All of you amazing moms out there cook a lot, many times a day. In fact, I bet you, like I, spend a lot more time in the kitchen than you would like. One of my favorite kitchen hacks is to maximize my time by using my chopping efforts in more than one way. Lots of veggies is a very good thing! Variety is so important to feed the health of our microbiome. You not only want a diversity of nutrients entering our bodies but also toxins. In order to get that variety, you have to meal prep.
The other major benefit to using the same veggies many times in different ways is your kids get repeated exposure to the same thing! More exposure means they are more likely to eat it! :)!!
I prepared two main dishes, which served four days of lunch and two days of dinner with left overs. I also made three days of side salads with the same single chopping effort!
The girls were “assisting” me in the kitchen during a huge time crunch, so I did not have a chance to take a pretty before veggie picture.
I used the following veggies:
Orange and red bell pepper Red onion Red russian kale Purple carrot Parsnip Turnip Golden beet Celery Gala apple Lots of garlic (trying to stay away from the flu!!) Fresh rosemary Fresh sage
Here is what I did:
I minced the garlic and herbs. I diced everything else but the kale which I chopped. I divided all between three bowls. Two of the three bowls were sautéed in coconut oil until they were just soft. The third bowl I reserved raw and added extra virgin olive oil and vinegar to marinate the veggies (cold cook them) for side salads.
Recipe #1–Ground Turkey Burgers: with lots of herbs and veggies!
Here I used one of the bowls of veggies and added ground turkey. Pack in as many veggies as possible! There should be so many veggies that the burgers are almost falling apart. Bake all in the oven on a parchment lined baking sheet at 350F for 40 minutes.
Here is Cameron’s dinner plate with his ground turkey burger with raw cheddar cheese, broccoli, orange sweet potato, organic ketchup with a little homemade sauerkraut juice mixed in and the raw side salad boosted with avocado.
Recipe #2–Tuna Salad with lots of veggies and herbs
Use your second bowl of cooked veggies and add wild caught canned tuna, salmon and sardines. Mix in some apple cider vinegar and you have lunch!!
Here you see Maddy’s lunch plate with the tuna salad at the top, white sweet potato, homemade dehydrated plantain chips, a scoop of the raw side salad which I stretched by adding avocado and her favorite black olives!
Side Dishes
The raw side salad served us for three days of side salads because I stretched them by adding avocado (see above) and purple sweet potato (see below). Less work for me and more nutrition for the family = awesome!!
Here is Annabelle’s lunch plate with a really unique find of pastured horseradish roast beef, raw milk sharp cheddar cheese, garlic and tarragon plantains fried in coconut oil, steamed green peas, purple sauerkraut and the raw side salad with purple sweet potato.
There you have it! Chop it once and use it lots of times! It takes that 20 minutes of chopping and spreads it out to many hours saved. I hope you enjoy a bit of inspiration from this post!
