Healthy Eating Tips: Making Time to Cook
Making time to cook is important- get tips to prioritize cooking to help you eat healthier, have a better relationship to food, and improve family time.
Let’s talk about making time to cook for this part of our Healthy Eating Series – why, how, and what our current culture thinks about it.
Of course, since a basic glance around AOC’s pages reveal my passion for real, simple, homemade food that is nourishing and healthy (most of the time – I’m also about balance!), it’s no surprise that I think taking the time to cook is important.
But I’m going to go out on a limb and say:
Taking – and valuing – the time to cook homemade foods is one of THE most important things you can do for you and your family.
Why is making time to cook important?
- We will eat healthier, no doubt about it.
- When we’re healthy, life is just easier to live, right?
- The act of preparing food builds togetherness – and a connection with our past.
- Food can create complicated emotions, especially when bad habits are started young – we want to encourage and build a good relationship with food.
- Preparing food is an essential life skill and passing this on to our children is just as important as math, reading, and science (and actually helps in all these areas, putting that knowledge to work in a real, hands-on way!).
Quick & Easy Recipes?
A few months ago I read an article complaining about “quick & easy cooking” not actually being easy that had me so exasperated I had to take some time before talking about it, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to let it go without adding my two cents.
It was published in the Atlantic Monthly and written by a freelance writer who states that she “writes about food for a living.”
I put that in quotes,Ā because I wonder if she makes a living writing about food, how can she not be able to look at a recipe and know if it will take her longer than the time listed (I usually can…)?
Why doesn’t she have a go-to arsenal of recipes for quick weeknight meals like so many others do? And she doesn’t plan for weeknights or have a stocked pantry? Sheesh.
Okay, I get it: we are tired at the end of the day. When we have kids needing to be fed it adds stress. But leaving 5 minutes to prepare a meal and eat before putting your kid to bed? Seriously?
I don’t think the issue is easy meals here. It’s more an issue of priorities, it seems to me.Ā And there’s the heart of it for me:
Our culture as a whole hasĀ devalued the time it takes – and has always taken – to make quality food for our families and ourselves.
It’s “not important.” “I don’t have time.” “I’m too tired.” “I don’t cook” said with pride (i.e., “don’t” not “can’t”). It breaks my heart, especially since I see so much trouble caused by food that could be avoided with better choices and relationship to food.
The food education that comes from a household where meals are cooked from scratchĀ and theĀ family allĀ helpsĀ in the preparation, from actually helping to cook to dealing with dishes and clean-up, is invaluable and shouldn’tĀ be underestimated.
Knowing we can feed ourselves in a good way fulfills a basic human need and is empowering- we can provide for ourselves and be proactive about our health.
Yes it takes time to plan, shop, and prepare and some nights it feels like a chore. ButĀ there are plenty of go-to dishes I can put together in about a half hour – and they’re delicious and wholesome, even if they’re simple likeĀ curries, lettuce wraps, or simple tacos.
Obviously this involves more of my time and effort than ordering out, but that should not be what we compare ‘easy’ cooking to, anyway.
So, let’s agree to value cooking and the time it takes to make good food, okay?
As long as there’s time to binge-watch the latest Netflix or Hulu offering, there’s time to nourish our bodies. (Note: there’s no judging here – we love nights watching a good show – just as a comparison to evaluate the time we do have, if we’re honest.)
Let’s also agree that sometimes it’s got to be quick and easy and may not look as good, or be quite as healthy as other nights. It’s about balance and having goals (learning to cook, trying new foods, eating more vegetables, or whatever it may be).
And here’s the key to making it happen:
You’ve Got To Have A Plan
If, like the writer of the Atlantic Monthly article, you comeĀ home after a day’s work and then start thinking about what’s for dinner, it’s too late.
Because thenĀ you’re willing to do whatever is fast, which almost always comes at a cost of your health and your budget.
When we plan in advanceĀ based onĀ what our family likes, it is easy to make a variety of simple weeknight meals, whether stir fries, pasta, or sausages with peppers & onions.
But even simple meals require planning and preparation,Ā like any job you want to do well.
So, how are we going to make this work for our real-life, busy lives?
Tips to Make Time for Cooking
Here are some tips for making time to cook and keep weeknight meals do-able:
- Plan a dinner menu. Assign themes to each night to make it easy (Taco Tuesday, Pasta Wednesday, Seafood Thursday, etc.).
- Keep a list of your family’s favorite easy go-to recipes and rotate them through the month. There’s nothing wrong with repeating recipes we love. Some of our easy favs are soft tacos, haystacks, vegetable-egg scrambles or a fried egg breakfast-for-dinner, pasta with meat sauce or pesto-chicken sauce, chef’s salads, and toasted cheese-type sandwiches (orĀ panini’s if you’re into that) with cut vegetables.
