One of my biggest hurdles in eating healthy is I feel that I run out of recipes I can make on a regular basis. I feel as though I eat the same few healthy things over and over and my taste buds get tired so I find myself returning to not-so-healthy options.
Lately I have been leaning on a few great websites to help me cure my taste bud exhaustion by giving me good, easy recipes, with ingredients I already have that are also good for me. Some let you choose by ingredients, some give you creative way to prepare your regular shopping items in not such a ‘regular’ way and others are just plain fun to try out.
Real Simple has a great menu suggestion tool that lets you choose by ingredient, convenience, course or keyword. All the recipes we have used have been great. There is no nutritional information on the results but keeping with the Real Simple theme – all the recipes highlight how delicious food can be with a clean recipe that brings out the flavor of your food, instead of masking it. They even have an advanced search so you can get more specific about what you are looking for.
If you want to get more complex and if you watch too much Top Chef, like me, you might want to look at the Food Network’s Healthy Eating Section. They don’t list nutritional information either, but making any of these recipes makes me feel like an expert chef AND like I am eating well. Like who ever thought to make a Lobster Cobb Salad Roll – delish! I will say since these recipes are a little more complex, I would be prepared to increase your food shopping budget a bit to make sure you have all the required ingredients, but hopefully you will be glad you did.
Eating Well has a nice healthy cooking section too, and I especially like how they have seasonal tips. Right now there are some quick and easy summer recipes, suggestions for picnic foods and more. This site is like a blend of recipe suggestions and a blog, which is nice. The blog aspect is helpful for learning more about the recipes and for tips on cooking better. They also have some nutritional information with their recipes.
I also like using sites like Recipe Key that help you find new recipes for ingredients you may already have or are comfortable cooking with. With Recipe Key you drag and drop the things you have in your pantry, if it is a primary or secondary ingredient, add any food allergies, what meal you are preparing and it gives you results of recipes you can try. You can also choose the difficulty of the recipe, prep time and cooking method. Not all of them are the healthiest of options but many of the recipes have nutritional information. If you start with healthy ingredients in your online pantry, you get some fresh new ideas on cooking healthy food.
I hope some of these sites help you beat your recipe boredom! I have found some great new recipes, printed them out and put them in a binder to make again later. I also have added some new foods that I had never tried cooking before and they were great. I always make sure to have a backup plan just in case a new recipe doesn’t work out, but I haven’t had to use the backup plan yet. Happy cooking new recipes!
Be sure to check out Expert Chef Erin Dow’s Guiding Stars recipes. These recipes are super delish and the nutritional information is included with each dish! You can find even more Guiding Stars recipes here.
Amanda O’Brien is originally from Peaks Island, Maine and currently works at Hall Web Services managing their inbound marketing team. She is a self proclaimed workaholic who tries to maintain a busy lifestyle. She is an amateur yogi and runner. Amanda contributes regularly to the Guiding Stars Blog.