128. Easy Way To Avoid Processed Food

This is the best way to avoid processed food in my opinion. Especially if you have a busy lifestyle: Make two meals for 4 in one day.

I find it’s just as easy to make two meals, as one, so do all your cooking together, and then all you have to do is heat the food up for the next four days (if there are two of you).

My friend is able to get by on two bananas every lunchtime. So she just has porridge (oatmeal) and a proper meal at home. I don’t mind bananas, but two at once is a bit much, so I have other fruit and a potato or Ryvita.

But the good thing about making two different meals together, is that you can cheat and include some of the same ingredients.

I prepared a general bowl of chopped mixed vegetables which I divide in two, then I boiled potatoes to make mashed spuds for both meals. I microwaved chicken and minced pork separately, and ended up adding sweetcorn to the white sauce made for the chicken, and adding extra red peppers for the tomato sauce made for the minced pork (masquerading as minced beef!)

So I ended up with chicken and Vegetable Pie and I called the other one Italian Pie, because it was like Bolognaise, but with mashed potato instead of pasta. And the spuds were not mixed with milk or butter, and they still had their skins – very healthy! Who says you have to stick to traditional recipes?

The whole lot didn’t take more than 45 minutes, yet it saved me loads of time for the rest of the week. Normally when I lose track of time, and look in the fridge when my tummy starts to rumble, I don’t fancy cooking, and am tempted to go out and buy something, invariably processed. That’s when I try to justify it to myself and say “Well I’m allowed one take-out once a week”, but I’ll conveniently forget that it’s the second time that week. This way, you can be lazy and still avoid processed food.