Quick and healthy dinners. Tips

Quick and healthy dinners for young and old.

Early risers, office work, children, the beach … It doesn’t matter if you are working or on vacation.

The truth is that at the end of the day all you want is to sit down to disconnect and rest all the accumulated exhaustion. But you still have to have dinner!

Often, it’s easy to get carried away by the temptation to lazy around and grab the first thing you find in the fridge or pantry to quench hunger regardless of whether or not what you’re eating is healthy. 

Traditionally we have been taught that, of the 3 or 5 recommended daily meals, breakfast should have great importance in our daily diet.

It is the first meal of the day, the most important !, my grandmother said, and with it we will face the first part of the day that, in general, involves more wear and tear.

Similarly, dinner implies just the opposite: it is the last meal of the day and , instead of activity, it precedes our time of rest and fasting at night.

Despite this important difference, the two meals must be complete and varied, but the dinners must also be light . It is precisely these two words that “complicate” our lives.

Because we think that making a complete and varied dinner will take a lot of effort (just what we don’t want to do at that time …), just as we think that fast food or dinner is synonymous with junk food . But we are wrong!

Here we are going to give you some tips to prepare healthy dinners in a short time and be able to enjoy a restful rest, correct nutrition and good care of our body.

How to save the kitchen

Plan meals

Have you ever calculated how much time you waste each day thinking about what you are going to cook? Well, weekly planning can be a significant time saver .

• Making a flexible menu, which you can modify on the fly, is the best way to avoid temptations too.
• Take advantage of our menu template to print and make your own. Easy to put in the fridge and keep track of the purchase to carry out your weekly planning.
• The weekly menu templates help us to organize ourselves , eat varied and balanced, save on shopping and all taking into account the preferences of family members.
• Make a list of healthy and fast foods that meet the requirements that we have already explained.
• That they are varied (we should not always eat the same thing), complete (they must include different foods: vegetables, carbohydrates, proteins, etc …) and light (the type of preparation comes into play here.
• You can also play with the quantity: the abundant dinners can spoil the quality of our sleep, make digestion difficult and harm our diet). 

Make a smart purchase

• To carry out the purchase of the week effectively, it is essential to have made the previous point: a list of healthy and fast foods.
• With that kind of weekly menu , like the one at school or the one that the nutritionist puts you to follow a diet, you can make an effective purchase, of what is strictly necessary, without overspending .
• In addition to making a smart purchase every week to prepare our dishes. It is advisable that you always have at home some non-perishable products that will always be part of fast and healthy meals .
• These are pasta, preserves, vegetables and fish, or some frozen vegetables, for example. 

Prepare and reserve (or freeze)

• Sometimes in order to save time in the long run it is necessary to invest it (not to lose it) conscientiously at a specific moment.
• This and overcome laziness . We could define this point as a kitchen marathon , because it is precisely one of the most practical solutions to prepare faster dinners .
• The idea is that you choose one day a week to cook and advance preparations that last in the fridge or freezer for several days. In this way we can blanch or boil vegetables , such as broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beans or chard, for example, and freeze. We can also chop onions, peppers or parsley and store them in different containers in the fridge to have them ready to use whenever we want.
• We can fillet or chop meats and even prepare some dishes and freeze them until the day we want to consume them.
• On the blog you have a special freeze to get it right. Where we explain that you can or cannot freeze.

Fast but healthy

As we have said above, fast food is not synonymous with junk food.

In addition to implementing the steps that we have recommended to save your time and money in the kitchen, there are other things that you should take into account when preparing your quick and healthy dinners :

• Avoid hypercaloric preparations . Forget about precooked, fried, battered or fatty stews late in the day. At night it is convenient to eat more protein, less carbohydrates and , above all, a small amount of food .
• Get together with the iron, microwave and oven . In this way you will cook in a few minutes and avoid fats in your dinners. You can use the iron for everything: meat, fish or vegetables. Like the griddle, the microwave and the oven allow us to cook dishes with less oil than the frying pan or fryer. 
• Fish better than meat . Fish contains protein, like meat, but is lighter for digestion . Something to keep in mind at night, just before sleeping. At dinners we must include fats, but of quality and in a small quantity. That is why it is advisable to avoid cold cuts, sausages, sauces and dressings at dinner. 
• Avoid sugars . At dinner we can include hydrates but we must choose them well. In this sense, when using pasta, rice or cereals , it is preferable that we opt for whole grains . Forget about eating industrial cereals! Avoiding acidic fruits and those that contain a lot of sugar at night will also help us to avoid affecting our gastric juices and sleep cycles. 
• Use fresh food . Wash, peel and cut. Is there something faster? You can take complete and varied salads in a short time combining different types of green leaves, tomato, onion, corn, cucumber, but also mixing fresh cheese, fruits rich in water or nuts. 
• Take advantage of the preserves. Add to your dinners , especially salads or stir-fries, canned vegetables, legumes or fish (tuna, mackerel, sardines, chickpeas, lentils, beans) and you will gain in flavor and nutrients.
• Don’t throw away the leftovers . Because the food is not thrown away. So every time you cook during the day, keep the leftovers to take advantage of at dinner. You will save time and money!

If we include all the foods recommended so far , we will give our body the amino acids necessary for the production of neurotransmitters, which will make us feel good and have a good rest.

But also, we must bear in mind that to have a restful sleep and rest it is highly recommended to leave a space of two hours between dinner and the time to go to bed . As well as taking an infusion that helps us fall asleep, such as valerian, chamomile, linden, melissa or roiboos.

And remember that in addition to all the recipes and suggestions on the blog we have a book on the market only with this type of dinner, “Dinner in 25 minutes”

In this book you will find quick, tasty and nutritious recipes so that you can eat every day of the week. Meals, designed to make life easier for beginners and also for those who lack of time do not allow them to enjoy cooking as they wish. With these recipes, you not only eat, but enjoy food.

Dinners in 25 minutes – Easy and tasty recipes.

• Authors: Alfonso López Alonso (Author), Jimena Catalina Gayo (Illustrator)
• Number of Pages: 256 – Rustic Binding with Flaps
• Format 19 x 23.5 cm
• Price € 15 for nothing.
• Publisher: Larousse
• ISBN: 978-84-16124-93-0
• Edition: Spanish – Gastronomy Collection.