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Eating Healthy At Dinner In Under 30 Minutes

Who has time to make a healthy dinner after a long day at work? This is the main reason most people opt to grab a fast meal at a fast food restaurant on the way home from work. Fast food is easy, no preparation and no work. The problem is that most fast food meals are unhealthy for your body to consume on a regular basis. Do you think that people would eat healthier at dinnertime if they could have dinner prepared and ready to eat in under 30 minutes?

Getting a healthy dinner ready and on the table in under 30 minutes may not seem like a possible feat to most individuals but it can be done and without breaking too much of a sweat. How, you ask? In order to make a healthy dinner in under 30 minutes you must be willing to do a little bit of planning and organizing. There are a few things that you can do to achieve this healthy meal in less than 30 minutes and here are some tips on doing just that.

First it takes a little planning and making out of a shopping list. Take the list to the store with you and use it, but be flexible because you never know what the produce will look like, or when a totally delectable food item calls out to you. Try new recipes and expand your ability to add new colors and textures to your meals, which will tempt your family to eat more healthy foods.

Another way to trim time is to have your recipes organized so that you know where they are when you need them. Pull out the ones where the prep time is low (under 30 minutes).

If your recipes are in various cookbooks, use tabs or stickies to find them easily. If you use recipe cards have them in categories or arranged by alphabetically so that you can find them (whichever is better for you).

If you clip magazine recipes, tape them to construction paper and organize them to category so that you can make them into a sort of cookbook. Put them into a notebook or binder. You can also make up a recipe file with folders and tabs to through recipe cards into or clippings from magazines.

For those of you who are Internet users, have a favorites folder marked "Recipes", for all your recipes and have a folder for each food group or category.

Now that you have your recipes organized move on to planning your menus.

Go through your favorite cookbook, or recipe file (listed above) and select some dishes that you want to include in your weekly menus. Make sure you chose a variety of colors and textures. Pick side dishes, main courses, fruits, salads, breads or rolls. Don't forget cheese to go with your fruit.

Use these menus to write up your shopping list. Mark down the page # of the recipe next to the meal so that you can easily refer to it when needed.

If you know the store well you can make out your shopping list based on how you walk the aisles. Once you have a list that works well, photocopy it and use it as a master (make several copies and have these on hand).

Use a notebook for the shopping list and use the same notebook each week. You will have a handy record of your menus and your shopping list.

Prepare foods ahead of time and store them safely according to food guidelines until needed. You can chop enough carrots for all meals that week at one time, same with potatoes. Double recipes and make two dinners at once, freezing one for another fast meal later in the week.