healthy cooking in the college world: healthy, fast, cheap

so since my sister asked me to tell how I go about trying to eat healthy without a lot of time to do so, I thought the easiest thing would be to make a few blog entries about it. When I plan my meals, my focus is to make healthy meals without taking too much time to do so, and keeping it cheap.

To keep it healthy I focus on adding a lot of fruits and vegetables, keeping my snacking to mostly fruit, nuts, and veggies. I also keep my meats to a minimum, since they're generally pretty unhealthy for you if you don't have the money to buy a pasture-fed farmshare, or the like. This means that I eat a lot of dairy and beans to get my proteins, which then means I get a pretty high percentage of my calories from dairy fats, which are unsaturated. This is the main area of my diet that is not the healthiest, but it still works quite well if the rest of my diet is well balanced. Also, I come from a carb-addict family, so high fat is a LOT better than high simple carbohydrates, which turn to fat anyway. I also limit myself to one meal out a weak, and one dessert a day (sweet tooth that I have). Right now I'm fasting sugar completely, which is making everything taste sweeter!

To keep it fast I have a list of meals that take only about 10 to 15 minutes to prep and cook. I also have a lot of ready to go things for breakfasts and lunches. When I take the time to cook, I try to always make leftovers so that I can have quick dinners and lunches in the next couple days. A lot of leftover containers is a must! I also will freeze and work with frozen foods a lot. I tend to use only frozen meat (if you buy it fresh you can still freeze it in tin foil really easily). I also invested in some good freezer-safe ziploc bags to freeze single servings of entrees for quick dinners and foods like brown rice and made-from-scratch beans that take a long time to cook but form the basis of many recipes.

To keep it cheap I always cook based on what I already have rather than buying for a meal I want to make. That being said, I always have the ingredients on hand of meals that I make a lot :). I'm always watching for sales of fruits and veggies to be able to make those meals I've been waiting for. I like to use tortillas, rice, and pasta as the basis for meals that include carbohydrates. I buy brown rice at all times, and whole grain pasta whenever I can find it at an affordable price. I cook from scratch whenever I can. This is almost always the cheapest way. Using beans instead of meat cuts down the prices too. Not eating out much at all also keeps costs down a LOT.

Those are my basic shopping-and-food-choices rules, actual recipes to come...

Also, I will probably organize my posts by making one for each general category, then adding specific recipes later.