Cooking short-cuts for Parents on the run!
Plan weekly.
Take one hour every week or weekend to plan your week so that you will have the food you need to make healthy meals. Use a shopping list, and ask members of your family to contribute and accompany you to the grocery store.Keep basic ingredients on hand.
Stock up on often-used quick meal fixings, such as canned beans and tuna, rice, pasta, and jars of spaghetti sauce. Buy extra canned or frozen fruits and vegetables. Because they’re packed at the peak of freshness, they are just as nutritious as fresh ones.Use a crockpot or slow cooker to save time.
All you have to do is fill it and turn it on. When you get home in the evening, your dinner is ready. For more information on how to use a crock-pot, cooking tips, and recipes, go to: http://busycooks.about.com/ library/howtos/blcrockpot101.html.Try batch cooking.
During the weekend or sometime during the week, block out a couple of hours to make a big batch of chili, soup, casserole, or a pasta dish to refrigerate or freeze for some time later. Then you can just heat and eat.Use your microwave.
For recipes appropriate for a microwave, check out the following: www.goodnuke.com/recipes/.Introduce cooking to your children.
Let your children join you in your kitchen to help prepare meals, learn new recipes, find ingredients, and serve a family dinner. They can help you while learning nutritional information about a broad range of foods. Cookbooks especially for children pre-teen and up include Honest Pretzels by Molly Katzen, There’s a Chef in My Soup! Recipes for the Kid in Everyone, and The Teen’s Vegetarian Cookbook by Judy Krizmanic.Ideas for improving your food choices
Start with one of these ideas to improve your food choices
this week. Or maybe you already have your own idea.
| Instead of… | Try… |
|---|---|
| Whole milk | Low-fat (1%) milk or fat-free (skim) milk |
| Sour cream | Plain yogurt, low-fat or non-fat |
| White bread or flour tortillas | Whole wheat bread or whole wheat tortillas |
| Bacon | Canadian bacon or lean ham |
| Regular ground beef (25% fat) | Extra-lean ground beef (5% fat) |
| Regular ice cream | Low-fat frozen yogurt |
| Fried chicken | Roasted chicken without the skin |
