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Cook Once ... Eat All Week

Cook Once and Eat All Week

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This post was originally published on Beyond the Gold– NY International Ballet Competition’s blog. It’s on how you can cook and eat homemade meals all week without spending your life in the kitchen. It’s easier than you might think….!

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I happen to love the phrase, “Cook once, eat twice.” But in my kitchen, it’s cook once, eat four or five times. I love to eat well, but I am not willing to spend a lot of time cooking during the week unless it’s a family event. So, here are some of my tips for cooking/prepping once and eating many times- these are very simple ideas, but I hope they get you thinking!

I usually pick a day when I cook three or four main ingredients and then have them in the fridge as building blocks for the week. My trick is that I cook them in the simplest way possible, usually steaming for veggies and greens and basic prep (without flavoring) for beans and grains. That way, every time I eat, I can add different flavors to create a whole new dish.

For example: Ingredients:

  • Kale: steamed
  • Wild Rice: boiled
  • Cannellini beans: soaked for 24 hours, then boiled until soft.

Meals

Warm or cold

  • Mix kale, wild rice and cannellini beans
  • Toss with tahini, splash of lemon, ground black pepper, salt

Cold

  • Slice up and add cherry tomatoes, avocado, pine nuts (toast them if you like)
  • Add cold kale
  • Toss with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper

Cold

  • Cannellini beans and wild rice
  • Add feta, cucumber, kalamata olives, tomatoes
  • Toss with olive oil, vinegar, fresh oregano/basil, salt and pepper

Warm

  • Saute cannellini beans and wild rice with sesame oil, salt and pepper
  • As a side, sauté the kale in sesame oil with some sesame seeds

In addition to these simple ideas, you now have a green, a grain and a protein, all ready to be eaten in any other creative way you want.

Some other staples that are great to cook ahead of time and keep on hand as building blocks are:

  • Quinoa (good cold, hot and as a breakfast cereal)
  • Brown Rice
  • Kasha (Buckwheat)
  • Steamed broccoli
  • Roasted red peppers
  • Chard
  • Kale
  • All beans: so good hot or cold and very easy to dress up in different flavors

 

 

 

 

Lucious Beets & Kale for Lunch

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There are a ton of beets in my local farmer’s market lately so this is what I’m whipping up for lunch today.

Start by grabbing your vegetable scrubber. (I like this one by Oxo.) It’s a special brush for scrubbing vegetables, which although it seems like a frill you can live without, it does make the job of cleaning vegetables much faster and easier. I use it on all veggies whose skin I want to eat. (After all, the skin is often the best part and full of nutrients.) Consider it a small investment with a big return.

Recipe for Kale & Beet Salad

  • 2 bunches of beets: I used one bunch of golden and one bunch of red beets
  • 2 bunches of Tuscan/dinosaur kale

I like to cut the beet greens off first and clean/store them for later use in smoothies. Then scrub beets and put into pot of boiling water for 15-25 mins, depending on size of beets. Cook until you can pierce straight through them easily with a fork.

In the meantime, rinse and chop your kale leaves. Bring 2 cups of water to boil in a large skillet. Drop the kale leaves in and cover with tight-fitting lid. Cook for 4-6 minutes till greens are wilted but still bright in color.

Drain beets and greens. Set greens in a large bowl. Chop beets and toss with the greens and a vinaigrette of your choice. I like olive oil and balsamic vinegar with some salt and pepper – easy peasy.

Tuck in and enjoy.

Beyond Nutrition

There are reasons beyond nutrition for adding beets to your diet. Just two of these tubers have 528mg of potassium (more than a single banana!), which is an important mineral for heart health and muscle cramps. Beets get their bright color from betalains, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. That’s good news for your inflamed tendons.