Day 7 of my top 30 for 30:
One of the biggest challenges to creating new health-promoting habits is actually having healthful food that you enjoy on hand. How many times have I heard from people that early on in their raw food or plant-based vegan transition that they ran out of food and had to resort to preparing something else that happened to be on hand but wasn’t really what they wanted to make. They were hungry, maybe they just got home from work, or their family was wanting to have a meal soon. They didn’t want to go out shopping for fruits and vegetables, etc. so they just made something in their pantry left over from before they started eating healthier.
Can you relate?
Honestly, I hear similar stories even from people who have been on the path for a while, so if this is similar to your story, no worries. Please know that you’re certainly not alone.
How can this situation be handled? One answer is keeping your fridge and pantry stocked at all times if possible. Implementing this can take practice. Depending on what types of foods you like, whether or not they need refrigeration (like lettuce or other types of leafy greens), or need to be left out to ripen for a period of time (like rock-hard avocados) or can store well in a pantry (like sunflower seeds for sprouting), it may take a while to “get used to” eating this way. And that’s okay.
It took me some time to figure out how much of each type of food to buy and how long these foods would stay fresh versus how much of these foods I would eat and what recipes I would make.
It’s a lot to digest all at once. But in time I figured it out and it became just as second nature as meal planning in the before times. My most helpful strategy was to always have something delicious and easy to prepare on hand at all times. My new ‘staple’ foods which you’ll see in a lot of my recipes.
What kitchen planning success strategies have you developed? What are your favorite staple foods?