Welcome back to Words to the Why is our podcast to help you save money
when you shop at Wise Markets. Are find some wise ways to keep your
family healthy, some fun ways to keep them entertained with your meals or in
this situation today, we want to save you some time when it comes to
that time in the kitchen, because that time is so valuable. My name
is Bob Howard, joined today by Melissa Logan, registered dietitian with Wise Markets.
It is it seems like we would say this every single year. We
have we have less time, we have no free time. Families have us
doing so much every day we have an event to go to. Any tips
that we can offer to save time for families, especially to eat healthy in
the kitchen, Melissa, are going to be so important. Absolutely, that's
That's one of the things I get from patients the most is that they want
to eat healthy, but they just don't feel like they have the time to
cook or put together these healthy meals. So yeah, I definitely have a
few tips for us today. My first one, and this is what I
personally find the most helpful, is frozen veggies and canned veggies. And you
definitely, you know, if you prefer fresh veggies and that kind of thing,
you know. In the in the produce section, they have those convenience
items where they're pre chopped fruits, pre chopped veggies ready to go for you.
But those can be quite expensive. So if you're somebody on a budget,
really take a look at frozen veggies and canned veggies. The prep is
done for you, right, so all the all the parts that you don't
want to eat aren't there. But a fraction of the costs is those those
prepped ones for you in the produce section. The only thing I would say
is like to watch the sodium. So for canned veggies, look for no
salt added. And then for your frozen veggies, the ones with like your
sauces, like a Tarioke blend that comes with all that that might be high
in sodium. But they have veggies there particularly like a Wise quality brand is
just the frozen veggies. You won't find much of any sodium on that nutrition
label. So that's a good place to start. I really like talking about
the frozen vegetables. If you go back in our previous episodes of the Word
of Words of the Wise, we celebrated National Frozen foods today and talked about
how far frozen food has come. And one of the pieces I think we
have to always highlight when it comes to frozen food is that flash freezing process
because that allows those nutrients to stay there is fresh best always. We love
fresh food, but frozen means it was frozen fresh, and I think that
that should help you rest easy knowing that if it's look, if it's chopped
up and frozen fresh, this is still fresh veggies, fresh fruit, fresh
food that's available when you're ready for it. Yeah, and you know,
really what we're looking at when we want to eat fruits and vegetables. And
I think the reason why people do think that they have to eat fresh veggies
is because those have the most nutrients. But really, frozen veggies because they're
flash frozen, Like you said, all those nutrients are just locked right in.
Canned veggies might have like a tiny discrepancy of nutritional value difference, but
it really is so negligible when it comes to your day to day. So
don't put any pressure on yourself to everybody you know that you have to eat
fresh produce. It really it takes so much time to prep them all.
If you can kind of try to define ways to work in those frozen or
canned it's I think it'll save you a good chunk of time for sure.
And I'll tell you, for a lot of people, the it's either you
know, fresh, frozen or fast food. So I mean, even if
you're talking about that negligible difference going to a canned vegetable, I mean,
the reality is with as fast as we're living our lives, there may be
no vegetable. So a canned vegetable is a better option than no vegetable.
Just like a meal that we're putting together here is going to be better than
a fast food meal. So so we're while we're talking about well, you
might sacrifice a little bit, I mean no, we're just we're still very
much in the positive calm when it comes to nutrients and eating healthier. Absolutely,
yeah, that is that is a wonderful point. Certainly it's better to
get some veggies than veggies, right, So let's talk talking about meal prep.
This is where I was on such a good meal prep kick for a
while. I mean I would I would do I would buy like the family
sized chicken breasts and I would cook them all up and cut them all up
and do with the food prep containers for myself. And I always thought,
man, I'm doing great, and then I kind of fell off. This
is an easy way if you put the time in your schedule to really get
a hold of eating healthy and doing it in one shot. Definitely. So
meal planning might seem like it takes a big chunk of time in the foreground
right when you're prepping, it seems like it takes a lot of a long
time, but it really is going to save you a lot of time throughout
the week as well. It's just stress, like that mental load of trying
to figure out dinner every night. Plus it sets you up for success.
Right, how many times are you driving home from work or whatever you have
going on in your life and you're just too tired to cook or too busy,
And so that's you know, when you end up through the drive through,
which is fine ones everyone every once in a while. But if you
can set yourself up for success by prepping, that's going to be a great
thing. And you know, meal prepping looks different to a lot of people.
Some people like to cook a whole batch or two batches of a meal
and put it in those little meal prep containers and like have it stacked in
their fridge. That's one of the biggest complaints of meal prep that I hear.
They don't want to eat the same thing every day for the entire week.
