#27 LOVE YOUR LUNCH, DIG YOUR DINNER

Even though breakfast is often regarded as the most important meal of the day, for many people lunch and dinner are bigger meals. However, all too often lunch is a sandwich or sushi or a piece of pizza bread from the supermarket – mainly white food with maybe just a smattering of colour. Dinner might be better, with a few more vegetables, but in a lot of homes the main component of an evening meal would be potato, rice or pasta.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with these foods if you’ve got room in your diet for them. If you’ve expended a lot of energy and you’ve already eaten all of the veges and good fats and high-quality protein that your body needs, then eating some carbs is going to be fine. But if you’ve sat on your backside all day and haven’t eaten enough vegetables, etc., then – if you want to stay healthy – white food should take a back seat.

HOW TO HAVE A HEALTHY LUNCH

Lunch is often a problem because people aren’t organised during the week. As a result, they end up buying lunch or taking a couple of slices of bread to work and slapping together a quick sandwich with a bit of ham or cheese. Or they fall back on convenience foods like noodles or packet soups.

So, how do you avoid this? You get organised.

# Plan ahead: spend a half an hour each week planning what you are going to eat that week. For most people it’s the work week that’s tough, so focus on this. You know you’ve got five lunches and five dinners to deal with. Think about what you’re going to have, then make sure you get what you need to make those meals. Use a meal-planning app, stick a plan up on the fridge, or write it on a chalkboard in your kitchen – whatever works for you.

# Prep ahead: With your plan in place, do as much preparation as possible before the chaos of your work week begins. An hour or two on Sunday spent chopping or cooking can make a phenomenal difference to your diet during the week – and to your stress levels. If you’ve got kids, see whether you can make this an activity that everyone can help with – it’s great for kids to be involved and to learn how to cook.

# Make extra: Leftovers make great lunches! Cook a bit more than you need for dinner, portion it into containers and stick it in the fridge. Or cook extra and freeze it, so that you’ve got a quick option when your day or week has started to unravel.

# Mix ’n’ match: If you’ve got a stash of vegetables prepared and stored in the fridge, then one day have them with some tinned fish, and the next day have them with some chicken – or whatever protein source takes your fancy. A lot of people find that swapping out the protein introduces enough variety to keep them happy. Consider all of your options – fish, chicken, leftover meat, beans, tofu, egg, cheese, etc.

BUILD A MEAL

Want to experiment instead of using a recipe? This is pretty easy to do if you’re making a main meal or a lunch, but not so easy if you’re baking – quantities and ratios are really important for baked goods! If you’re going freeform with your cooking, follow these guidelines to help get the best results:

# Pick your protein: Choose a protein base for your meal. Some ideas are red meat, chicken, fish, seafood, tofu, tempeh, beans, nuts, cheese, eggs.

# Add vegetables: Be sure to include ones that grow above the ground, and make sure you have a mix of colours.

# Add texture: If you can get a combination of soft and crunchy in the same mouthful, you’ve got a much more interesting meal. Raw veg, toasted seeds or nuts, a few croutons – all of these add crunch.

# Add flavours: Sometimes a single flavour is OK, but for real interest you’ll usually need layers of flavour. A dressing made with a good oil, an acid (e.g. citrus juice or vinegar), a tiny bit of sweet (honey, maple syrup) and maybe a bit of heat (chilli, mustard) will really make a dish pop – with very little effort.

# Season your meal: Salt and pepper are the secret ingredients in so many professional kitchens. Make sure you use them when you’re cooking – don’t leave it until the food is on your plate!

HOW TO HAVE A HEALTHY DINNER

Being organised is also going to help when it comes to dinner. Instead of getting home and succumbing to the post-work blues by opening a bottle of wine and a packet of chocolate biscuits, or thinking ‘I’m hungry, the kids are hungry, everyone’s hungry – let’s just get takeaways’, make sure that you have a plan so that you know what’s for dinner each night during the week.

As for lunches, if you’ve done some preparation on the weekend, then you can get a meal on the table without too much drama during the week. Make good use of ‘convenience’ foods like frozen vegetables – they can be steamed or microwaved, and are just as nutritious as fresh veg (sometimes even better).

