If you are like most of us, you’ve made a New Year’s resolution or two. I made ten. On the top of my list was making better dinners for my family. After all, if a nutritionist can’t do it, who can? But let’s face it, we all are pressed for time and often resort to what’s the easiest—which may or may not be the healthiest.
PLANNING IS THE KEY TO HEALTHIER MEALS (besides good ingredients!) Here is what I’ve found to be helpful.
- I went through the many recipes torn out of magazines or copied over the years, throwing away the ones that were too complicated, and thus would never be made. Unfortunately, there were a lot of these–what was I thinking!
- I then separated out all the dessert recipes and put them in their own folder.
- Next, I created a pile of 30 or so of my favorite recipes –whether they be sides or main dishes-from my very large pile of recipes. These then went in their own special folder.
- From these 30, I would look at each and decide if it was a keeper or not for this week. If it was a keeper, I placed the recipe in another pile and wrote the name of it down on a piece of paper.
- On another sheet of paper I listed every night for the next 7 nights. Underneath each day, I put down one or more of the recipes I had written on the other paper, until I had my 7 dinner-days filled.
Now that I knew in advance what I was going to make, I quickly made my shopping list. The added benefit to doing it this way is that I can make one trip to the grocery store and I can make in advance the meals for the nights I work late. I hope this helps!!
Happy New Year! Jayne Tamburello