftovers for the next day’s meal (instead of letting them sit until they’re unrecognizable) will also cut down on prep time.

If your family eats fast food more often than you’d like to admit and you want to start cooking healthy meals, the article recommends choosing two nights a week to cook and moving on from there. Shopping with your kids on the perimeter of the supermarket where the fresh foods are located can help get them interested in the process. Getting them involved in prepping the food by chopping vegetables or tearing lettuce if they’re too young to use a knife can also ease your prep burden and make them more invested in the process. Using fruits and vegetables in your meals is key in making them healthy.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to try to change my mindset and move from slow food to quick and healthy. I may even bust out my dusty crock pot to see if I can find an appetizing recipe. If you have any suggestions leave them in the comments.

Here’s a recipe idea from the article with the timing to get you (and me) started.

Berman said parents don’t have to be “uber-organized” to get a healthy dinner ready, but Erica Cover enjoys her detailed methodology when meal planning. She creates her family’s meals for the week on a computer spreadsheet.

She put the tortilla dish in the oven, set to bake for 30 minutes. The time was 5:23. It took Cover 15 minutes to make a dinner that, before 6 p.m., would feed the whole family.