Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to figure out some quick and easy convenience foods that are not as much of a compromise as $5 pizza.
Level of Commitment: Baby Steps
Summer is often the time of being on the run, vacationing, and certainly not wanting to spend all day in the kitchen even if you’re home all day.
It’s tempting to just grab a pizza sometimes, isn’t it?
And it’s not that there’s anything inherently and truly evil about a white flour pizza every so often. Most families can compromise on el perfecto diet and not pay the consequences. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice to have a quick meal that’s almost as convenient as a $5 pizza without missing out on quality nourishment?
If your family has food sensitivities or are following a serious diet like GAPS, you know you can’t compromise. It’s mighty nice to have a meal that doesn’t take too much work though, isn’t it?
Today’s mission will explore some ideas for quick, nutrient-dense, properly sourced meals that you might want to rely on in these whimsical summer days.
Last summer, when we were in the throes of moving and having a baby, I wrote a few good posts on quick meals:
- Convenience Foods that Aren’t a Compromise (stuff you can buy that might cost a little more than your usual frugal fare, but still not as hard of a hit to the pocketbook as eating out)
- What to Eat When You’re Too Busy to Think (quick meals, packable meals, …)
Picnic Style Meals
Sometimes you don’t need a main course, side dish, and salad. Follow Life as MOM’s lead and serve a meal that’s just a bunch of things on the same table:
- Quality cheese (more on sourcing cheese later this week in the Sourcing Quality Animal Products series)
- Crispy nuts
- Homemade yogurt with fresh or frozen fruit or green smoothies
- Popcorn (why not? You gotta have some fun, and serving kids popcorn for dinner is fun)
- Fresh fruit
- Veggies and homemade ranch dressing or a yogurt cheese based dip with fresh herbs and garlic
- What else?
Convenience Meats
We talked a little bit last week about how the real food lifestyle lends itself to whole chickens, and I think many of us agree that we miss the simplicity of throwing some chicken breasts on the grill, adding baked potatoes and calling it a meal. I figure that Costco organic chicken breasts, while pricey and still probably not perfectly raised, are a far cry better than eating out, both for the body and the budget.
Here are some other quickie meats we splurge on, just for “sometimes”:
- Applegate Farms lunchmeat (we’ll explore “natural” lunchmeats in today’s other post!)
- Nitrate-free sausages from Costco – they’re not even organic, so they’re barely a step up from regular old junky meat, but if it’s between that and the white flour, trans fats, and junky meat that my kids would choose if we ate out, it’s still the better part.
- Buffalo brats from Tropical Traditions
Eating Out?
I often point to Chipotle as an example of a restaurant that has a good food philosophy, sourcing from smaller farms that raise their animals humanely. We have a new place here in Grand Rapids called The Green Restaurant that also sources all its meats well and even has gluten-free bread options. (It’s right where we used to live, so bummed about that, but we went up there once and really enjoyed it.) Check out my Grand Rapids local real food resources page for more sustainable and nourishing restaurants in this area.
In truth, it’s really difficult to eat out and not compromise on something, which is when the 80/20 rule comes into play and you just remember that, unless you’re on a strict diet or have food sensitivities,little junk won’t kill you.
I’d love to get more good advice from the KS community -
What do you rely on for quick foods or healthy restaurant fare?
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Eggs, always! Also yogurt+granola, nut butter+fruit, and (on the less breakfasty side) stirfries or curries over cauliflower rice. That’s done in half an hour.
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This is exactly why I made a habit of doubling and freezing everything I can, all the time. Before I started GAPS intro, I was still pretty much on the full diet, and after one particularly scary emergency stop at Safeway when I realized there was truly NOTHING safe for me to eat there, I vowed to have home made something available at all times.
Other than that, salad with protein and a smoothie is a go-to, along with eggs, tacos, pita pizzas (for those who eat grains), throw-a-bunch-of-tasty-stuff-in-a-skillet and call it dinner (my husband has come up with endless variations of things involving pesto, sundried tomatoes, and parmesan, from mixing it with beans in a skillet to open faced sandwich/pizzas on ezekiel bread).
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Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship Reply:
July 9th, 2012 at 9:44 pm
Christina,
Sometimes people ask “what is this called?” and I make up a name real quick.
Katie
Yeah, I love that meal!
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Eggs; spinach, fruit and yogurt smoothies, veggies and peanut butter, fresh fruit. I cook whole chickens and try to always have cooked meat in the freezer…so chicken and rice is always an easy possibility!
