Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Healthy Living Quick Tips: Part 2

   Last week I posted a couple of ideas for healthy eating in our  fast-paced world, and promised to come up with more.  I know you've all been on the edge of your very seats awaiting the exciting conclusion as if it's the next Hunger Games movie, so without further ado, here we go:
   
   3)  Make dinner with friends.
   How many times have you grabbed a quick bite on your own before going to meet someone at a concert or the movies?  Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive?  Eating should be a social activity.  It's literally what keeps up alive, and should be given a little more attention that it usually gets.  Too many of our meals are eaten during stolen moments in the car or at work or before running out the door.  And I'm not saying that has to change;  it's not going to any time soon.  However, I don't think it's too much to ask to actually enjoy your food when you do have free time.  Dinner parties (especially cook-outs now that the weather is getting nice!) can be a fun, healthy, inexpensive way to reconnect with friends and family.  Open up one of those cookbooks lying lonely in a kitchen drawer and buy the ingredients for something you've never made before.  What's the worst that could happen?  It's comes out innedibly terrible, and you all have a good laugh and order a pizza.


  4) Make a grocery list.
It's a fact that people who make grocery lists and stick to them spend less money and buy healthier foods.  As tempting as that two for one sale on potato chips is, do you really need that many potato chips?  I like to start my grocery list by taking stock of what I already have, then planning recipes around it.  Thanks to the magic of Google, it's now easy to come up with interesting meal ideas just by typing in the name of an ingredient in the search bar.  (I once Googled "lentil and pumpkin recipe" and, believe it or not, ended up with a pretty good dip!)


Hope these helped.  Up next week: Easter highlights, including adorable birds-nest macaroons and eating meat again.

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree about the grocery list making! I'm a serious "stick to the list" person and I always spend less when I do that!

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  2. That pumpkin lentil dip was astonishingly good, if I remember correctly.

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