Hello, I'm Kate Freeman, and this is The Daily Dollip. Transform your eating habits and achieve long-term wellbeing with ALA Health. ALA Health is a mobile app that combines micro-learning with meal planning into a seamless user experience that teaches you how to eat well for the rest of your life, one habit at a time. Download it now from the app store, it's free!
On this episode of The Daily Dollip, we're chatting about easy meals when your time poor, stressed and just can't be bothered. I've got heaps of ideas for you, plus we'll chat about what the word easy means and how meals can get easier for you over time if you commit to building the skills. It's Dollip Time! Hey, hey, my name's Kate.
I'm a registered nutritionist, and after 20 years in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start. And so, I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empower it to maximize your health. Every weekday will dull up an episode into your feed, covering everything from busting nutrition myths, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics, and habits for a healthy life.
I promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free, and strictly no-woo. Only good science translated into easy, everyday advice. Let's do this. Welcome back to The Daily Dollip podcast, everyone.
Today is a huge day for me and my family. The removal truck comes today and picks up all of our stuff and starts making the trek up to Queensland. We will join it next week, and we leave on Monday and we'll meet at our new house on Wednesday. So it's all happening, team.
It's all systems go. We'll be settling into our new country home very soon. Oh, I can't wait. It's been a whole mission.
I'll be a very happy lady once this is all over. They say that moving interstate is one of life's greatest stresses. Which is funny because this is something that we want to do and we're doing it purely for a lifestyle change. So it's all good.
It's all positive things, but yeah, it definitely takes its toll. So if it feels stressful and I think it's just uncertainty, not knowing what's going to happen, the process of purchasing and banks and approvals and homelands, it's a whole thing, right? Anyway, we have got easy meals on rotation in our house, and I've got also a few days planned of meals for when we're on the road. We're also going to have to spend a couple of days in our old house without any furniture or stuff.
So we're in kind of like camping mode and we'll also have a night up at the new house without our stuff as well. So yeah, it's going to be a bit of an adventure, but what a time to talk about easy meals and quick things. Before I get on to the range of easy meals that I've got prepared for you, I wanted to talk about this idea of the word easy because it's a pretty relative term. And what feels easy to me might not feel easy to you and that it's really dependent on your skill level in the kitchen and your familiarity with different types of foods.
So I think that's important to remember because we can easily get down on ourselves when we're not doing something the way that we expected ourselves to, but the thing is that what might have been easy for something or maybe we bought a cookbook that was easy 15-minute meals, and then we went to cook meals in that cookbook and it really wasn't that easy. It can feel a little bit overwhelming, but does anybody remember when Jamie Oliver brought out his book, 15-minute meals, and then he had a TV series. But this guy is a whiz because absolutely some of the things he was cooking in that 15-minute meals. They wouldn't have been easy for many people.
They wouldn't have been easy for me. Some of them were, but not all of them, but his knife skills, his familiarity with cooking techniques and utensils, the kitchen that he was in, what a dream. And then behind the cameras, the people there, the resources, the support, this is absolutely not what's going on in the average home kitchen. So I think it's really important to understand that skills can be learnt.
So if you don't have the skills now, you absolutely can have them for the future. And to not feel bad about that will be down about yourself. And a really great example is that I can't play very many instruments very well at all. I have at some point started learning the guitar many years ago.
That was really hard. Gave up as soon as I got to bar chords, could not get my fingers to do what they needed to do. And I've also taught myself how to play the piano, but I'm not very good at that either. But that is because I haven't devoted the time, the patience and practice to developing that skill.
So I don't feel bad about not being good at those things because I haven't tried. I haven't put the time in to build this skill. And it's the same for food. So if you are feeling like I'm not a very good cook and I can't really put a healthy meal together and this is really difficult, that is absolutely okay.
And if you dedicate yourself to learning the skills just little by little step by step, you absolutely can become better and meals will become easier and it will feel more achievable for you. So absolutely don't give up at all. That is really important that you know that. So I've got some ideas for you now, which are genuinely easy meals, in that they use convenient pre-made options from the supermarket or they just require very minimal prep and cooking.
So there are some things that are just genuinely easier. So let's start with lunch. So meal number one is a tuna and avocado sandwich. So you've got a little tin of tuna in spring water, you want to drain that and then mix that with some grated carrot and then some aioli or mayonnaise.
This makes a really nice carrot, tuna-y, pasty type consistency and you want to spread that nice and thickly, like use the whole amount on one slice of bread. Top with shredded cos lettuce and then on your other piece of bread, mash about a quarter of an avocado. Put that piece of bread on top and away you go. Absolutely delicious, satiating, nutritious sandwich.
Amazing. Highly recommend using a really nice grainy or high fiber bread, rye bread, soy lindseed, whole meal. Yum. Really nice.
Sandwich can absolutely be part of a healthy eating pattern. Don't demonise the sandwich. Completely unnecessary. Idea number two for lunch is a different variation on a sandwich, which is a chicken and tabuli wrap.
