Not Just a Man's World

I have a tendency to try to fit too much into my life and I end up with a very fine balance.  As soon as something gets out of balance I suddenly find that I’m struggling to fit in everything that needs to be done and some of the smallest but ultimately most important bits get missed out, like mobility drills.

To have total control over the food I consume, both in quantity and quality, I have had to learn that there is no space for ready meals.  A few years ago I lived in London and if I got stuck late at work it was too easy to stop in at the supermarket for a microwave curry or to treat myself to Chinese take-away from the place I walked past on my way home.  But since then I have converted fully to a paleo diet and I’ve also increased the exercise I do to the point where I would be compromising on my general health to go back to a lifestyle of take-aways and ready meals.

Cooking meals from scratch can take time, but in the last couple of years I’ve learned that there is no need to compromise your diet when you are busy.  With some careful planning and applying some of the tips below, you can reduce the time spent in the kitchen and leave more time for important activities like mobility drills and rest.

Tip 1: Prepare your menu a week in advance

By knowing what you will eat for the whole week there is no time wasted on making decisions when it comes to time to cook.  You can plan the shopping list and buy all the food you need, saving on shopping time and avoiding wasting money on items that you think you “might fancy” but eventually don’t eat before they go off.

This technique also helps in sticking to a draconian diet (if it isn’t in the house, you can’t eat it) and with budgeting (the more often you shop in a week, the more likely you are to pick up other items that catch your eye but which you don’t need). 

Tip 2: Prepare vegetables and entire meals in advance

Brian St Pierre often writes about how he spends his lazy Sunday preparing food for the week and even preparing all the vegetables for the whole week on Sunday evening and keeping them ready-chopped in boxes ready to add a handful to whatever he is cooking.

I don’t go this far, however we do have a couple of companionable moments each week when we do food preparation.

The first is on Friday night when we mix up the pre-workout snacks for the week ahead.  We set up a production line in the kitchen with me peeling fruit and Chris chopping it into the saucepan for stewing.

 

On Sunday afternoons 10 tupperware boxes are lined up on the table and 10 identical salads are chopped into them for our week of lunches.  Never again will I try to make work lunches in the morning before work (or in the evening when I’ve got much better things to do).

 

I’ve also seen a fantastic idea for omelette muffins which sorts out breakfast if you are the sort of person who has to leave so early for work that it would be better to eat breakfast on the go but you still want the nutrition of a home-cooked breakfast.

Tip 3: Double up your meals

Along the same lines as the previous point, these days we cook our meals for four people instead of two.  We then have the second half for dinner the next day, reheated in a pan while the ubiquitous broccoli (that we have we almost every meal) is cooked. 

As far as possible we also try to get the second day to match up with a workout day when time is more limited.

This has to be one of the most effective ways we’ve found to save time in the kitchen.

Tip 4: Have standard meals that you cook regularly

We actually eat the same menu from Sunday evening through to Saturday morning every week.  The only meals that aren’t the same every week are the weekend lunches and Saturday dinner.

While I don’t recommend this approach to meals for everyone, since lots of people would get tired of eating the same thing every day, the benefit of having certain meals that you cook frequently is that you can cook them faster without having to think too hard.

Tip 5: Use simple menus

Our weekly meals are as simple as possible to prepare and they actually all have the same “base” as well:  chop onion and pepper, brown in pan, add mince, once mince is browned add tinned tomato and appropriate flavourings/extra ingredients to make it into curry (dessicated coconut and spices), chilli or bolognese (herbs and mushrooms).

The simpler the meals are to prepare, the less time they will take you to make and the more time you will have to spend on other things.

If we have complex recipes and menu ideas that we would like to try out, we save them for a weekend when time is a little more flexible.

Simple measures like this have saved us huge amounts of time without having to compromise on quality in our diet.  What other ideas have you had to save time in the kitchen?

Related posts:

1. Clearing out the kitchen cupboards
2. Lessons learned this week: kitchen experiment accidents
3. Paleo kitchen experiments: tuna coleslaw and other portable meals
4. Paleo kitchen experiments – roast pork and a tomato sauce