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Prep work for easy, healthy meals

Published:Tuesday | March 7, 2017 | 12:00 AMJody-Anne Lawrence

Many of us eat food for more than just nutrition - for comfort, pleasure, and yes, even for fun. In a time when many of us are trying to live a healthy lifestyle, eating a healthy, well-balanced meal, we often struggle with finding the time to prepare them.

When it comes to having a healthy lifestyle, your diet has to become your personal responsibility. We can never control what people use to prepare our meals, but we can control what we use.

With that being said, it might be hard for us to find time to prepare a fresh meal daily. Sometimes just doing the prep work alone takes an hour, and that is the last thing we want to do after a long day at work. So, here are a few tricks in cutting down your daily prep work time in half so you can have a fresh meal each day.

 

Prep tips

 

 

Seasoning matter

 

Fresh seasoning such as scallion, onion, etc, that helps you to achieve that perfect flavour, can be diced and placed in separate containers or frozen in zip lock bags. You can do this on a Saturday or a day off. When you are ready to prepare your meals, you do not have to worry about prepping - with all the stripping and chopping. This will drastically cut down on your daily preparation time.

 

Meat-it halfway

 

When you are seasoning your meat for Sunday dinner, season all the meat you plan to eat during the week. Pack them for each day - so you can either pop them in the oven or the pot and have a quick meal during the week.

 

Vegetable Plus

 

Prep your vegetables from the weekend as well. So cut your carrots and broccoli so that you will not have to worry about them on preparation day.

 

Star Starch

 

Weigh and prepack your chosen starch as well - from the quinoa to the brown rice. Sweet potatoes and some ground provision will have to be prepped on the day, but prep as much as you can before you need them.