New Season, New Opportunities for Consistency

With the change in season comes an opportunity.

October is the onramp to the holiday season. Getting clear on your food goals NOW is the key to food success for the next few months. Hopefully, you’ve settled into your fall schedule, planning and prepping for easy and delicious meals and snacks, embracing roasted veggies, colorful soups and heartier salad dinners.

Still hitting the farmer’s markets and gathering veggies, still making the big, delicious crunchy salads. But now, try adding some heartiness. Maybe a side of veggie soup, a roasted vegetable, toasted nuts, crispy legumes, apples and pears. 

Colder weather begs for a little heavier meal, all the while maintaining the inspiring Mediterranean-style framework. With a little planning and prepping, it’s easy to be successful. Here’s how.

Changes in Grocery Lists

Keeping it seasonal means starting to buy frozen organic berries and fresh apples and pears. Adding a squash to the cart. Picking up broth. Stocking the pantry with white, garbanzo, black beans and red, green and black lentils.

Two Sessions Per Week

Are you willing to food prep twice a week? That is the sweet spot. Buy what you need for the next 2-3 days. So, 2-3 breakfasts, lunch, dinners and snacks. That might be buying, chopping or mixing. It might mean making a frittata, a soup, a sheet pan meal, or a slow cooker meal twice a week for main meals. Spend a bit of extra time up front (again 2x/week) so that each mealtime prep is minimal, delicious, real and home cooked.

Breakfast: Frittata, 4 servings for 2 breakfasts for you and others OR it could be breakfast for 3 days and snack 1 day.

Lunch: Soup + salad. Eat this 2-4 times. If you’re not a leftover person, soups freeze well. Eat 1 to 2 times and freeze the remaining. 

Snack: Pick a snack and stick with it for a few days. Then, pick something else for the remainder for the week. Protein and healthy-fat-rich, please. For example, hummus and carrots.

Dinner: It’s the perfect time of year to start sheet pan + slow cooker dinners. We’ll highlight these for the next several months.

Make a Date 

Putting time in your calendar for planning, shopping, pre-cooking each week (in small chunks) is crucial to making mealtimes successful. Consider making a date with yourself and your food.

Embrace the Creativity

Here are the comments I hear regularly on cooking:

• I don’t have time—this is the most common!
• I don’t like to grocery shop.
• I buy too much and throw out food every week.
• I’m not a good cook.
• I don’t know how to cook.
• I travel so I don’t cook.

There are LOTS of reasons NOT to set yourself up for success. The biggest reason TO doing the work to set yourself up for success is… A little bit of up-front work makes easy work later on. And makes it WAY easier to hit your individual food goals. SO, set yourself up! It’s totally worth it.

Need a little help? Reach out to a holistic nutritionist and see if Healthy Nest is right for you.