Meal Plan like a Pro
Wellness Wednesday is back! Scroll down and head into our latest article that can help you easily get to meal planning and save money too!
To catch up on missed articles click on the relevant week as follows:
1.Better Health Through Food : click here
2.Macro & Micro-nutrients : click here
3.Balancing Meals & Snacks : click here
Meal planning is a great tool. You can use meal planning to save time, simplify feeding your family, and making meal time less stressful and more enjoyable. Maybe you feel like you never have time for breakfast, maybe you want to have lunches ready for the work week, or perhaps you always feel too tired to start cooking dinner and you choose the easiest option. If any (or all) of these options apply to you, think of how you feel at the end of these days. More than likely you experience feeling cranky, hungry, and a lack of energy. Ensuring that you are keeping yourself and your family well fed is a form of self-care. So, we want to ensure that you create a realistic plan that works for you and won’t leave you feeling stressed out.
Another perk of meal planning is that it can help you save money too as you will be creating a plan and a grocery list of only the food you need. This will hopefully help you avoid buying takeaway/ restaurant food. Most of all, meal planning allows you to have a healthier diet as you are eating more homemade food and less takeout meals, processed, and packaged foods.
This may seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but don’t wait until you’re hungry to start preparing food. It often leads you to grab whatever is available. Take a couple hours over the weekend, or whichever day you have some free time, and open up your cookbooks, search your favorite foods on the internet, or call your family for recipes of foods you enjoy. Jot these recipes down that you would like to make for the upcoming week. Personally, I enjoy using Pinterest and saving all of the recipes I would like to make there. Another note is to make sure you’re choosing meals that are easy to make and what you’re comfortable cooking. Again, we want to make this a realistic goal for you to achieve and not seem like a daunting task. When you have decided on your meals, assign a day to have them.
For example, five meals I know that are easy to cook and enjoyable for me are:
- Baked fish with rice and roasted vegetables (pumpkin, baigan, cauliflower)
- Tuna casserole
- Vegetable Stir fry with rice
- Chickpea and Veg curry (leftover pumpkin, baigan, and cauliflower that wasn’t roasted + mushrooms)
- Roasted chicken with potatoes and green beans
I will also usually prepare a big salad on a Monday that will last the week so that I can add it to most of my meals and not have to think about it.
Meal planning also allows you to see what nutrients you are getting for the week. For example, I always try to add some vegetables into each meal when planning. If I think there are too many dishes with meat, I will swap it out for a plant-based meal with wholegrains.
Making the Plan
Using my meal plan for the week, I can make my grocery list to include all of these items:
- Fish (typically salmon or white fish)
- Wholegrain rice
- Pumpkin
- Baigan
- Local cauliflower
- Penne pasta
- Canned tuna
- Frozen peas and carrots (for tuna casserole)
- Eggs
- Cheese
- Cream of mushroom soup (tinned)
- Lettuce — Carrots
- Cucumbers
- Tomatoes
- Channa
- Chicken breast
- Potatoes
- Green beans
Some of these items such as the pasta, rice, channa, tinned cream of mushroom soup are pantry items which I usually have and that makes it even easier. On top of these items, I always ensure I have different breakfast options such as oats, eggs, yogurt, cereal, bread on hand.
After grocery shopping, if you have the time, it can be useful to prepare the vegetables and meat/ fish ahead of time. Washing, chopping, and storing the vegetables in a tupperware until ready to use will save you a lot of time when you are ready to cook. As well as cleaning and seasoning the meat and storing it in a tupperware the night before cooking it if you have the time.
If you are struggling to create a plan for yourself, there is the 5–4–3–2-1 plan which makes grocery shopping easy if you don’t have a plan. It consists of buying 5 snacks, 4 sources of protein, 3 fun drinks (V8 splash drinks), 2 sauces or cheeses, and 1 frozen meal.
There will be some days where you just don’t feel or have the time to cook. If you are making a big soup such as split pea or callaloo, make extra to freeze so you can pull it out later in the month. You can also apply this to when you’re making a tuna casserole, or a big pot of chilli. I keep a pizza base in the freezer so that I can pull it out, dress it with tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever vegetables I have in the fridge at the time when I have nothing prepared.
Simple Meal and Snack Ideas
Breakfast
- Cereal and milk of choice (dairy or non-dairy) + piece of fruit
- Toast with peanut butter and banana
- Yogurt and granola and sliced banana or fruit of choice
- Eggs (fried, poached, boiled, scrambled) with a piece of toast and tomato and/ or avocado
- Tomato/ baigan choka with sada roti
- Pancakes (can prepare the batter the night before)
Lunch and Dinner
- Sandwiches
- Bread of choice + protein source (sliced turkey, chicken breast, boiled eggs, smoked salmon) + veggies (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes). Spread lightly with mayonnaise or hummus.
- Bake trays — Place seasoned fish or chicken on a baking tray along with potatoes, vegetables of choice such as pumpkin, carrots, broccoli, green beans, etc.
- Wraps
- Protein source of choice (black beans, chicken, fish), with sauteed vegetables, + natural yogurt or sour cream and salsa
And there you go — meal planning and prep!
Information this week by: Kirstyn Church, an Associate Nutritionist with Nutrition Consulting Services. Tru Valu Supermarket is one of the leading grocery chains in Trinidad and Tobago with five stores and the best customers. Have a question? Email us truvalusupermarkets+wellness@gmail.com. Follow us on facebook and instagram too!
