REALLY, REALLY Easy Meals...

For my friend, Dave, at your request for

"REALLY, REALLY easy healthy meals to make relatively fast..."

I cook simply. Very rarely do I make anything that's complicated or takes a long time to make or involves very many steps. So your request is an easy one to fill. I think you have to cook for yourself, don't you? So I'm going to try to make this as EASY as possible for you. :)

The main tip I have for you in creating a balanced meal is to always serve a healthy starch (potatoes, rice, etc) on about half of your plate (this is your energy food) and then steamed veggies or beans and a raw salad/assorted veggies with hummus or another healthy dip on the other half of your plate. You can fill a container with assorted veggies (carrots, cuke slices, cauliflower, broccoli, pepper strips, snap peas, celery) and put in your fridge for a few days' worth of eating.

There are some soups that you can buy if you want to have quick meals after a hard day of work. They typically have more sodium than we should probably eat but brands to look for that are MSG free (that I know of) are Amy's and some Pacific brand soups such as their split pea, which is delicious by the way.

1. Fill a crockpot with scrubbed potatoes (it can be helpful to have a crockpot that has a timer on it so that it can go to a 'warm' setting if you are not home or around when it completes it's cook time). Set the crockpot for 3 hours on high. When they are finished cooking, cool them and place in the fridge. Now you have a healthy starch to work with. Here are some ideas on how to eat said potatoes:

A. Break open a potato or two. Add some black or red beans. Heat. Then add a chopped tomato, some red onion (you can even buy onions chopped already in the grocery store if you want), some quacamole (you can buy this at the grocery store too) and some salsa and chopped lettuce.

 B. Place diced onions, celery, peppers and mushrooms in a skillet with about 1 T olive oil or water. (some of those veggies you can buy already diced from the grocery store). Add about 1 or 2 T precooked sausage (of course I prefer organic and humanely raised without antibiotics, etc) and let it all cook til veggies are soft and sausage is heated thru. Then shred 2-3 potatoes into this and sprinkle with some Adobo seasoning or just salt and pepper. Turn and cook a few minutes til the potatoes are heated thru. We eat this with ketchup or bbq sauce.

C. Make a gravy: 2 c chicken broth, 1/4 c flour, 1 T Adobo seasoning, 1 T dried onions, 1 t. black pepper. Stir until thickened. Heat as many potatoes as you like and smash them slightly with a fork. Pour gravy over your potatoes.

2. Steamed broccoli is SIMPLE to make. Take a kettle in the which a colander fits over it. Place about 3 cups water in the bottom of kettle, place the lid on it and put it on the stove over high heat. While the water is boiling, cut as much broccoli as you will be eating. (For me, this is 2-3 cups) Put chopped broccoli right into a colander and when water is boiling, place the colander on the kettle and put the lid from the kettle on the colander. Set timer for 7 minutes, still on high heat. Immediately remove and season as you like. Eat with a sweet potato and if you really feel fancy, carmelize some chopped onions and mushrooms and serve with the broccoli and sweet tater. (You can do sweet potatoes in the crockpot just like the potatoes I suggested above. They can be eaten in many different ways and last a week or two in the fridge cooked)

3. Place 2 cups brown rice in a crockpot. Add 4 cups hot water, 1 t salt, 1/2 t black pepper and 1 T butter. Set on high for 2 hours. Use rice in myriads of ways including the following suggestions:

A. Exactly as the 'taco' potato suggestion above, only replace the tater with the rice.

B. Buy a stir fry veggie blend that looks good to you. In a skillet, heat some broth or water (just a few T will do), add the stir fry blend. Cook til desired tenderness, adding about 1-2 T soy sauce. Serve over heated rice. We like to buy Asian sesame garlic sauce to serve over this meal but watch out for MSG in it.

C. Buy a premixed frozen pepper and onion "fajita" blend in the grocery store. Saute it in a bit of water on the stove. Sprinkle it with taco seasoning (no msg!). Heat some rice, place in a 'low oil' whole grain wrap along with guacamole, the peppers and onions, some heated beans, salsa and lettuce and tomato. Wrap and enjoy.

