12 Days of Resolutions. 12 resolutions that will help steer you towards a healthier lifestyle, whether you've got weight you'd like to lose or not. 12 resolutions that are each in and of themselves extremely straight forward and doable. Some might involve doing, others simply thinking, and if any of them don't seem useful to you, skip on to the next.Day 3: Lose a Box!
When my wife and I first met, her freezer was full of boxes. There were chicken fingers, burritos, pierogies, and fish sticks.
Now I can't brag too much. While I wasn't a box sort of bachelor, my staples were home made burgers, steaks, pizzas and chicken wings.
Over time our dietary worlds have changed - in part because of the career path I found myself upon, in part because of simply getting older/wiser, and in part because we had children.
Nowadays there are no boxes in our freezer. In fact it's an extremely rare meal that's not home made, from scratch.
Of course we didn't get to where we are now overnight. Instead we slowly lost boxes.
I think the pierogies might have been the first to go, followed by the fish sticks. A few years later the chicken fingers were gone and finally the burritos.
You don't need to get where you're going overnight. In fact that's a great way to not get there. Flying leaps land you on your face.
Instead start with a small and very doable step. Why not take a boxed food inventory of your freezer and resolve to permanently lose the most nutritionally offensive box?
In it's place?
Learn a new home made, from scratch, produce rich meal.
Once one box is successfully done and gone, consider when you might want to tackle the next.
In terms of what's replaced our boxes, here's one we love. It's stupidly healthy, ridiculously inexpensive, strangely coloured, but wonderfully delicious and extremely hearty:
Lose a Box, Stupid Easy, Beet Curry (Serves 4)
1 large beet
1 can coconut milk
1 can chickpeas (rinsed)
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
1/4 to 1/2 vegetable bouillon cube (depending how salt sensitive you are)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons curry powder
3 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 cup Brown rice or quinoa
1. Cook chickpeas until tender
2. Cook brown rice or quinoa on side to serve over
3. Peel and dice beet root and cook in simmering water until tender
4. Chop up beet leaves
5. Saute garlic and onion with some sesame oil for extra flavour
6. Add coconut milk, diced beet root, chickpeas, tomato paste, tiny bit of stock cube and curry powder and bring to boil and when boiling add in chopped beet leaves (or cooking greens). Boil for 5 more minutes
7. Sprinkle with fresh coriander and serve over brown rice or quinoa
Per serving 410 calories, 12g protein, 9g fibre, 427mg sodium
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I am really enjoying this series!! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDawn
PS I was wondering the evolution of us getting rid of the boxes too - I do remember that one of my meals repertoire, after we were married, was a boxed macaroni meal! EEK! It's been 24 years...
I really liked that you stressed attacking the most nutritiously terrible box first. Because there definitely is some variation.
ReplyDeleteAt one point, my freezer was like the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad ones would include "mini sausage bites," marinated deepfried chicken from M&M meats, cheese pastries, mozzasticks, "pizza bites," fish sticks and tons of fries (not in a box, but still).
I still have boxes. The most common element in my freezer is skinless chicken breast, at just 120cal a breast. I've tried "fresh" chicken and it spoils too quick in my fridge, and cooks terribly once frozen. I consider my chicken to be in the "good" category.
The "in-betweens" that I'm still stocking are Panebello veggie goat cheese pizza. It's 1054cal and an easy supper for two. It's most nutritious than plan cheese mini-pizzas from Pilsbury, and way healthier than restaurant pizza. I consider it to be an ok alternative. And then there's lots of frozen bags of vegetables for stirfrys (and to go with my chicken), and boxes of frozen veggie samosas (just a slight step up from the mini-sausages, I know.)
I'm loving this series! These tips are practical and helpful for me. I'm getting married in January, and my fiance grew up in a healthier-eating household than I did (in part because his mother did not work and spent hours in the kitchen crafting wonderful meals), so I'm looking for concrete things we can do as we start to set our /own/ eating habits.
ReplyDeleteDe-boxing sounds like a great start! The only 'box' we've accumulated so far is buitoni pasta.
We save pierogies for special occassions AND WE MAKE THEM BY HAND. We also make our own chicken fingers and fish sticks from real chicken breast and fresh fish, breaded with panko, and BAKED. It takes all of a couple of minutes to do this, and they taste much better than the salty boxed stuff. Even our pizza is mostly homemade so we can control fat and salt. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the flashback. When I was at university and had a $20 a week food budget, I lived on Mrs. T's Pierogies, frozen bean burritos, pasta, large cans of tomatoes, onions and plain yogurt. The plain yogurt went onto the pierogies and burritos. The tomatoes and onions became pasta sauce and (with hot sauce added) salsa.
ReplyDeleteI haven't eaten that frozen stuff in years. Now that I can afford it, I cook almost everything from scratch. However, it's actually not a bad option for people who are really poor. If you look at the nutritional information on that some of it, it's not too bad.