How To Put Together A Quick Healthy Meal When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking

All recipes have been recommended by Harriet Smith B.Sc (Hons), RD from HRS Communications.

Recipes are found on BBC Good Food

Cooking a meal. It can be the last thing you want to do when you have little energy to spare let alone make sure the meals you cook are healthy and nutritious. Registered Dietitian, Harriet gave some top tips for the cupboard essentials you need to get stocked up on.

Three Recipe Ideas You Could Try

So here are a few suggestions that would be quick and perfect for the days when you don’t want to be hanging around the kitchen and would rather be having some much-needed downtime. Let’s get breakfast, lunch, and dinner covered!

Breakfast

Beans on Toast with a twist. Swap your baked beans for butter beans and try some Smoky Beans On Toast.

An easy choice with little washing up. Win-Win! All you need is a small pan and your bread at the ready. If you’ve got some smoked paprika stacked somewhere in the cupboard, then this could be a nice edition.

Lunch

Pasta…but make it veggie. Why not try making a Veggie Hummus Pasta Salad. If you make enough you could have some leftovers. That would sort lunch for a couple more days!

A fresh and veggie alternative lunch including chickpeas, spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, and if you fancy it maybe even some olives. You can use any kind of pasta whether that is what’s left over in the cupboards or make it fun and pick up some farfalle pasta (that’s the one that looks like pretty bows)!

Veggie Hummus Pasta with tomatoes, cucumber and spinach and lemon juice

Veggie Hummus Pasta with tomatoes, cucumber and spinach and lemon juice.

Dinner

Stir-fry is always a great choice. You can’t go wrong with a stir-fry. Try the Stir-Fried Beef With Hoisin Sauce.

Add some veggies to the mix. Go for some mangetout, carrots, baby corn, and mushrooms. Don’t forget to choose some noodles to go along with it.

These meals are recommended by Harriet Smith B.Sc (Hons), RD, who understands exactly how it feels to not want to prepare meals. After the health writer went through her Scoliosis operation, she began to understand the importance of food and nutrition and the impact this has on our overall health.

“You go in with one body and come out with another”

Harriet Smith
Registered Dietitian

Whilst living with chronic illnesses, Harriet advises the nutritional benefits of eating well and wants to remind people to not shy away from tinned foods, like your tinned fruit!

Top Tip: Stock up your shelves with essential tinned foods so they are ready and available for flare-up or low energy days.

A few tinned essentials to add to your cupboard

Baked beans
Tinned fish (such as tuna, salmon and mackerel)
Tinned fruit (my personal favourite peaches or you could stock up on apricots, pineapple and mandarins)
Tinned vegetables (such as sweetcorn, peas and potatoes)

If you feel like experimenting more but still want something easy, then maybe even try involving something in season this March. As Spring is approaching, this can be an exciting and perfect opportunity to try and include new ingredients to your dishes whilst learning to become more aware of eating what’s in season. Perhaps try switching up your usual breakfast routine and give mushrooms on toast with a fried, poached or even scrambled egg a go.

Photo by Jade Wulfraat on Unsplash

Harriet is a registered dietitian and health writer who founded HRS Communications two years ago which offers health and nutrition writing, and copywriting services.

Check out BBC Good Food, Quick and Healthy Recipes Collection for lots of fun, nutritious, and easy meals.