D. Add 1/2 c diced, cooked chicken, 1 T parsley flakes, 2 T dried onions to the rice before you cook it in the crockpot. Use chicken broth for the water. Cook as instructed above. Eat along side a big garden salad.

E. Tomato sandwiches are the bomb! Get a jar of sweet pickle relish or bread and butter pickles that are not colored with yellow food coloring. Keep it in your fridge along with a loaf of good bread (Aldi has sprouted grain breads now I saw). When ready to assemble a sandwich, pop two slices of bread in your toaster. Thinly slice tomatoes, cukes and onions. Pile them on  your sandwich with a little mayo and even  honey mustard if you like. Add lettuce if you wish, too. And pickles :) Enjoy. If you are really adventurous, try batch baking some bbq tofu. Add a few slices to a sandwich. It's awesome. (If anyone reading this is interested, I can teach you how to bake tofu slices. They are also delish cut into strips for stir fries, etc)

F. Buy some cubed butternut squash in your grocery store. Put in a crockpot along with 1 T browned butter and salt to taste. Cook on high for 1 hour. Mash with a fork or puree in a blender. Serve with steamed broccoli and even bbq tofu strips. This is very yummy.



Salad and raw veggie ideas:

Buy prechopped romaine. Add pre shredded purple cabbage, preshredded carrots, and any other chopped veggie you desire (broccoli, cauliflower, onions, peppers, tomato), sprinkle on add-ins like raw sunflower seeds, cooked beans, dried cranberries or cherries, pine nuts, whatever you think sounds yummy. Use salsa or a salad dressing you buy but watch out for those oils that are high in empty calories.

A simple salad dressing recipe, called "3-2-1" dressing:

In a pint jar (i prefer wide mouth for ease of stirring), place:
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T maple syrup
1 T spicy brown mustard

Stir and enjoy on salad.

The assorted veggie box idea from above is something we do every week at our house. We serve this at one of the meals and a salad at the other meal. Hummus is a fast and convenient way to dip veggies and usually fairly healthy. (some hummus companies load their hummus with oil, altho I can't figure out why!)

Tomato Cuke Salad

chop 1 large tomato, add some diced red onion, and a shredded or chopped English cuke (probably a half as they are pretty long). Sprinkle with Italian or Greek seasoning (depends on the flavor you're after), stir in a T mayo and 1 t mustard and a t sugar. Sprinkle with salt. Enjoy over a smashed potato or beside your entree of choice.

Snacks:

a ripe, yummy apple with natural peanut butter consisting only of peanuts and/or salt
a bowl of 'raw' oats mixed with some brown rice krispies and a sliced banana
grapes
celery sticks with peanut butter (you can buy celery already cut in the grocery store)
raw veggies and hummus or dip
brown rice cakes with peanut butter and fruit juice sweetened jam (I buy mine from Mennonite bulk food stores) or apple butter

Breakfast idea:

Make overnite oats. 2 c rolled oats, 2 cups almond or soy milk, 3 T flax meal, 3 T maple syrup, 1 t vanilla. Mix together and refrigerate overnite or for a few days. My husband eats this nearly every morning for breakfast with sliced bananas, strawberries, blueberries or whatever fruit may be in season. He sprinkles other cereal on at times too such as Ezekiel brand cereal, or brown rice krispies (Barbara's brand is sweetened with fruit juice), etc.

I have had some 'housewives' saying they're eagerly awaiting these ideas as well. This post was designed for Dave, a man cooking for one. Obviously some of those 'convenience' foods that I suggested he buy from the store can be done at home less expensively for a family of more than one. But I compiled some of those 'convenience' ideas for him here so that hopefully he can feed himself healthy foods that won't require alot of work after a hard day's work.

Dave if you have time on Saturday or Sunday to throw a crockpot of potatoes or sweet potatoes together, or at night before you go to bed, etc that's a good time to do it.

I hope this was helpful. I have crockpot soup ideas too, if anyone is interested.