Quick, Healthy Meals?

[HeyMeganZ]

It's been a bit of an, erm, adjustment, having both of us work long hours and our apartment (and waistlines) have been worse for the wear.

Does anyone have quick, easy, healthy recipes (links) that they could share? We're making chicken chili this afternoon which I'm hoping will get us through the next few days, and I wanted to try and make stuffed peppers later this week....just having a lapse in creativity as to what we can cook/have ready ahead, when we both get home (usually well) after 7pm.

[diggitydot]

You could sub ground turkey for chicken. Way less fat and cholesterol.

[HeyMeganZ]

Will for sure keep that in mind! Stood at the grocery store debating the merits of turkey vs. chicken, and I think we went chicken as a post-thanksgiving decision

[L.Jane]

With the help of whole foods I can make a quick stir fry. They have the veggies already precut in a stirfry mix in the veggie section. I take that, dice some chicken, saute it all, throw a stirfry sauce on it, or I am trying out this one this week: http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-stir-fry-32652
You can always buy all the veggies and chop them yourself, I just find buying the ready made ones a big time and sanity saver. Then throw it over some rice. I throw my rice in the rice cooker before I start and its ready in thirty minutes.

[MissCrabette]

I don't have any specific recipe recommendations. Find some easy recipes that you can make with your eyes closed and make those your go-to recipes. Double up your recipes and have leftovers later in the week when you're too exhausted to cook. Some people don't like this kind of repetition, but I never have an issue eating a favorite food for the second time that week. In fact, I look forward to it. Stock up on healthy(er) convenience foods that you can reach to in a pinch. There's nothing wrong with frozen ravioli or pizza and a big salad. Everything in moderation.

[MarissaNicole]

Some quick meals we do are omlettes (with veggies), soup and sandwiches, tacos or burgers (made with lean ground meat), grilled salmon with grilled vegetables (I buy it frozen, marinate in teriyaki sauce all day and then cook a veggie on the side), and spinach pesto tilapia (defrost spinach and drain, put in the bottom on 9X9 pan, place defrosted tiliapia on top, make knorr pesto sauce according to package directions (basically add milk and butter), pour over top, cook covered on 400 for about 40 minutes).

I also love this website for great recipes: a two favorites are pasta fagioli soup, and spinach lasagna rolls.

[HeyMeganZ]

With the help of whole foods I can make a quick stir fry.

LOVE Whole Foods. I'm going to start meal planning and adding a stir fry to the mix will be a great start!

[HeyMeganZ]

[QUOTE I also love this website for great recipes: a two favorites are pasta fagioli soup, and spinach lasagna rolls.[/QUOTE]

This is great. Is it weird that omlettes are one of the few things I cannot make? urgh. I'll try at least one night this week. And the skinnytaste website has been bookmarked for ages, will for sure start there.

[poky]

This is great. Is it weird that omlettes are one of the few things I cannot make? urgh. I'll try at least one night this week. And the skinnytaste website has been bookmarked for ages, will for sure start there.

You don't have to make an omlette, make a frittata instead, or just "scrambled eggs with veggies" - all the same ingredients, just presented slightly differently, and scrambled is super-simple.

[diggitydot]

Our kids flove frittata. But I make it with egg whites and not the whole eggs. Let's of good, high quality protein with no fat or cholesterol.

[SoonerTexan]

I like eatingwell.com for quick healthy recipes, except for their casseroles. All of them have bombed for me. I guess casseroles just require insane amounts of fat to taste good. Love their chicken and soup recipes though

[diggitydot]

We tend to just make a lot of substitutions for healthier ingredients. We already had pretty decent nutrition because of DH's working out/weightlifting. We just needed to tweak things here as there. It can make a huge difference.

Have you read the "Eat This Not That" books? Small recipe adjustments can make enormous differences. There's also a book by Rocco DeSpirito along the same vein. It's pretty interesting because he went from being out-of-shape to doing triathlons and discovered that he HAD to change his views on nutrition, so he decided to change some of his favorite, high-calorie recipes.

[JDAZ11]

With the help of whole foods I can make a quick stir fry. They have the veggies already precut in a stirfry mix in the veggie section. I take that, dice some chicken, saute it all, throw a stirfry sauce on it, or I am trying out this one this week: http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-stir-fry-32652
You can always buy all the veggies and chop them yourself, I just find buying the ready made ones a big time and sanity saver. Then throw it over some rice. I throw my rice in the rice cooker before I start and its ready in thirty minutes.

We ate stir fry at least twice a week before we moved and got a little too excited about having a grill. We were lazier and bought the pre-cooked frozen chicken strips from whole foods or TJs (TJ's had a much better deal, but going to TJ's on a weekend in NYC can be like going to target on black friday!). Our whole foods also stopped carrying the frozen stir fry veggies (it was devastating!), but we found them TJ's at too. Whole foods has a great selection of sauces which helped to keep it more interesting.

Whole foods also has a fantastic selection of pre-chopped veggies (although they are actually really expensive... it used to annoy DF that I paid so much for them), but that really seemed to cut down prep time. There is no way I had time to chop a bunch of veggies at 8pm on a Wed! Every so often we would chop veggies for the first part of the week over the weekend so that things ran more smoothly on weeknights. I also really liked the pre-cut veggies for chicken soup and used to make once a week during the winter - it took about 10min.

We also stopped eating carbs after 6pm about two and a half years ago (we don't follow it as strictly anymore - we occasionally have quinoa now and random TJ's frozen foods now), but I think I lost about 5 lbs the first week that we started (and I really don't loose weight very easily at all). DF loves pasta, so this time of year we substituted spaghetti squash. When it wasn't in season, we started eating those tofu noodles (although, after awhile they started to upset my stomach). I forget the name, but whole foods has them in the tofu section. We usually used chicken rather than beef in our pasta sauce and threw in tons of vegetables (spinach is my fav and makes it very filling). Beyond that, grilled chicken or buffalo burgers with a vegetable or two were usually our go-tos. We have been eating a lot of TJ's frozen fish lately. Their miso cod is pretty great (if you like fish), and the salmon is very good also (we used to follow the recipe on the package). I also really like the TJs pork loin, and it seems to be pretty low cal/low fat.

We were big on repetition like Miss Crabette said. It wasn't that exciting, but it made grocery shopping and eating healthy during busy weeks totally mindless, which was nice. We usually tried to make something a bit more adventurous on Sundays and almost always ate out (or ordered in) on Friday and Saturday (I miss seamless web!).

[diggitydot]

Some things to keep in the freezer for quick, easy, healthy meals are turkey or salmon burgers. They cook up really quickly. If you pair them up with a salad or maybe some frozen veggies, you have a pretty decent, filling, healthy meal.

[JDAZ11]

Some things to keep in the freezer for quick, easy, healthy meals are turkey or salmon burgers. They cook up really quickly. If you pair them up with a salad or maybe some frozen veggies, you have a pretty decent, filling, healthy meal.

Agreed - we eat these often too. There is also a frozen chicken burger from TJ's that is very good (can't recall the name, but it's in a yellow/orange box). A well stocked freezer is the best when you have a busy schedule.