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Eating healthy is something that I love and I want to help you develop the skills to do the same. Eating healthy all week doesn’t mean 2-3 salads a day. I mean, I love a good salad and currently have 3 types of lettuce, kale, spinach, and arugula growing in my greenhouse but, I don’t want to only eat salad.
During the spring, summer, and fall, my main way to prep vegetables is my grill. I’ll fire it up complete with smoking chips to add even more flavor. During the cold or wet weekends, I use my oven, but it won’t give the same flavor intensity as the grill.
I’ve been known to cook bread, pizza, pies (yes I eat dessert too), fruit, and even eggs on the grills. I have three grills, one large one, and two smaller ones for camping but if its corn season, chances are I’m using at least 2 b/c I’ll stick all my longer cooking items on one grill and then I don’t have to keep opening the grill to check on the stuff that cooks too fast.
Pro Tip: Prep and start longer cooking foods first.
Whether you are grilling or roasting in the oven, prep and start longer cooking foods first. This includes vegetables and fruit like corn on the cob, potatoes, sweet potatoes, certain squashes (butternut/spaghetti), whole beets, and whole garlic heads.
If you are making kabobs (my favorite way to cook veggies en masse) you can still cook potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, and squash, you’ll need to chop them into smaller chunks. I shoot for about 1-2” depending on the toughness of the vegetable. Or in the case of potatoes, I’ll buy a bag of baby potatoes and cook them whole on the BBQ or if roasting in the oven, I'll either leave them whole or quarter the potatoes.
Food that cooks quicker, zucchini, onion slices, bell pepper, individual garlic cloves, tomatoes, beans, etc, will go in about halfway through the longer cooking time veggies. This way all the foods are coming out roughly at the same time.
Here’s what I cooked this past weekend in one large batch:
3 bell peppers
1 mixed variety of baby potato bag
1 medium sweet potato
1 radish bunch
1 medium onion
1 bunch of asparagus
4 slices of pineapple
2 ears of corn
1 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 zucchini
The asparagus, zucchini, and tomatoes were cooked separately while the remaining veggies were kabobs. I used hickory smoker chips this time and everything has this amazing hickory flavor and smell.
What meals I plan to make with all these veggies:
Steak with corn, kabob veggies, and pineapple
Apple Pork Sausage with kabob veggies
Omelet with zucchini, tomatoes, spinach, and onion
Black beans with corn, tomatoes, onion, spinach & kale tacos
Chicken breast with asparagus and zucchini
Kitchen sink frittata (all the leftover veggies and any other prepared foods throughout the week get tossed into this frittata)
Usually the most flavorful meal ends up being my kitchen sink meal at the end of the week. It’s not always a frittata, sometimes I don’t have any leftovers, and other times its tacos.
The key to any successful meal planning is MEAL PLANNING. There are many ways to meal plan, mine focuses only on dinner b/c my mornings and lunch are pretty consistently healthy and freshly made daily. Whereas for dinner, I need food that is either able to be eaten on the go (since I usually work in the evening) or ready to eat within 10 minutes.
To learn more about meal planning and other practical healthy living tips, be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter.
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