Sometimes life is busy and you might not have time to cook a meal from scratch – but this doesn’t meal that the meal that you get on the table for your family can’t be nutricious and delicious! In fact, there is a simple way to do so and this involves getting to know your local butcher!
When you need to get a meal on the table quickly you need to ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’…you want to have a protein component (i.e. your meat), you want to have a carbohydrate component (i.e. potato, rice, pasta, bread etc.) and you want to have a vegetable component.
I like to cook my vegetables at least two different ways so that you can have a few different textures on the plate. If you take my meal below as an example, I have steamed the carrots, zucchini, cauliflower and broccoli and then I boiled the potato and spinach and then mashed them together with a little milk, butter, garlic and salt.
I keep the veggies simple – because they are easily picked up and eaten by our son that way…but it also helps that I can have them on the plate in approximately 15 minutes. Other options for your veggies are roasting, grilling, or frying.
So once you have your veggies and carbohydrate down you can spice them up with something delicious that your butcher has preprepared. Butchers have done all the hard work for you and they can also provide you with ideas on how to prepare/cook your meat when you have more time.
Think about checking out their chicken schnitzels or chicken wrapped in filo pastry. You can pick up some pretty awesome pre-marinated beef or lamb or some fancy stuffed pork. It’s all about finding a good local butcher and letting them tell you what is good that week.
Your butcher may be part of your local shopping centre or they may be out at the markets – you just need to tap into their knowlegde and let them help you out with your weekly meal plan. Because no one can make everything from scratch every day.
