Obviously, I like to post a lot of my food on Instagram. Following a strict diet can be hard, but I try to make it fun and I try to make it look good. And Tom's only requirement for what he eats is that it has to be delicious. The other major requirement for meals in our house is that it has to be FAST. In the mornings, my meals have to be grab-n-go. At lunch, I am either working or driving to my other school. And since my energy has been so low lately, dinners have to be super easy cause at the end of the day, I am just barely making it. Combine all this with food restrictions and it can be tough. Thankfully, we've gotten a system down that ensures we spend minimal time prepping food during the week, we stay on our food budget, and we are getting lots of healthy veggies, protein, and fat at each meal. Here's how we do it: 1. Flexible grocery list During the summer, I love to try new recipes and be adventurous in the kitchen. I'll make an exact grocery list with specific ingredients I need in order to make more complicated recipes. For a long time, I tried this approach during the school year and it got frustrating with AIP simply because shopping for specific recipes requires you to cook that recipe regardless of if you feel like it later on in the week. If I buy ingredients for a dish that takes 45 minutes and I plan to make it on Thursday night, but then Thursday rolls around and I have no energy, I'm going to be stressed about making that food. If I don't make the food, will it go to waste? And more importantly, what are we going to eat instead??! So, I started creating flexible grocery lists. Game changer. Not only does this take the pressure off me to cook certain meals on certain nights, BUT it has also helped save us money because we eat what's in season and what is on sale at the grocery store. Which definitely helps when you are trying to buy all organic. I go to the grocery store with an idea of what type of veggies I will buy, but when I see that collard greens are on sale and kale is not, guess what I'm buying? The collards. This isn't to say I go to the store without a plan. I have categories I plan to get, but then flexibility within those categories. So here's what my list might look like: 2. Lots of repetition (but only once)
There's a lot of info on why AIP'ers should rotate their food and not eat too much of the same thing. Even if you don't have food issues, it's great to get a lot of variety in your diet. However, cooking something different for every single meal is time consuming and not economical, especially if you are buying different ingredients for each dish. So what we do to get variety AND save time and money is we rotate ingredients each week instead of each day. For example, one week I'll make a huge batch of butternut squash for us to eat. We'll eat that as a side for dinner every night that week. But then the next week, I'll get sweet potatoes and that will be our side dish. We get variety, BUT I only have to cook once. Furthermore, I'm able to buy ingredients in bulk to save money. Which leads me to my third point... 3. Bulk Buys and Batch Cooking As you probably noted in my photo above, we shop at a few places. If you aren't shopping at Costco, I would suggest you check it out and see if they carry products you would use on a weekly basis. We used to have a Sam's membership, but then we realized that Costco actually carries much more organic produce. We buy our fruit, greens, and some veggies at Costco each week. Bananas, berries, salad mixes, avocados, AND some times they even carry those Paleo Hail Merry tarts! In addition, we buy our coconut oil there. It saves us about 10-15 bucks a week when we shop there. In addition, we buy our fish there-- sometimes we buy frozen salmon, sometimes canned salmon, and sometimes cod. The important thing is that they sell WILD CAUGHT fish, which is incredibly important. Then we buy our "single" items at Whole Foods. We shop at Whole Food primarily because they offer a wider variety of organic produce than HEB, however, if there are items we know are cheaper at HEB, we will sometimes swing by there as well (Did I mention that grocery shopping is pretty much the whole Saturday morning affair?) . At WF, we buy organic meats, organic produce not available at Costco, and a few products like salsa, epic bars, and dried ingredients from the bulk bins. Then, finally Sunday afternoon, I do some batch cooking. I start by roasting three trays of vegetables for side dishes. Sometimes I buy the pre-chopped veggies at Costco (score!). While my veggies are roasting, I assemble my salads for the week. After that, I make a ground beef or bison skillet-- I just throw some green veggies with onions, garlic, etc. in with the ground beef. All in all, it takes about 1.5-2 hours to make about 15-20 meals. After two hours I have the following: 1. All veggie sides for dinner 2. Lunch salads for the week 3. Breakfast wraps or hash for the week 4. 4-6 servings of dinners to get us through Monday-Friday Our dinner menu might end up looking something like this: Monday: Sweet potatoes with ground beef/veggie mixture Tuesday: Sweet potatoes with ground beef /veggie mixture Wednesday: Salmon with brussels sprouts and spinach Thursday: Roasted veggie bowl with ground beef on top Friday: Leftovers: whatever meat and veggies are left in the fridge! You can see, we eat a lot of vegetables, but a little bit of prep makes it easy and convenient for us to stick to a healthy diet, even on those days when I'm just not feeling it! It is possible and it is totally worth it:) If you are wanting to try batch cooking, just keep in mind planning is key BUT you can do it!
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January 2017
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