Kitchen Organization: Tip #2

I think we are all influenced by this equation: The more easily accessible something is, the more likely we are to eat it.

Of course, this applies to the croissants your colleague brought in that are sitting around in your office, just calling out your name… or the biscuits your husband left lying on the kitchen counter…

So why not use our inherent human attitude of “I’ll eat what’s there” as an approach for healthier foods?

For me, this means mostly 2 things:

1. Putting nuts and seeds into old jars so that it is easier to add them to meals. It also makes it easy to see at a glance what I have available, as in the photos below.

2. Cutting up and washing vegetables and putting them in a Tupperware in the fridge on Sunday evening, ready for when I get home from work the following days and am too tired to cook from scratch. Having the veggies available makes it easy to simply add them to a soup or stir fry or smoothie or fresh juice.

Kitchen Organization: Tip #1

I am not the most organized person in real life, but when it comes to the kitchen, I have become freakishly organized.

I realized early on in my health journey that I will always have the same number of hours in a day and that it was up to me to use my time wisely and to give priority to what matters most. And while this may seem obvious to people who are naturally organized, planning things actually saves time in the long run!

Something simple to try is:

Cook once, eat several times.

There are several ways to do it:

Make more than planned of the entire dish and eat over the next few days.

For example, I made a huge pot of vegetable soup last night, and brought the leftovers to work to eat over the next two days.

When eating leftovers, make it a rule to always ‘jazz things up’ by adding in a new ingredient.

I often sprinkle seeds on top, add a new spice or chop up fresh herbs to add to the leftovers. Often I will also add avocado which seems to go well with everything!

Make more of only one part of the dish.

For example, when making a quinoa or brown rice stir-fry, make a larger amount of unseasoned quinoa or brown rice and store in the fridge for future use. This can then be reheated with milk, spices and raisins as a breakfast porridge or the quinoa can be ground to make healthier versions of brownies. That way, you get new dishes with less work.

Make more of the whole dish or part of the dish and freeze.

If you are making a time-consuming dish like lasagna, you can always double the quantities and freeze the dish. This will come in handy when you don’t feel like cooking and is a much healthier alternative to the frozen food you can buy in supermarkets. It also works well with ingredients like pumpkins – if you don’t want to use the whole pumpkin straight away, you can chop it up into cubes and put in the freezer to use in the coming weeks.

What about you, do you cook or prepare food once and eat several times?