Why Cooking at Home Is Important

As mentioned in a previous post, convenience foods are everywhere nowadays and cooking from scratch has become quite rare. Who has the time to prepare home-cooked meals on a daily basis? We are always on the go, and weekends can be just as busy as the rest of the week. What we don’t realize, though, is that when we reach for convenience foods and on-the-go meal options, we do not necessarily fuel ourselves with real food – with nutrient-dense food. Only home-cooked meals made with whole foods can give us the right nutrients required for proper metabolic function. 

How to Make Homemade Dinners in No Time

You don’t have to cook every single day in order to obtain an optimal level of health and wellness. Most of us have busy schedules and aren’t able to set that time aside each day. Instead, you can implement a few different strategies into your weekly routine in order to obtain the same goal. Here are a few tips to make cooking easy, as explained in How to Be Well, by Dr. Frank Lipman:

• If you usually don’t cook much, just make one or two dinners a week at first. Pick some very basic recipes.
• Set some time aside on the weekend (“put it on your schedule”) to prep several dishes for the week. You can store these in the fridge or freezer, as required. 
• Use a few essential time-saving tools like a slow cooker or pressure cooker, a steamer pot, an enameled cast-iron skillet or stainless-steel pan, an immersion hand blender, and maybe a veggie bullet.
• How about Cooking Without a Recipe? Simple primal/paleo meals and snacks take no time to put together.
• When cooking, always make extra so you have leftovers for the next day.
• Meal kit delivery options like Blue Apron, Sunbasket, Green Chef, and Hello Fresh are yet another way to help you cook more often at home.

On a Final Note

Don’t forget to make kitchen time fun! Cooking can be the perfect time to listen to a podcast or some relaxing music. Cooking with friends and family can also lead to sharing new cooking techniques and ideas, along with a few laughs. What is your favorite strategy to cook more from scratch?

Until next time!

Reference

Lipman, Frank M D. How to Be Well: The 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life. Houghton Mifflin, 2019, pp. 52-3.

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