Nutritious choices made simple®
To my mind, the prime directive of nextover cooking is this: save yourself time and hassle in the kitchen. To accomplish this, you’re probably going to need to cook something in enough bulk to last you family for three meals. The second directive is: don’t be bored at dinnertime. To meet that goal, you need to choose an ingredient that plays well with others, or better yet, can be a master of disguise.
We love meal prepping in my house. By “we,” I mean “I,” and by “love,” I mean “appreciate the time savings.” The problem with meal prepping is the leftovers. Big batch meals are easy to make, but with just two adults and a toddler in the house? Even the best lentil soup in the world gets a bit tired after three nights straight. The happy medium, I find, is nextovers.
Food allergies are tough enough if you have one. If you have more than one, finding safe food in public can be a challenge. If you’re prepping a snack that needs to be safe for a diverse group, making safe choices for everyone is that much harder.
Snacks are often helping us keep up our energy between meals as we’re going about busy lives. This means that we often need snacks that are safe left sitting in a hot car, or which at least don’t require refrigeration. This list of recipes brings you a range of homemade, shelf-stable snack options that have some dietary fiber, protein, and fat to help stave off hunger…no fridge required.
We love snacking here at Guiding Stars. Food fuels our bodies and gives us energy to do our best. Whether you need a bridge between meals or a mini-meal approach to eating, snacks rock. The trick is to choose foods that will give you energy, keep you fill, and support your overall nutrition goals for the day. Here are some of the healthful snack advice highlights from our experts: dietitians Allison Stowell and Kitty Broihier.
This month, we’ll be exploring ideas for truly great snacks. A snack, as our dietitian Allison Stowell often tells us, should be a purposeful bridge between meals. Snacks can be tricky because they’re rarely eaten sitting down at a table with ample time to plan them out. They’re more often consumed quickly in between activities. And while many of us are spending the lion’s share of our time at home right now, snacks may still be needed under more challenging conditions for eating nutritiously.
Whether you’re just learning to cook or are looking to expand your skills into a specific area, we’d like to help. Our cooking advice tends to focus on preparing delicious food that’s packed with nutrition. We showcase recipes that earn Guiding Stars. This means that they have more of the nutrients we should each more of and fewer of the food qualities we should limit.
Bulk acquisition of produce is one of the ways we can save money while eating fresh food. We’ve discussed nutrition-oriented ways of preserving produce and tricks for experimenting with a vegetable to keep it from getting boring. Sometimes, of course, you just need to get it out of your house. Not many people appreciate it when we play “ding-dong, ditch” with a paper bag of zucchini. And, more to the point, if you find someone who would actually appreciate that zucchini, you might be able to exchange it for a food you don’t have.