Cholesterol Follow-Up

[harimad]

What are your favorite tricks for eating healthy when one is short of time? For the purposes of this discussion, assume money is not an issue (but don't bother with the wise-crack answer of hire a private chef, it's already been done). Since I like cooking, bonus points awarded for quick recipes or techniques.

Comments

[ndrosen]

Vegan spaghetti sauce doesn't take too long. Boil water for the pasta, saute onion and maybe other vegetables (squash, Bell pepper) in olive oil, along with oregano, and you're free to add ground black pepper or nutmeg, and garlic. Add water and tomato paste, or else crushed tomatoes from a can, a little sugar or molasses, and tofu for protein. Or you can saute mushrooms for protein, if you prefer. You can chop up capers if you like, or add a splash of red wine if you have an opened bottle handy.

It isn't a microwaved TV dinner, but it doesn't take too long to prepare.

[leeble]

Unless you are eating gobs of really bad for you things - lots of fried junk and big fatty meats, or the opposite - lots and lots of starchy white carbs with not much veggies or lean protein, I vote for heredity

[harimad]

I'm eating a lot of junk food and less-healthy food: chocolate, cookies, olestra chips, recent fave is pb-filled pretzels. I'm eating plenty of lean protein, I think, but produce is suffering.

So in the past few days I've been thinking about the problems and the blockages to fixing them.

- Figure out something to keep in the fridge a quick and healthy, to replace things like pb-filled pretzels.

- I haven't felt like eating my usual fruits, partly dunno why and partly because my teeth are still a little sensitive to cold (I've seen my dentist already). If I leave the fruit out it's likely to go bad. Solution: try more fruit shakes.

- My usual way to eat veggies is to cook them into dinner, but now no time. One solution is to prep ahead - get Cruiser to watch M more on the weekend - or buy, and just put up with more waste as pre-prepped veggies go bad before I use them.

- Buy salad for lunch (past experience shows if I buy lettuce at the store it just goes bad) to supplement whatever else I have; this means getting over the

[leeble]

Yes, you can probably do better yourself, but clearly you don't have time to do so just now. Don't beat yourself up over it

[harimad]

You put your finger on the key: get over the habit of doing it better myself. I'm a bit like an engineer that way. I also need to control the engineering habit of trying to improve a recipe because that always takes longer, too.

If we can organize ourselves, I will try prepping all produce over the weekend and see if I can deal with the inevitable spoilage. Even better if I can pick a couple recipes in advance to make, and buy what I need.

There's always broccoli & baby carrots in the fridge, Ro-Tel in the cabinet, deshelled frozen shrimp (raw & cooked) and boneless turkey "breasts" ("with rib meat" - sometimes over 50%!) in the freezer. These are the best bags-o-dinner I've found; I add extra veggies or meat if I have it on hand. FYI, the ones without rice tend to be much better than the ones with, and a bag generally serves two

[prilicla]

Frozen ostrich burgers and buffalo burgers can be thawed in a few minutes in the microwave, and they take less than 10 minutes to cook. (Much less, for ostrich.)

I like the Sweets in a Flash recipe in Healthy Cooking for Two by Frances Price: Pierce sweet potatoes with a fork and microwave them on high for 5 minutes (for about 10 oz) or 8 minutes (for about 20 oz). Then bake them at 450 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

Kashi Pilaf is a good alternative to brown rice. It takes about 30 minutes to cook, though, so it's not as quick as the whole-wheat couscous that leeble mentioned.

For lunch, most of the Kashi frozen entrees are pretty good.

For snacks, you might want to add stringless sugar snap peas to your broccoli/baby carrots rotation.

[harimad]

Ymmm, snap peas. I go through phases of sweet peppers, too.