But that doesn't have to be the only way that meal prep looks.
Like, so you can just prep ingredients, like if you buy a bunch
of produce, chop it up, put it in containers so that it's ready
to go, and at least you can eliminate like the prep and pulling out
the cunning board and the knife during your week that kind of thing. But
we have a we have a lot of meal prepping, meal prepping tips and
other kind of meals you can look at as well. Yeah, so I
mean, if you think about the investment of time, yes, it's all
one moment, but man, for if you do it one day for six
more days, there's no prep and I think about you talk about you've made
fast food in reality, because I will say when I did do the male
meal prepping once day two came and I'm like, go to the fridge,
I grab my meal done, Like wow, It's like so it was like
this is great because nothing is more satisfying than eating immediately. So to have
that meal prepp done right and it didn't take you much. You did the
same thing, or you did it once and you could still be creative.
In that moment, we mentioned about one of the innovations being fast food,
but I think we got to look around the kitchen a little bit. We
are multiple generations of people with microwaves, and now we're also the air fryer
and the insta pot, you know, we and a lot of times these
are gifts given to us that you know, maybe we use with a relative
infrequency, or like a crock pot, maybe we lean on all the time.
There are great recipes to use these really convenient tools that many of us
have in our kitchen and may not activate as often as we really could.
Yeah, man, dude, I love a crock pot. That is my
favorite thing in the world, especially we're coming up on fall season. But
yeah, and you know what, yeah, those those those fancy appliances.
Certainly you can do something. But man, just the good old oven.
If you can find a good sheet pan meal, or even just one pot
one pan meal for your stove, or even no cook meals, you know,
the microwave might come in handy, but you might not need a heat
component at all. That is something to consider when you're planning what you're going
to eat for the week, So pick your recipes wisely. Something might look
delicious and healthy, but if you're going to be dirtying every pot and pan
and just kind of getting your like a tornado went through your kitchen, it's
really not going to be worth worth it for you. So check check for
those for sure. That's that's very fair too. And my wife loves to
cook, but she loves to cook for fifty and she struggles to cook for
five. So it's usually more food than we could eat in one sitting.
That is not a bad thing as long as you take the right precautions right,
right, right, And so that's a great point. Leftovers right kind
of if you just leftovers in a way is meal prepping. I actually I
just made in one of our classes the other day. I made these taco
zucchini boats. Delicious. It was like keenwa a bunch of chopped vegge.
I also used like the microwave keena that come in those little bowls. They're
like two dollars, very affordable, done in a minute, you don't have
to worry about like boiling keenuan getting the water ratio right. But yeah,
so the diced veggies in there, and I only made half the recipe as
far as zucchini, so I had extra filling leftover. So the next day,
maybe I'm not feeling like eating the same exact meal. I don't want
the zucchini boats, but I have that extra keenuan veggie filling with that like
taco flavoring already, right, So I just put it on some lettuce,
made myself a little tuco salad, and you can, you know, get
creative with repurposing those leftovers. Yeah, it's quick creativity because you're talking about
add one little thing in there, add a little flavoring, you know,
throw it into a bag of salad, so to speak, or a little
bit something you have already handy, and you can use that without it going
to waste, which go back into our previous episodes A word to words of
the Wise. We've talked about waste and how what Wise Markets does to fight
wasteed and its stores and of course for our family, some great tips for
us to do that too. But those are great tips on simple little things
to do every day, and they're probably if you're not doing them now,
they're probably just a you know, a little inch to the left or right
from what you're really doing every single day. You probably do the same thing
with leftovers. You probably don't throw them out. The key is to have
kind of a game plan with them, and you know, maybe you do
the crock pot and for like one thing, you're like, wow, I
really love a taste. Try for three more things. So there's a lot
of ways that we can get into the kitchen and we can save some time.
But I think, you know, we need to get into the meal
prep part because I think this is still the challenge. You'd mentioned that I
don't want to eat the same thing every single day, and that might be
the mentality that holds people back from meal prep. What are some meal prep
tips you have? Yes, definitely. So meal prepping doesn't even have to
be like, oh, I'm going to cook Sunday for this week, and
then next Sunday I'm going to cook for that week. You can really capitalize
on your time and really meal prep in the future. So, for example,
one of the things that I like to do is to just double a
recipe, so say you're making enchilada's for dinner one night, you know you're
gonna roll up those tortillas laid all out in a pan. Wonderful, tasty
dinner that night. Do the exact same thing, Philip, a second pan.