So find yourself a nice grainy, whole meal wrap. Spread that with some hummus, add some grated carrot on top. I would spread the whole wrap with hummus because then one, the carrot sticks to the whole thing, but it kind of acts as glue, like holding the wrap together. It's very strategic.
Then if you've got a rotisserie chicken or a barbecue chicken or some chicken breast left over from a meal, shred that up and place that on. And then the last addition is some pre-made tabuli from the supermarket or your local cafe, or wherever you can get that from or you've got some leftover from a different social event or something. That just adds some really nice flavor. Box it out with veggies.
Delicious. Next up is dinner. So idea number one is a Mexican bowl. I love Mexican bowls because they're a really great way of adding in lots of delicious whole foods with great flavor.
So we've got some diced chicken breast or some diced chicken thigh. We're going to cook that up in a pan, maybe with a little bit of olive oil, and then some taco seasoning. You can buy the sache from the supermarket or just use things like paprika and cumin and coriander seeds. You can Google, you know, Mexican seasoning mixes if you want to make your own.
Then we've got just a standard tomato salsa just from that you can buy from the supermarket. Some instant brown rice and then you're chopping up a bunch of veggies, shredded cos lettuce, some tomato, some canned corn, maybe some cucumber diced. And you're building your bowl up with some microwaved brown rice with your lovely taco season chicken, add your veggies, drizzle with your salsa. You might want to get a little sprinkling of cheese if you like.
Amazing. Really lovely. High protein, high fiber, tasty, easy idea for dinner. Great for leftovers as well.
Next up is a honey soy salmon stir fry. Yum. So you can actually do this with any protein option. I just really love honey soy as a flavor with salmon.
So we've got some salmon fillets with either the skin or not skin off, whatever your preference. Then we've got some veggies, so bok choy, purple cabbage, carrots, broccoli. You can use whatever you like, snow peas, broccolini, green beans, capsicum, red onion, whatever veggies you've got on hand to chop them all up. And then what we're going to do is just buy a really easy marinade from the supermarket.
So a honey soy dressing. But if you want, you can absolutely make this from scratch with honey soy and ginger, a little bit of olive oil. And what we're going to do is we're going to saute up and stir fry up the veggies. We're going to add the salmon chunks in.
We're going to add the honey soy sauce. Stir that around for a bit. And then we're going to pop some cooked sober noodles through to add some carbohydrate. Mix that all together and serve up.
Yum. So good. Next up is we've got snacks. So two snack ideas that are really excellent.
There's some really nice grainy crackers. We're going to spread them with some peanut butter and we're going to slice some banana and pop that on top. Maybe sprinkle with some cinnamon. Amazing.
Have two or three depending on how hungry you are. Idea number two is a nibble plate. So this is fantastic if you actually like to have something to do. Like if your eating urge is a little bit bottom.
A little bit trying to escape your mundane task at work. A nibble plate can be a great idea because it means that the snack lasts that little bit longer. So you might have some cubes of cheese, maybe a handful of almonds, maybe some baby cucumbers, some cherry tomatoes. Maybe you've got some raw snow peas.
Whatever you can sort of nibble on and just throw a little tasting plate together can be an excellent snack idea. You can throw this into a lunch box, snack on it while you're traveling. Lots of different ways you can do this. Some final ideas to leave you with is this idea of bulk cooking.
And there are lots of easy meals that you can create in bulk that will then save and you can keep them in your fridge or your freezer and then just reheat them for later. And you can find all three of these recipes in the Ailer Health app. So we've got a basil pesto pasta. So this meal is one of my favorites.
It's got halloumi in there. So yummy. So make that up. It'll last in the fridge for a couple of days.
Just whack it in the microwave to heat it up a little bit. You've got three or four days of delicious tasty veggie rich meal. Next up is a chicken and vegetable stir fry. Again, a really easy tasty meal that you can make in advance.
That's less than 20 minutes to cook. But you get four serves out of it or double it and make eight serves if you're cooking for someone else as well. A really great meal that you can then reheat for an easy lunch or dinner. The last one, excellent meals to create in bulk are curries.
So this is a chicken and lentil curry. But the apple also has a green curry. I think it's got a yellow curry. It's got a calmer.
A bunch of different ideas. It's got a butter chicken. All that can be made in advance. Divide it up into portions stored in the fridge and are ready to go when you need them.
This is easy meals. Again, easy is a relative term. And you also want to think more broadly. What are the other barriers that you are facing?
Focus your efforts on what you can control with those barriers. And if you do need some help, we do offer one-on-one nutrition coaching through the ALA Health Virtual Clinic. You can start off your sessions with a free strategy session with our lead dietitians, Stephanie. So make sure you check that out.
The link to that is in the show notes. Otherwise have a great day, team. And we'll catch you next week. The Daily Doll Podcast is proudly brought to you by ALA Health.
Build food confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits that last. As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes. You can also join the conversation over in the ALA Health community group on Facebook.
We'd love to see you there. If you've got a topic you'd love to hear a chat about on the Daily Doll, please let us know. Email us at hello at alahhealth.com.au Or you can send us a message on Instagram. Until next time.