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speaking of convenience, I just popped (fyi- I accidentally typed pooped 1st, bwahahaha!) in here to get your “cream of …”recipe to make cream of mushrooms soup for stroganoff tonight. I have been trying to better at not eating out when my brain is fried, so I have been making more freezer meals (which are hard since we don’t use a microwave anymore, and if I don’t realize my brain is not functioning until 3:30/4, then it takes too long to defrost, in which case we will end up having eggs or pancakes).
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Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship Reply:
July 9th, 2012 at 9:46 pm
Amy,
I hear ya! Frozen food is not QUICK convenient, just “helpful” convenient. I knew we were having soup from the freezer tonight for dinner, but I still didn’t get down to dig out the jars until 3:30. Um. I put them laying down in a pot of water and brought it just to a simmer. 30 minutes, pourable soup!
Not sure how that works with casseroles, but it was handy with soup in jars!
Katie
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p.s. oops..i forgot to add, we only have one car, so on the days that I need to take my husband to work, we stop at this AMAZING burger joint, called “Elevation Burger”- they have all grass-fed burgers, raw milk cheddar, and offer fruit as side dish options. They also have amazing no-soy veggie burgers. They are made with real veggies and rice. TWO different kinds. MMMM. I am gonne have to find a reason to take hubby into work soon;O)
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Hey Katie – we definitely do the ‘lots of random healthy stuff on the table’ meals pretty often in the summer. Raw fruit and veg. Leftover chicken from the whole bird a few days before. Cheese. Nuts. Rice. Whatever. It’s always something different.
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Eggs are my go-to. Sometimes scrambled (with random leftovers folded in) sometimes as fried egg sandwiches (with some kind of cooked greens in there).
But with the heat wave that has finally just passed, I haven’t wanted to cook at all. It’s been too hot in my unairconditioned kitchen– hit 116F when I was baking bread. So there were a lot of sandwiches and salads in the past 10 days.
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Ashley Reply:
July 9th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
I face this same dilemma… I would love to be able to stay up late & cook/bake when my kitchen will have the whole night to cool off, but I have to be to work at 7am. So, I just end up not cooking or baking! I will take my toaster oven outside if I just have something small to bake/reheat. It’s amazing what one can accomplish with a tiny oven!
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Our summer convenience meals are
*burritos made with canned beans
*whole-wheat spaghetti with sauce from a jar (it’s pretty easy to find sauces with no added sugar, no soybean oil) and whatever veg is handy, or shredded kale from the freezer (can just thaw it in the sauce, since shreds thaw quickly)
*Spicy Peanut Dressing over salad.
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Hard boiled eggs
Fruit Salad
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I’m definitely with you on the Chipotle/Qdoba for fast food, it’s our best option here as well.
For eating in, I always try to have some sort of leftovers available, or else it’s spaghetti + canned sauce or breakfast (eggs, pancakes, potatoes).
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Grand Rapids also just got another organic restaurant, Trillium Haven in Eastown. We ate there last weekend and it was awesome! And their flatbreads can be ordered gluten free.
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Kris Reply:
July 9th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
I have heard great things about this restaurant – what is the price range? I know the couple who run Trillium farms in Jenison is doing this – so it is truly farm to table!
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Christina Reply:
July 9th, 2012 at 8:32 pm
I think the flatbreads started around $10 and the entrees were $15-30. It sounds like the menu will be changing often depending on what’s in season.
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Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship Reply:
July 9th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Christina,
Katie
Yum! I wonder if they’ll have a Groupon type thing soon…
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Homemade cheese, bread, hardboiled eggs and leftovers! Also fruit and veggies, nuts and seeds. No cook meals for me – I don’t have AC and this summer is killing me!
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Big salads with tons of fun stuff, including beans, eggs, marinated artichokes, quinoa, hemp, etc.
I also love making quick wraps and they can be super healthy.
Another good one is quesadillas. They can be as simple as plain cheese or I can add tons of healthy stuff. Last week, I had a bunch of random veggies that needed to be cooked, so I sauteed them quickly and then put them inside the quesadillas. It’s also a great way to use up avacados:)
Yum, now I’m hungry again and it’s bedtime.
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For me, lunch at home is the hardest meal. (yeah, weird.) I try to keep a pot of cooked quinoa in the fridge every other week. I know it’s not hard to cook it, but it’s just so much easier to use if it’s sitting in there waiting for me. I haven’t quite converted the rest of the family to quinoa yet, but I sure love the stuff.
And thanks to your blog, I ALWAYS have plain yogurt on hand. My little boys will eat plain yogurt all day long.
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When it is really hot – dinner at lunch then conversely lunch for dinner.
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Salmon patties with frozen peas or whatever other veggies we have has been my fall back plan lately. I use your recipe and use almond flour instead of bread crumbs to make it grain free. I just had a leftover one for lunch, actually.
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