You know, you can buy those little disposable foil ones and put that
in your freezer with some foil over top. You can double the foil so
you know you don't get freezer burn or anything. Everybody has their own little
trick for that. But then that'll be good at least two months. You
know, I eat things way longer in the freezer, but at least two
months. So down the road, if you're needing a meal on a week
night, in a pinch or anything like that, maybe it is the next
week that you end up eating it. Whenever your family's ready for it,
just pop it in the oven and it's good to go. Yeah, that's
why I met you two about my wife cooks for fifty people better than cooks
for five. I mean, instead of splitting it in the leftover side and
laid it all on the table, like look at it right there, and
like, okay, here's my half, I'm gonna plate for five people.
Our family, and I'm gonna pan the rest and goes right into the freezer
and it's done. It actually really helps with the clean up in that moment
too, because you've already separated the food and there's not going to be anything
on that leftover side to really worry about what all of a sudden done.
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I talked about how the zucchini boats I
had left over filling, but I kind of just as intentionally doubled the recipe.
So when I'm pouring out two cups of Queenwa, you know, it
takes the same amount of time pretty much virtually to pour out four cups of
Quenwa versus on a separate day, like pulling out the measuring cups, pulling
out the queen wa, pulling out the bowl, and like making the recipe
again. Like you really are saving time that way. So yeah, good,
I love it. I love it. We mentioned you're the freezer.
Is is the greatest weapon I think really we have in winning this this meal
prep war. And we take it for granted because we haven't been not just
flash freezing, but even refrigeration in general in general. I mean again,
two maybe three generations like this is still new when you're in the long scheme
of things. So you have a major advantage just having that free and it's
probably the number one full of stuff in there. If you plan better,
you can probably use it. But number two, there's usually a lot of
freezer space in general to work with when you plan it out. Yes,
certainly you can. You can organize your freezer. Mind the organized I mean,
it's it's like the it's the thought. It's like when you think about
but I can probably get rid of a bunch of stuff in there. And
if you go through it, like you could say, wow, I can
organize. I know I have these meals. The freezer's right there. It's
so easy to use, so easy, and you know what I like,
I certainly am somebody who's prone to forgetting about things in my freezer. So
if you're also one of those people, just keep a little list and like
smack it on the side of your fridge or the front of your fridge.
I'm like, okay, I'm meal prepped, these enchiladas. They're in there,
and so you know you have it to refer to if it ends up
in the way back. But one of the other freezer tools that I like
to use, and this kind of goes hand in hand with the crock pots
as well, but freezer bag meals. So we've been doing quite a few
of these. I do a meal prep class for one of our online classes,
and so basically these freezer bag meals you just need like a gown zip
block and you can do any kind of cuisine. We've done butter chicken,
or zip block of freezer bag meals, stir fry ones. We did a
lentil curry pineapple chicken. We've done so many. So basically, just prep
everything right. So I would like slice up my raw chicken. Typically the
chicken breasts just stay whole in these meals anyway. But you throw that in,
you measure out your sauce, you chop your veggies, and you put
it up in this nice little package, lay it flat in your freezer,
and it's good to go. So it's not like your I think people are
a little more open to this because it's not like you're cooking a meal,
freezing this cooked food and then just defrosting and the microwave cooked food. It's
like it's raw food. You're still going to cook it and eat a nice,
fresh cooked meal, but the prep and the time is way behind you.
And again at least two months in the freezer there, but I eat
way past that for sure. I feel like things actually last forever in the
freezer. Yeah, I mean, there's always that recommended amount of time.
And again we encourage you to use your judgment more than anything else when you
inspect, especially freeze or burn or you know it's gonna it needs to be
a little more than just taste right for you too. We need to be
healthy for you. You mentioned about forgetting, and I'm a forgetful guy.
But your device is your smart speakers, your virtual assistance. Look setting an
appointment. You mentioned even about putting those post it notes on the side of
the fridge. It's nothing to ask your smart speaker to remind me on Tuesday
to unfreeze this, and people can act on that on that virtual calendar.
Like there's there's a lot of ways you could plan without lifting a finger into
it fast. Yeah, absolutely, And you know for frozen meals, you
know, if you freeze something the day you cook it, then when you
defrosted, it's good for at least four days or so after that. Right,
However, you would typically keep it in your fridge, so you know,
even if you think you will forget, just put it in. Like
if you think you're gonna eat those chelads that you froze on Thursday or Friday
and you're thinking about it Monday, go ahead and take it out Monday,
stick it in the fridge Monday, and it'll be defrosted whenever you go to
put it in the in the oven, or just put a straight in the
oven from the freezer either way. But yeah, send an appointment, certainly.
