Save Money - Stop Random Nibbling
What's in your fridge?
If your best intentions fail you every time you walk through the kitchen, read on.
Imagine that in your kitchen there’s a pack of biscuits that you opened for a guest, 3 bites of cheesecake and a quarter portion of last night’s pizza. Somehow you end up eating them all without a second thought. The next thing you know, it’s dinner time but your appetite’s gone the way of your best intentions.
Here’s my method to stop nibbling leftovers. It’ll also save you money, time and effort in the kitchen.
It’s dead simple:
Firstly, assume you have no willpower. Testing your willpower doesn't make you a better person, it just lines you up for disaster and ready made excuses like "I meant to have salad but the bus was late and the cucumber shop had shut" or "I had to eat through the sausage rolls to get to the lettuce in the fridge".
Next, place all temptations and leftovers in the freezer and display the healthy, easy to prepare snacks at the front of the fridge. You can nibble on quite a few cherry tomatoes before you reach the calorific equivalent of 2 bites of leftover tiramisu. This'll get you over the "home from work" hump while you get tea underway.
Thirdly, if you’re really well organised, try batch cooking to ensure leftovers are best used up.
Sometimes we eat junk because it’s tasty and sometimes we eat it because it’s easy. If you’ve ever found yourself craving a homecooked lasagne but settling for a ready meal version you’ll know how unsatisfying it is. Add to that the additional calories, salt, sugar and preservatives in a ready cooked meal and your body will curse you. The trick behind preventing this is batch cooking.
So, whenever you make a meal, think about whether you can make double. Does it freeze and defrost easily? Get started with easy things and progress when you’re ready. My favourites are basic vegetable sauces that can be added to mince for healthy Bolognese, or blended for soup, or baked with fish, or added to beans for chilli.
Before you know it you’ll stop having second helpings just so you can freeze enough for a free meal next week and the local takeaway will be calling you up to check you’re still alive.
I know many of my clients will be reading this and hoping for a more concrete solution. If I've already bored you with the batch cooking lectures then here's the next phase. Are you ready? Learn the art of the tumble down meal. I discovered this in this cookery book, Economy Gastronomy by Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett. Not to be confused with slow cooking, this is about making one large item stretch out for 3+ meals in imaginative and delicious ways. Once you get the hang of the tumbledown meal method you can combine it with many other recipes to ensure your freezer is chocka with choice.
Enjoy Food Health!
