You just read a really inspiring article in Body + Soul, or Real Simple, or some other beautiful magazine publication, and you’ve decided: This is it. I’m going to change my life. I’m going to lose 50 pounds in the month of July by eating super duper healthy and walking everywhere and finding that old Pilates tape that may be under the couch, and I’m going to look fabulous!
So step one, you have to throw out the oreos, dorito’s, and other naughty foods that you’ve accumulated since your last menstrual cycle. well, maybe you don’t want the food to go to WASTE, so you eat most of them, throw the final handful of chip crumbs in the trash and then feel quite pleased at your first effort to rid your home of junk food.
Step two, you head to the grocery store. Head held high, you walk briskly past the candy aisle with nary a glance, straight to the produce section and begin to fill your cart with only healthy items. You feel so much healthier, just LOOKING at this cart full of colorful, healthy food, that you don’t stop at the standard lettuce and tomatoes. Maybe this time you’ll actually LIKE the taste of radishes, so you grab a bunch of those. Or this colorful, prickly looking fruit. It looks SO cool, so grab 3 of those and add them to your beautiful stash.
You get home with all of your healthy food, stash it all away in your produce bins, but of course it overflows out of them because you are just so darn healthy, you shut the door and forget about that food for now. But come dinner time, you open the fridge and find:
there is nothing to eat.
nothing quick anyways.
You wistfully think back to how triumphantly you strolled past those frozen pizzas, the “healthy” ones even, sure you would never need them because from now on you are making all of your pizzas from scratch. If only you had a frozen pizza, dinner would be ready in a few minutes, but no. You stare into your fridge, at it’s mound of healthy, yet inconvenient, food, and throw a couple of yogurts at the kids while you figure out what to do with some of this stuff, finally deciding to beg your sweet husband to pick up some Chinese food. your diet will have to start tomorrow.
2 weeks later, you find yourself tossing bag after bag of rotten produce (when did you think those prickly things would be a good idea?) into the trash.
Now while I don’t actually believe that a shopping cart of produce will make you a better person, I do believe that a cart of healthy foods that are actually CONSUMED, will improve our diets. But how do you use it up before it goes bad? How do you make it as easy to prepare as, say, a box of mac n cheese?
The answer is so simple: prepare all of your veggies and fruits before you are actually ready to use them.
But won’t this deplete the veggies of their precious vitamins?
Well, yes. Proper storage is essential to prevent oxidation that occurs when fruit and vegetables are cut up.
However, what good is owning veggies that don’t get eaten at all? Is limp broccoli and moldy peaches that end up in the compost heap a better alternative to veggies that have been prepared earlier in the week?
While I don’t usually have time after a shopping trip to tend to the weekly dinner prep, I have plenty of time in the evening and it feels so good to have a weeks worth of food washed, chopped and stored away ready for use.
Here’s what we have this week:
Carrots and broccoli, peeled and chopped for a stir-fry
Strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, washed, patted dry and stored separately for snacks, desserts and breakfasts
Watermelon, chopped in the fridge (frozen watermelon treats in the freezer)
potatoes, peeled and sliced and soaked in water (to prevent browning) for french fries and mashed potatoes
asparagus (on sale this week, so i stocked up) washed and shopped for dinner, while the remainder was blanched and frozen for upcoming months when asparagus won’t be so affordable.
(i covered the asparagus, and i soaked it in a bit of water too. i wasn’t sure how to properly store it, but we ate it tonight and it was wonderful, so i’ll probably do that in the future)
if you like salads, you can prep everything that you like in your salads and save them in individual containers for a nice grab n go lunch (don’t add the dressing until you’re ready to eat).
you can prep veggies for stir-frys, casseroles, salads, fruit for fruit salads, desserts or just simple snacking. the possibilities are great, and I’ll share one example of how this can be a great time saver.
This week, I got very very sick. It came on so suddenly, I started to heat a pan for dinner and shortly after, I was doubled over in pain.
I told Dustin that I needed to lie down for a minute, and that minute turned into about an hour.
Normally had this happened during dinner time, Dustin would have had to call in a pizza, or make due with PB&J’s. But since I had chopped up all the food ahead of time, I was able to tell him, “The potatoes are already cut up for fries, the asparagus is clean and chopped, just saute it in the pan with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper , the Boca burgers are in the freezer, no mustard on Julian’s”.
Dinner took no longer than normal, a somewhat healthy meal was served, and as a bonus, I didn’t have to cook it! 
you can’t really tell in this picture, but there are a few other items that we make ahead and keep in the fridge during the week, including tomato sauce for pasta and pizzas, black beans or pinto beans for soups, tacos, burritoes, etc., and brown rice for stir-frys, taco/burritoes, or rice pudding, Dustin’s specialty.
What can you do today to make dinner time easier on yourself tomorrow?
