More on Creating Quick, Nutritious Meals

the key is to preserve your own food

Next weekend I will be giving a workshop around how to make quick meals that are nutritious and low-waste. This photo was just taken after spending several hours cooking and preparing for the week ahead. There are lots of reused containers - plastic, food-grade tubs and glass jars, so it’s not aesthetically pleasing….sorry. But, it’s real.

I have a rough formula each week - sourdough gluten-free bread, yogurt, cheeses, bone broth, 2x main meals, roast veggies, salads, salad dressing, ferments and pickles based on what’s on hand (this week I harvested the last 6 heads of cabbage as you can see), fresh juice (while we still have a lot of citrus on the trees) and cold brew coffee. During Summer and Autumn when there’s more coming out of the garden, I will also preserve (in a water-bath canner) fruit and vegetables.

There are two parts to this kind of food prep that are tricky - preparing the vegetables and making quick main meals. Vegetables generally require lots of cleaning and prep work - chopping or slicing, etc. To get through this, I put on a good podcast or audiobook and ‘get to it’. I like to make one green and one cabbage salad each week. I then add them to things (in tacos, inside egg crepes, make a quick coleslaw) and top with different dressings or toasted seeds - they are amazingly versatile. I do the same with the roast veggies - just use them as fillers or side dishes to the main meals. This way they are all prepped at once and ready to go.

The way to make the main meals easy is to have lots of preserved sauces and tomatoes and the like on-hand from last Summer/Autumn harvest. This way I can just saute onion and garlic, brown the meat, then place that into the slow-cooker with a jar of sauce and a bit of bone broth to thin it out and, voila…..that’s the basic idea anyway.

The sauce for today’s meatballs included a jar of preserved tomatoes, a scoop of verdurette (see below), a squeeze of lemon juice, fresh herbs, a bit of homemade Worcestershire sauce and a dash of homemade vinegar, onions and garlic. It came together quickly because the ingredients were already here. Basically, it’s the same as creating a meal from sauces you find at the grocery store, except these taste WAY BETTER and they are nutritious (without any preservatives, additives, etc.) and there’s a lot less waste involved (in packaging, food miles and so on). Let’s face it, most foods in the grocery store have toxic ingredients that rob us of good health, whereas food made at home, from single ingredients, nourish us.

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So, here’s what’s hidden in all those containers in the photo….

Top Shelf:

• meatballs in tomato gravy*

• roast veggies*

• whey (from straining the ricotta; I will use this to soak the chicken feed)*

• fresh milk

• cold brew coffee (I make a new batch every 3 days)*

• fizzy water

• fresh mandarin juice*

Next Shelf Down:

• fresh eggs

• hard cheeses

• cabbage salad*

Middle Shelf:

• pickled cabbage*

• red cabbage sauerkraut with grated beets/beetroot*

• bone broth*

• roast pumpkin (in the old yogurt tub)*

• lemon juice*

• a pile of crepes*

• berries and grapefruit

Second to Last:

• ricotta*

• baked ricotta slices (from last week’s ricotta)

• chocolate chia pudding

• jars of nuts, seeds and dried fruit in the back

• left-overs

Bottom Shelf:

• lots of preserves and ferments

• salad dressing*

• verdurette - a homemade vegetable stock seasoning, preserved in salt

• food for my dog for the week - veggies boiled in bone broth*, fish, meat

Veggie Drawer:

• green salad*

• veg from the garden in cotton bags

• cherries from the orchard

• defrosted coriander in olive oil

note: the asterisk denotes items made today

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If you are interested in this way of cooking, I will post some recipes and ideas after next week’s workshop to help you get started…

N x