Vegetarians lead busy lives too and in between juggling work and kids is the task of preparing interesting meals everyday. Contrary to popular belief, preparing them may be a convenient task after all. Here are some practical tips for a quick easy vegetarian meal.
Pre Cook Vegetables
You don’t need to wash, prepare or cook your veggies on the spot. In fact, expert cooks boil twice or thrice as many vegetables in one sitting and then just freeze the extra for use on the third day.
Find out which vegetables can be prepared before meals so that you won’t have to prepare them at several different times. Vegetable soup can also be prepared in this way. Just make sure that you add a little more water when you take it out of the fridge on the second or third day. As an added note, be sure to label your pre cooked veggies and food with the date so that you know which ones should be taken out first and eaten and which ones are nearing expiration.
Alternate Breakfast Cooking
Mornings usually require a truly quick easy vegetarian meal because everyone is in a hurry for school and office. You can simply alternate cooking breakfast with quick meals so that you don’t have to be haggard every morning. Cook eggs, waffles and the like every other day. On your non-cook days, simply add a generous amount of nuts, berries, fruits and a little honey on cereal mixes or ready to eat oatmeal for a truly healthy and hearty meal in the morning.
Prepare Snacks
Snacks are no longer considered unhealthy as long as you serve nutrition packed snacks. Snacks help control and delay family member’s appetites for main meals. This means that you’ll have more time to prepare your quick easy vegetarian meal.
You can add a few new items everyday, instead of the usual cheese and crackers, to keep your family interested in healthy snacks . You can try some mixed nuts, yogurt with diced fruits or simply mixed fruits in their own juice. One other delicious option would be to mash and mix some fruits like melon or avocado with a little milk.
Follow the Plan
Preparing them would be smoother if you follow a daily plan. This will not only assist you in coming up with a quick easy vegetarian meal but will also help you generate more ideas.
As a note of caution however, you should try your best to only use tried and tested recipes for this type of plan on your busy days. It is not a good idea to experiment on new dishes and recipes when you are pressed for time. Prepare Veggies ahead.
It is best to do your vegetarian grocery shopping on weekends when you don’t have work. Make sure that you set aside some time after shopping to immediately wash, chop, peel and store some of your vegetables. You can even have some of them packed in mixed bunches already so all you have to do for your meal is to open a packet and cook. This strategy though works best for salads because some recipes will taste bad if you cook all the ingredients together. The idea though is to prepare packets that go together whether you have to cook them or eat them as a salad.
