Make a Healthy Diet Easy - 8 Helpful Hints
Often people are amazed at how quickly we can make a delicious healthy meal… without any packets! Roger’s Mum comes over for lunch or dinner sometimes, and is amazed how instantly food is on the table.
How do we make healthy food so simple?
Here are some of our best refrigerator and pantry secrets;
8 helpful hints to make a whole food diet
easy to maintain for you and your family.
Notes: There are many special foods hiding in our refrigerator and pantry. We whip them out to add flavour, interest and nutrient density to a meal. We make sure we usually have these on hand to make a plain meal into a feast.
Making some of these meal enhancing condiments takes some weekend time investment. But once you’ve made a big batch, you’re set for weeks. Many of these recipes can become fun family activities.
So here they are...
Anna’s eight helpful hints to make a whole food diet easy
1) Make hummus, or other bean and seed dips in bulk. Freeze them in smaller containers. This way you always have a healthy sandwich spread ready for lunch time and snacks. Try our sublime pumpkin hummus , or the standard tasty variety .
What are the advantages of making your own hummus?
- It is very time efficient to make dips in bulk
- You can make up your perfect flavour blend
- It will save dollars compared to pottles of hummus from the supermarket.
2) Cook healthy chutneys and pickles when fruit and vegetables are ripe, juicy and in season. One of our favourite chuntey recipes is beetroot apple chutney . As well as being gorgeous with salads and sandwiches, it is an intense aromatic marinade for fish and chicken.
To make chutneys healthier the best changes you can make to standard recipes are:
- Adding dehydrated cane juice and honey instead of white sugar. Whole food sweeteners are much more balancing in the body, because they a full spectrum of minerals and vitamins, plus enzymes for digestion. White sugar has been stripped of goodies; hence it is merely ‘empty calories’.
- Using good quality apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is naturally brewed without the harsh processes of bulk supermarket varieties.
3) Start sprouting. It really is easy and
takes less than a minute a day to rinse them. If you haven’t seen our sprouting
video yet, take a look. We always have sprouts on the go, or a big lot ready to
eat in the refrigerator. Freshly sprouted sprouts last for a good week or so. How to use sprouts:
- Sprouts are always an easy addition to salads. For example grated carrot, beetroot and sprouts .
- Hummus, and chutney (or a little spread of miso) plus a handful of sprouts makes a delicious sandwich on wholegrain bread.
4) Try making sauerkraut. Sauerkraut has been
a nutrient dense staple food in eastern Europe for hundreds of years. Many
traditional wholefood diets use ‘living’ pickles like sauerkraut to aid
digestion.
Once you get the hang of the process it is
easy. Chopping a big batch of cabbage with the food processor, and then rubbing
in a little salt takes less than an hour. Leave it to mature for a few weeks
and you are set for weeks.
We use sauerkraut as a salad vegetable, on sandwiches and mashed into softly cooked root vegetables. (I’m a Dutch blooded woman so enjoying sauerkraut runs in my family!)
5) Simplify dressings if you’re in a
hurry.
One of my favourite 30 second dressings is olive oil, balsamic (or
cider
vinegar) and soy sauce. I slosh a little of each directly onto the
salad… no
mixing. This combo is also luscious for roasting vegetables, or poured
on a mixture of vegetables and a protein option (cooked beans, fish,
chicken or eggs).
6) Make legumes preparation easy. Soak, drain in and boil large quantities of beans or lentils. Once cooled you can freeze them in smaller amounts. The bigger beans defrost in minutes if your pour boiling water over then. Then you can pop them into a one-bowl-meal salad or a stove top savoury fry-up. Of course, plain canned beans are good for emergencies!
7) Soak grain breakfasts the night before. Whether you’re making Bircher muesli or porridge, soaking the oats, spices, dried fruit and seeds reduces cooking time. This morning we had a lovely steamy bowl of whole oat, current and sunflower seed porridge. It literally took five minutes to cook. Topped with fruit and yoghurt, both Bircher muesli and porridge are a healthier alternative to boxed cereals. Did you know that oats are helpful for calming the nervous system and regulating blood sugar levels?
8) Make smoothies when time is short but you
want to eat well and stay energised.
Here are three of the best:
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