- Shop on the weekend or day off (Shopping on the way home from work or an appointment? Always a really bad idea= hangry).
- Keep your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry stocked with foods youĀ like (ie, if you make a lot of Thai dishes, fish sauce may be a staple, but for others, maybe not).
- Save new or longer-cooking recipes for weekends.
- Be flexible with recipes – if you don’t have shallots, use onions (one of my favorite substitutions, as I rarely have shallots), and so on.
- UseĀ weekends to make batches soups, stews, and casseroles and re-heat the for a quick meal.
What tips would you add to this list?
Read all of the Healthy Eating Series:
Healthy Eating Tips: Making Time to CookĀ (you are here!)
Healthy Grocery Shopping Tips: Shop Smart & Stay On Budget
17 Essential Cooking Tools for Healthy Eating: Cookware & Small Appliances
18 Essential Tools, Knives & Gadgets for Healthy Kitchens {+ 7 Nice-to-Haves}
25 Healthy Family Favorite Main Dishes
19 Healthy Soups, Stews & Slow Cooker Dishes
Hi Jami, my eyes were opened to this issue when I visited Morocco and stayed with family (my brother in law is Moroccan). His sister thought nothing of spending the best part of the day, on and off, preparing food for the family for the evening. Various family members helped her at various points during the day. Every evening, we had a beautiful spread of food and each meal was a joy to experience. The love and care she put into it was a revelation. Whilst few of us have time to spend a day cooking, the lesson I learnt was that whilst we may eat food quickly, that is not a reason to prepare it quickly (or buy it ready prepared). If made with care, the process of cooking and eating is so much more enjoyable. She did not see it as a poor use of her time to prepare a lavish feast for loved ones and no-one else did either.
Oh, that sounds like such a wonderful experience, Liz! I, too, learned from our travels that we can learn a lot from other culture’s relationship to food. š
I agree with all you have said above, we too have the same problems here in the uk, it’s easier to have something processed or take out. It’s damaging the nations health and the government are really trying to get people to cook, there is a lot of advertising going on with programmes and adverts on the tv, and Jamie Oliver and other famous chefs have been campaigning for several years now in schools and on the tv. There are booklets coming through people’s doors and the manufacturers are having to put full nutrition values on packaging. The big supermarkets are on board too encouraging people to cook from scratch with tips and hints for easy dinners involving the whole family. All that said, my tip if your days are very stretched is to get and use a slow cooker, very useful summer and winter and coming in from work on a cold day to a delicious stew or curry or bolognaise or chilli or even a whole chicken/roast just needing some vegetables or rice or bread is wonderful!
At least they’re trying, Julie. š We have Jamie Oliver here a bit, too (I loved his food revolution reality tv shows he did a few years ago), but we don’t quite have that push to encourage people to cook – that would be nice.
And yes to slow cookers – I love mine! I have heard people say it’s hard to find recipes that need all day (10 hour) cooking, but definitely soups, chilis, and things that can’t really be overcooked are so wonderful to come home to. š
I have people look a little shocked when they see we have such a well stocked freezer and pantry for just my husband and me. Well, I cook nearly meal, or reheat our leftovers. If we can’t go out, or don’t want to, we have everything necessary for many meals. For years my husband had diverticulitis, making his diet very bland and limited, so it was easy to fix what he liked, and could eat, at home. Now I estimate we eat out about 5 meals a month, lunches specifically, all other meals we make at home. We’re older, retired, on limited incomes, however, to be honest, this is how we have always done it, in our 33 year marriage. It amazes me that young people seem to do the opposite of us, eat out often and cook occasionally. No wonder so many of them cannot save money.
So true, Judy! I’m curious, you said that your husband ‘had’ diverticulitis – did eating good food help it go away or was it something else?
I suppose you could say Dennis still has it, at least diverticuli pockets, but the main ones that kept catching everything were removed in surgery to remove a large mass found in 2008. His bland diet changed then, but his preferences were set, he never went back to eating foods that were spicy, although finally he was able to eat thing with seeds, and nuts. I think we eat very healthy meals, normally. I enjoy cooking, and preparing our meals, so we kept eating at home. I was thinking the other day that I cannot remember the last time I went into a drive-three at a fast food place! I will say Dennis was in the hospital recently due to a blockage in his small intestine. Something got stuck and it wrapped around some scar tissue from the first surgery. Right now, he is on a low residue diet, no fiber, and that will be added in over time. If there are any more blockages, he will need surgery to remove the scar tissue. It’s really interesting how one thing affects another.