It's you know, we make appointments for so many things, and I
hear this recommendation for a lot of things like exercise in particular. You know,
like you don't really miss appointments. If it's an important meeting for work
or doctor's appointment, you don't just say like not right now. So do
that for yourself as well. Do that with meal prep, set an hour,
two hours, whatever it is, and just really do it. We
even do so. I mentioned the meal prep classes we usually do like Sundays
at ten am or sometimes Monday evenings. But I think the best thing for
people and what they like about it is that it's like a set time.
They know at ten am Sunday, we're making two recipes. And then it's
also a little bit of a bonus because they don't have to plan the meals.
You know, we send the recipes, we send the ingredient list.
So even if you want to just sign up for if you can't make that
time, just sign up for the classes. At least you'll get some recipe
ideas and a shopping list and if we can help you save time that way
too, I'm all for it. I mean, and the Wise Dietitian team,
I mean, when you do speak with them, and this is something
we'll touch out at the end of the episode two, I mean, they
really are there to help. They're not there to say, well, here,
here's the three flavors of rice cakes we have to offer. This goes
so much more into eating healthy and eating delicious and enjoying what you eat too,
So I really encourage you to take advantage of that availability. This is
what the team is there for. And again, when you schedule that time
out for food prep, you're really scheduling it out for yourself and for your
family. It's one of those things if you do first in your life,
your family and you are going to eat well. For the rest of the
week. And that's a big, big advantage because otherwise, again it's it's
fast food is your option. You're going to eat something, so having that
available is great. You had we talked about these, these sheep pan meals
and even no cook meals. I love the thought processes of even the no
cook because you know you don't have to worry about minding something or watching something.
You know, is it going to boil over, is it gonna burn?
I mean having these types of meals to be able to easily throw together.
They're great as options to come up with something fresh and fast. Definitely.
Typically no cooked meals are like colder and temperature like. They're not really
heat. They don't need heat. So as far as taking it out of
your fridge when you actually go to eat it, a lot of times they
were there. It's a quick, quick option. So we do have two
no cooke recipes to recommend today. They're actually in the current edition of our
Healthy Bites magazine. I'll talk about that later, but one of them is
peanut chicken spring rolls. So this is using either leftover chicken that you already
have, so maybe you have frozen chicken that you made a while ago,
you can take that out to frost it. Or if you don't have already
cooked chicken, you can buy chicken pre cooked right like a rotisserie chicken.
You could even use can chicken for this recipe, just be mindful of the
sodium. And then this recipe has a bunch of different like chopped and shredded
veggies, So you can either buy a whole carrot and chop it up yourself
if you want to, or just buy the bag of carrots that you would
like put on a salad and have that and use that shredded red cabbage.
And then all you're really doing is mixing together the chicken and those veggies.
And then there's a quick sauce you whip up. It's like peanut butter soy
sauce, and maybe some ginger. You could swap out ginger powder if you
don't want to mince up fresh ginger. You know, quick quick options there,
and then you roll it in spring wrappers. Then it's like this nice
Asian treat and who doesn't o the meal where you get to dip something.
I love things that common wrappers like that. Yeah, that sounds delicious.
Yeah, And then this might be a little common, like a tuna salad
lettuce rap. So this then what's for lunch? I mean this is the
tuna is almost always makes a great lunch for everybody. And you know with
the tuna cans or tuna pouches, I mean something I think we almost always
have hanging around the house. I know we do. Yeah, no,
definitely, and you know what you're getting those nice Omega threes if you can
switch in some seafood, so good good things there. But you know,
certainly this particular recipes is lettuce wraps. But if your family prefers to eat
tuna salad as a sandwich, to certainly go for it. I think it's
nice to just have some in the fridge. My favorite thing to do with
tuna salad is like an aposta salad. I make this quite frequently. I
cannot recommend whole wheat pennay enough. I think if you just cook it for
like ten minutes, I really don't think it's that big of a difference from
white pasta, especially with so many other things going on with it in a
tuna salad. So give it a try. It's pretty much the same price,
if not the exact same price as white pasta, but you're getting some
extra protein and fiber in there as well. And then also if I'm really
in a pinch, I will either pick up like a pre made tuna salad
in the Delhi section you can get like the Wines to Go tuna salad or
star Kist has those tuna creations under two dollars a bag. If you're making
like a whole pound aposta, you might need a few bags. But that
tuna salad is pretty good and you just dump it right in and mix it
together, really good flavor and yeah, not going to break the bank,
not going to really suck up a lot of your free time, and it's
pretty flavor filled as well. I love, you know, bring in that
whole week pasta into this whole conversation as well, because one of my favorite
things, even for the color difference, I like the way it looks laying
out there on the plate as well. If you check out Healthy Bites magazine,
we have a two prep now, Eat later recipes in our current edition
which both sound amazing. Yeah, so one summer garden chicken skillet. The
other one is a freezer friendly sweet and spicy meatball that one's kind of one
of those like freezer bag meals I was talking about. You make it,
freeze it, and then you can defrost it in the crock pot for a
few hours if you want to, or even just on the stove or the
microwave. That one is really good. It's pretty tasty. And just make
some quick rice, real quick before. I have some fresh rice with it.
