Real food talk: Cooking for yourself is hard.
Sure, it's easy during the festivities of Thanksgiving and Christmas, when you have a date coming over for dinner, or on the days you actually feel like it.
But cooking consistently, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Meal prepping week after week? That's a different story, especially for a scattered, single knucklehead like me. It's a lot easier to drop into one of SLO's alluring restaurants for lunch and kiss goodbye the extra $10 (or more) spent.
I realized—well actually, my editor helped me realize—that this "Flavor" issue presented a good opportunity to challenge my eating-out habit by making all my own meals for a week and writing about the experience. Empty-walleted from the aforementioned spending, I accepted the challenge.
My first stop wasn't the grocery store, but Google. I have a few favorite recipes of my own, but I wanted to find a couple of nutritious dishes I could make in bulk and that would keep well in the fridge. Thankfully, the web knows no bounds when it comes to recipes and general cooking advice. After perusing a few cooking blogs, I picked out a vegetable quinoa bowl and a chicken stir-fry for dinners/lunches and, for breakfast, a spinach-heavy smoothie. I took screenshots of the recipes on my phone and took off for Trader Joe's.
Back at home, I dusted off my food processor and blender (having used neither since I moved to my current apartment in September), sharpened my knives, and readied my measuring cups. I threw on a vinyl record and got cooking. It took a few minutes to get my momentum going, but after about 15 minutes I was in the meditative and satisfying flow of cooking—the quinoa cooking on a burner, the sweet potato slices roasting in the oven, and the almond butter, ginger, and lime dressing churning in the food processor. After everything was ready, I mixed it all in a big bowl with the other vegetables and stuck it in the fridge for future lunches.
The next morning, instead of my usual sourdough toast with butter and coffee for breakfast, I crammed a couple handfuls of spinach, a banana, frozen pineapple chunks, and almond milk into the blender and—wow. That drink gave me five times more energy and vitality than what I normally feel in the morning. That evening, I cooked up the chicken stir-fry for my second lunch/dinner option. Now I'm set for the rest of the week. I managed to get through it without spending a penny more on food, and I actually felt better.
My meal prep process wasn't perfect or very efficient. I don't have a system or schedule nailed down. I found out that preparing meals for yourself all the time isn't easy. But I imagine it's like a muscle you have to use to make stronger, and, boy, is it an important muscle. There are so many benefits to taking responsibility for your food—financial, nutritional, and personal—that I hope I can keep the routine going. Especially with all the expertise and recipes available online, all it'd take is a little bit of planning and effort. Bon appetite!
Meal prep recipes
Breakfast smoothie
Recipe courtesy of whatsgabycooking.com
1 tbsp almond butter
2 cups spinach
1 cup vanilla almond milk
1/2 ripe banana
1/4 cup frozen pineapple chunks
Optional: 1 tsp chia seeds or flax seeds
Quinoa bowl with sweet potatoes
Recipe courtesy of makingthymeforhealth.com
1 cup quinoa
1 cup shredded cabage
1/2 cup diced green onions
1/2 cup cilantro
3/4 cup chopped almonds
2 sweet potatoes
1 tbsp salt
Dressing
1/3 cup almond butter
1/3 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves
3 inches peeled ginger
3 squeezed limes
filtered water for consistency Δ
Staff Writer Peter Johnson is neck deep in quinoa at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.
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