Quick Fix - What's For Dinner?
We have looked over the last few weeks at breakfast and lunch, today we take a look at what is on the menu for dinner.
Also coming up, how you can get involved in National Fitness Day tomorrow.
If you are anything like me you can usually work out what’s for tea in my house depending on the day of the week!
Or is it just me that gets stuck in that kind of a rut?
In the interests of keeping the family happy and ease, dinner tends to be a rotation of meals I know everyone will like and ones which I don’t need to think about because the recipe is either ingrained on my mind or seriously simple!
It’s time for a mix up in my house and I’m taking you along for the ride!!
So let’s have a look at what makes up a good dinner.
Should we be avoiding carbs? Eating buckets of vegetables? Are potatoes good or bad?
When we looked at what’s for lunch we followed a few simple rules:
Take a Break and make time to eat slowly
Where is the protein? Aim for a good palm sized portion.
Where are the veggies? Make it half the page.
Where are the carbs? Go for natural sources.
Where are the fats coming from? Good quality and natural.
Funnily enough the same rules apply to dinner so make sure your meal is balanced.
The next thing also applies to all meals, planning is key. If you fail to plan you plan to fail applies to what you eat as well as it does to anything else.
Make sure you either pre-prepare or that you only have the healthiest ingredients in your kitchen so that you stick to your goal.
So here are some quick workday ideas that meet all the above requirements.
Slow Cookers
One of the best ways to make sure you get a good meal when you get home from a long day is to use a slow cooker.
Prepare all the veg and meat or pulses the night before and throw it all in the slow cooker when you get up in the morning.
Its planning dinner at its best and there is nothing better than coming home to a house that smells of dinner knowing you have very little to do to get it on the plate!
My favourite recipes are slow cooked chilli, honey and garlic chicken and red lentil curry.
You can get some recipe ideas on my Pinterest page.
Quick and Easy
If it’s quick and easy you are after and you want something that will appeal to the whole family my favourite meal in 30 minutes is sausage and mash!
Yes you heard me right, sausages that are gluten free and have a high meat content are best and they are now easily accessible with most major supermarkets offering a good selection.
And if you want to make the mash more appealing then halve the white potatoes with some sweet potatoes and mash with some cooked frozen chopped spinach and some grated cheese, hey presto you have healthier more exciting mash! Serve with loads of steamed veg.
Oh yes my advice is eat a balance of good carbs. Always eat loads of veg (you know it is best) so plan about half of your plate to be vegetables at each meal.
And potatoes, if the goal is eating healthier and generally balancing your diet then yes some potatoes are absolutely fine, let’s aim for three good, healthy balanced meals every day and go from there!
National Fitnes Day
Tomorrow is National Fitness Day and I would love to share some of it with you. I'm supporting a really fabulous campaign aiming to empower women to discuss what body image means to them.
We want women to use language that is positive to describe their bodies so that we can empower the next generation to love their bodies and what it can do for them.
Join me in a local walk with your friends or family or simple make the effort to walk to work or school, use the hashtag #AWomansWord to share your support for the campaign too.
I’m off to do some planning, speak soon.
Kirsty xx
