How to make a meal for the whole family when you eat differently!
I get this question a lot, how do you cook ONE meal while people in your family have different preferences and likes and dislikes? Or if some people eat meat/grains/fill in the blank and others don’t.
The first thing I want to say is I don’t believe in making 10 different things because people in your family REFUSE to eat healthy food, or vegetables in general or things like that. That’s a different situation that needs to be addressed itself. And there needs to be an understanding that you (if you really want to be healthy) that you as a family will eat real foods. Mostly whole foods. Because what else is there really to be doing?
I just can’t and don’t get behind giving kids boxed macaroni and cheese just because they say they won’t eat a vegetable. That is happening because they have been allowed to be the boss and you need to take your power back around supplying nutritious food for them. And it might be a process, but it’s WORTH it for their HEALTH for their LIFE.
But there are ways in which people just like different kinds of things even in the umbrella of healthy eating or whole foods based eating or plant based eating. In our family, I eat mostly veggies and fruits all day long, and my husband is really easy going and eats what I make but I do make his differently than mine, not always but most of the time there are some differences, or he will eat some additional things or we’ll have a swapped out component. And then Dalton eats what we eat, or whatever we have on hand. I do take into consideration our human designs too. I’m a manifesting generator, Heath is a projector, and Dalton is a generator. The foods themselves are still all clean and pass my eyeballs as far as any labels go, but Heath eats more grains than I do, and as a projector I know that fits for him. I could if I wanted to, but they just don’t sound that great to me and make me feel more heavy energetically. And as far as Dalton, this kids loves protein, like organic turkey and chicken and salmon. Who knows if that will last but for now he does.
This recipe above happened just the other night, now I’m even on my cleanse and still making dinner, but I get to have some veggies along with my other products and I still made this whole thing in less than 10 minutes. No big deal at all. Remember it comes down to knowing how to put flavors together, having the right things on hand, and some simple cooking methods.
MY SHORT CUTS:
I had extra wild caught salmon filets already cooked (cold) in the fridge from the night before which I cook in my air fryer (love love love for easy cooking fish, especially salmon and mahi) Find mine here.
Things I had on hand that I always have on hand: an organic marinara sauce; frozen organic peas, gluten free pasta (whatever kind you want), raw organic spinach
WHAT I DID:
I knew noodles would be fast, and you can make this dish with a protein like salmon/chicken/shrimp/beef if you want or just leave it out.
I used rice pasta in this, but if you chose a lentil or chickpea or black bean variety you’d have protein from plants built in and not need anything at all.
Boil water in a sauce pan (turn up to high until boils then add salt)
Add the noodles
NOTE: I had put some peas in a glass dish so they were thawed but even if they weren’t it wouldn’t matter, because they would just warm through really quickly
The noodles cooked in about 5-7 minutes, then I strained them
While the noodles were cooking, I sauteed cauliflower rice (from frozen straight out of the bag into my deep dish saute pan (just spray with avocado oil first). Once it broke apart, I added salt, and garlic powder) When my rice was done, I moved it to my bowl
Then I moved the cooked noodles to my used pan, added red sauce, and forked the salmon apart and warmed it up on medium/low. I added the peas and spinach at the very end because they didn’t need to be cooked just warm.
So how this goes all together:
I had a cauliflower rice bowl with spinach and red sauce
IF I wasn’t on a cleanse I would have added salmon and peas to mine
The boys had pasta with salmon, spinach and peas with a red sauce
>>If you had a vegan person, just omit salmon.
>>If you had a grain free person, sub cauliflower rice or a veggie noodle like zucchini/yellow squash/sweet potato/kelp/spaghetti squash but since this is a very fast meal, I would do zucchini/yellow squash and simply saute.
>>If you don’t like fish use chicken/beef
>>If you didn’t have protein cooked, super fast options would still be to use your air fryer to cook salmon while you boiled water and cooked noodles, it seriously would take the same amount of time OR you could saute it, it’s such a short cooking time.
OR you could use something like pre-cooked wild caught frozen shrimp, that you literally would just add to the noodles and red sauce to warm up.
NOTE: not RAW shrimp or UNCOOKED frozen, PRECOOKED frozen.
OR you could use wild caught flaked salmon in a can which requires no cooking but simply opening, rinsing/draining and adding to noodles.
So this means what you need to know and do is:
BE PREPARED. Have wild caught/organic meat options if you eat that
Have fresh greens on hand at all times
Have extra frozen veggies on hand at all times
Know that noodles goes well with red sauce and a protein and greens and another veggie
Keep organic marinara in your pantry
FOOD FORMULA:
Noodles + Red Sauce + Protein (or omit) + Greens + Extra veggies = healthy fast dinner
This is how I cook and how I teach cooking, you can check out so much more in Fueled and Focused my online course.
Other examples of this could look like:
Red lentil penne + marinara + spinach + frozen bell peppers
Chickpea pasta + marinara + baby shrimp + kale
Quinoa pasta + marinara + baby carrots + arugula
Sweet potato noodles + organic diced chicken + marinara + spinach