But then also I'll give you a little sneak peek for September coming up,
we have a few sheep pan meals. So one is everything salmon,
so I feel like everything bagel seasoning is quite popular right now, and so
we slept on some salmon. And then we have lemon parmesan chicken with brockle
tomatoes and onions. Those are kind of like tenders, so your kids probably
will really like that one. And then the other one is a vegetarian recipes
orange ginger tofu with veggies. So in general, what I like about these
three sheep pan meals is that a they're easy, right, they're super quick.
They only use one sheep pan. It all goes in the oven at
the same time for the same amount of time. But then you're getting a
nice variety of protein as well, and that's one of the things we like
to recommend, like one of our general nutrition tips, because all different kinds
of protein have different nutrients to offer us. And so with just these three
sheep pan meals, you're getting a seafood right for those Omega three, some
vitamin D chicken, a nice lean protein, low and saturated fat, and
then tofu pretty much no saturated fat, more of a plant based option,
but it's still good protein. Yeah. Wis Markets dot Com slash Healthy Bites.
You can actually take a look at those recipes, the ones now,
the ones that will be coming out in September. I love varying things because
that was one of the big objections at the front where we started talking about
this. When I do meal prep, I'm gonna be stuck eating the same
thing over and over again, and a lot of the same ingredients can be
used in myriad ways. Look it at kind of what we just went through
throughout our suggestions during this episode as well. So it's something that you take
the time for yourself and your family first, and you're gonna eat great all
throughout the week. Definitely, And I mentioned tom meal prep can look like
just chopping your veggies. It doesn't have to be a full meal. So
let's just take red bell pepper for example. If you chop up your red
bell pepper on Sunday before the week and that's ready to go along with some
other veggies, how many different things can you do with that bell pepper.
You can put it an omelet, you can make tacos, you can make
kcdias, you can make stir fry if you want an Asian type of flavor
profile. Lots of different things you can do with that. But that prep
time is done. All you gotta do is whip it up and eat it.
Yeah, so let's let's recap all this. First of all, I
want to remind you Healthy Bites magazine, Wise markets dot com slash Healthy Bites.
Of course, you could take a look at wise markets dot com slash
recipes. You can look at those sheet pan recipes or even set the filter
to no cook. I mean really, it's not a deep dive to go
in there and if I say, oh wow, this is great to try.
But the tips we really came out with this, and right at the
jump, I'm a frozen veggiean frozen food guy. I love having that available
on demand. But but give those cans, give those frozen veggies to try
to cut down your prep time. You don't need to use all these appliances.
Schedule which we kind of came to the top of this to use that
schedule to your advantage and talk to the Wise Markets dietitian team. Not just
ideas on how to eat healthier, would eat more delicious. There's so many
places you can get great ideas from wise And I mean you see these recipes,
They're not difficult from the Wise Markets perspective. I mean these are really
easy for you to pull off. Even if you would label yourself a beginner
chef with minimal time, I think you can marry those two things together and
eat deliciously. Yeah, and even you know, if you are beginner,
you're welcome to take our classes. They're totally free. You can check those
out and register for them at Wise markets dot com slash nutrition. That's also
a big component of time, right. The more comfortable you are in the
kitchen, the more skilled you are, the quicker things are going to go.
So if you can learn some new tips, maybe some new hacks in
our classes, that would definitely benefit you. And then you know, I
completely understand that it can be a challenge to plan meals, come up with
recipes, and really balance eating nutritiously with your busy lives. So we're here
to help with that. You know, we offer free nutrition counseling as well.
So again that's all at wise markets dot com slash nutrition. We love
to help. We're here to help and lots of great services there. And
I gotta point out too, not the only people that would be seeking help,
Like, there's a lot of people that do turn to the Wise Markets
dietitian team and they've heard it all and they want to help. So so
many healthy ways to eat and eat well with a limited amount of time because
we try to save you some time in the kitchen. Well, listen,
Logan, thanks so much for spending time with us today. I'm Word of
the Wise. Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks for listening. Don't
forget to subscribes you don't miss any episodes, and make sure head back into
our archive check out previous episodes. Thanks again for listening to Words of the Wise.