How to Eat Healthy When You’re Too Busy to Grocery Shop

PodcastNutrition

Jan 27

Written By Lia Chiccehitto

Episode 27 of the Two-Minute Wellness podcast | How to Eat Healthy When You’re Too Busy to Grocery Shop

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Transcript

Hey there! And welcome back to the Two-Minute Wellness podcast. Healthy eating is hard enough, but it gets even harder when your schedule gets super busy and you don’t have time to get to the grocery store. So today I wanted to share one of my best kept secrets - something I like to call a no excuses meal. These are meals that you can throw together in a pinch, even if you haven't been to the grocery store to buy any fresh ingredients.

So, yes, it does take a little bit of preparation. You'll want to make sure that your pantry and your freezer are stocked with a few key staples, but otherwise, you can make these meals any night of the week and you can make them in 10 minutes or less.

That's the key - you need to be able to make them quickly so they're more tempting than take out and you need to be able to make them without any fresh ingredients so you don't have the excuse that you haven't been to the grocery store.

Here are a couple of my favorite no excuses meals:

Pasta is an easy one, but we still want to keep it balanced and healthy if we can. I like to keep some protein pasta on hand, so like Banza or another chickpea pasta, or you could use a brown rice pasta and add some unflavored collagen powder for extra protein.

Then, I like to keep either Raos or Muir Glen sauce in my pantry. These pasta sauces are my favorite because they don't have any added sugar and they use olive oil instead of other more processed or inflammatory oils.

I also love to keep some sort of frozen veggie in my freezer. I’ll just throw my spinach into the freezer when it starts to get a little bit wilted, and you can also keep broccoli or I've really been loving these frozen fire roasted veggies from Costco that are so good to add to pasta.

So in 10 minutes or less, you have a protein-rich pasta dinner with veggies, and you are good to go!

Another really easy, no excuses meal I like to make is a quinoa and chickpea salad. You can get the pre-cooked frozen quinoa at Trader Joe’s or just keep regular quinoa in your pantry, and keep a few cans of chickpeas in your pantry, too.

You’ll want a veggie and some seasoning, so I like to add sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, roasted red pepper or olives. There's also a brand called Poshi I that I love that sells little bags of cooked and marinated veggies that are shelf stable and they’re amazing for snacks or salads. I’ve tried their olives, marinated asparagus, and artichoke hearts and they're so good. They come in different flavors and marinades, so you can get a variety, and I just add those to any salad.

So for your no excuses quinoa salad, you have your quinoa and chickpeas, then you’ll add your favorite pantry veggie, and lastly you’ll just drizzle a little olive oil, add some salt and pepper, and voila! Another 10 minute meal without having to go to the grocery store!

Now you can stay on track with your healthy eating goals, even when your week gets crazy!

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