If you have a pressure cooker, use it to produce meals in a fraction of the time that they’d take in the oven or on a stove – with the added benefit that you’ll also use less power. Pressure cookers (in particular one called the Instant Pot) are having a bit of a renaissance at the moment, and there are loads of recipe ideas on the internet. Find ones that appeal to you, and give them a go.

The flip-side to a pressure cooker is a slow-cooker. Perfect for winter meals, the slow-cooker can be loaded up in the morning and left all day, so that when you come home all you have to do is dish up.

LEARN HOW TO COOK!

If you don’t cook already, have a go. You don’t have to make gourmet meals – you just have to make something that is tasty and nutritious. You can start by following recipes. Once you’re confident, you can change things up depending on what you have in the cupboard or fridge.

Some good sites for recipes are:

bbcgoodfood.com– has a huge range of recipes for all types of meals. Create a free account and save recipes that you like. They have an app, too.

101cookbooks.com– a big selection of vegetarian recipes, most of which can be changed up quite easily. Has a big focus on natural, unprocessed foods and is easy to search by ingredient.

ohsheglows.com– a great site if you have difficulties with dairy, gluten or other foods. Contains exclusively vegan recipes.

bestrecipes.com.au– has over 15,000 recipes, mostly submitted by users. Nicely organised into different categories to make finding easy recipes easy!

foodlovers.co.nz– family-oriented recipes with a strong focus on fresh, seasonal food. Also has an active forum where you can ask questions.

PIMP YOUR VEGES

So many people say they don’t eat veges because they’re boring. It’s hard to think how this could be true, given that there’s such a massive range available. However, if you do think that veges are just a bit too dull to eat, here are some simple ways to jazz them up so that you’ll want to eat them at every meal.

# Salt with sass: Instead of using straight table salt, try getting a few different-flavoured salts and sprinkling these on your veges, especially steamed ones. Try to find salts that have got multiple flavours in them – so chilli-lime salt rather than just lemon salt – as these will add more interest. Don’t smother your vegetables with salt, though, as too much salt in your diet increases your risk for high blood pressure. You only need a sprinkle.

# Spice it up: Do something different with leafy veges like silverbeet, spinach, kale and cabbage. Put a splash of oil in a frying pan, then gently fry 1 diced onion (red or white) until soft. Add a clove or two of garlic, finely sliced. And if you’ve got one on hand, add a chilli too (also finely sliced). Cook for a minute, then add some spices – a bit of ginger, some ground turmeric, ground coriander, ground cumin, even just some curry powder if that’s what you’ve got in the cupboard. Make the total amount of spice you add about 2 teaspoons max. Stir the spices through and cook for a minute, then add your leafy veges (which you have washed and cut into strips) and a splash of water. Stir everything through, and cook to your desired level of crispness. Taste to check the seasoning, and add salt if needed.

# Slow-braise your veges: This works well for carrots, celery, cabbage and fennel, and could be adapted for a whole range of veges. Peel your veg, if needed, and cut into bite-sized pieces. Put a knob of butter into a pot that has a well-fitting lid and add a splash of water (about a tablespoon, maybe two). Put the veg in, add salt and pepper (freshly ground tastes so much better), give it a stir, put the lid on and put the pot on the stove on a medium heat. As soon as you hear the water start to bubble and hiss, turn the heat down to the lowest setting and leave for 20–30 minutes. Check it once or twice during the cooking time – give it a stir and add a small splash of water if it looks like it’s going to burn.

# Drizzle them with flavoured oils: This works really well on steamed veges, like broccoli. Buy a small bottle of a nice flavoured oil – lemon-flavoured avocado oil, for example – and put a light drizzle of this over the veges on your plate. You probably won’t even need to add any salt.

# Add crunch: Virtually any vegetable can be pepped up with a crunchy topping sprinkled over the top, but steamed or boiled veges particularly benefit from this. Sprinkle the cooked veg with some dukkah (buy it or make your own – it’s easy and keeps for ages), or some spiced seeds (see the recipe on page 205), or even some garlic-infused crunchy breadcrumbs – blitz a slice or two of stale bread in a food processor (or crumble by hand), heat a mix of butter and olive oil in a frying pan, add a few sliced cloves of garlic, some finely chopped chilli and a couple of anchovies, then toss in the breadcrumbs and cook till they brown up. They’ll go crispy as they cool.