Hi MealMasters! I am Dr. Monique May, Board-certified Family Physician and Founder of Physician in the Kitchen™. Through my books and cooking classes, I help busy households enjoy healthy eating without impacting their hectic schedules. With all of the responsibilities, tasks, chores, and jobs vying for our attention, meal planning may not be the most exciting, but it is very important. Our bodies are highly-tuned machines, and they require high-quality fuel to operate at their best. Many of us do not get the recommended daily intake of essential nutrients and vitamins, and our bodies suffer because of it. Whether it be depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, arthritis, or cancer, what we eat has a big impact on our health.
If you eat the (loosely) recommended three meals a day, that means 1,095 meals a year that you have to plan and prepare. This large number can intimidate even the most efficient meal planners and budgeters, let alone those of us who are not as organized or do not enjoy meal prepping or cooking. So what can you do to prevent from feeling overwhelmed, under-prepared, and hungry? To paraphrase a famous quote, the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. And while most of our diets do not include large pachyderms, we can apply that basic concept to the somewhat daunting challenge of meal planning and prepping for most days out of the year. Here are 3 quick tips on how to take small, effective bites out of an important and potentially intimidating task:
1) Start with the basics
Have the right tools such as pots and pans, a few good utensils including a good chef’s knife, and various items such as dishwasher-safe cutting boards, a set of mixing bowls, and measuring cups and spoons. You also want to have
