Optimization of food/time

Sunday food prep – Batch salads and post-workout recovery berry smoothies.

Salads are good for you.  Salads are a pain in the ass. They take forever to make, they take forever to eat and, I don’t know about you, but they get all over the place when you try to eat them with a fork.  How many times have I ruined a perfectly good shirt by mishandling a floppy piece of lettuce dripping with vinaigrette?

But, they’re good for you.  What’s up with that?  It’s like a challenge from a higher force.  “Hey, I’m going to make food that is good for you, but really inconvenient.  You good with that?”

You can buy salad but frankly 99 out of 100 salads in restaurants suck.  They are a handful of wilted romaine lettuce covered with cheese, croutons and dressing.   Or they use the popular mini-field greens that really don’t have enough oomph to satisfy my needs.

I want a big salad.  I want it to have lots of different vegetables in it.  I want to be able to eat it when I want to eat it without having to prepare it first.

How do you overcome these hurdles?  Here’s what I do.

I think in terms of optimization and efficiency.  I want what I want when I want it and I want to minimize the amount of time I have to spend in preparation.

To this end I make my salads in big batches on the weekend and I package them up into single use containers to deploy as needed during the week.

Start with the biggest bowl you have because we are going to make as big a batch of salad as we can.

The base of my salad is kale.  I like all kinds of kale.  I’ll use 8 -9 kale leaves washed and deboned.  With a sharp chef’s knife I chiffonade the cleaned leaves into tiny shreds.  I put those in the big bowl.

On top of the kale shreds I do the same with a head of lettuce.  On top of this bed of greens I’ll throw on finely chopped red bell peppers, mushrooms, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, celery, cabbage – whatever veggies you like – until the giant bowl is full.

The key here is to chop all the veggies very small.  This maximizes the amount of veggies you can fit in a container.  It makes it easier to pack into containers, soaks up the dressings better and makes it easier to eat.

While you’re prepping the carrots and celery you can peel and clean extra to put in plastic bags for snacking.  These are extra credit snack veggies.

When I’m done I’ll mix up all the shredded veggies thoroughly and move them into stackable plastic containers.  I’ll get 3-4 of these containers which are a good size meal for me.  These containerized salads will last several days to a week.

During the week I can grab one of these containers out of the fridge in the morning and take it with me.  I’ll dash in some of my homemade balsamic vinaigrette and shake it up. This is the point where if you want to add nuts, or meat, or eggs, or avocado to your salad you throw it in, as you are packing.

Just toss this container into the fridge at work and you’ve got yourself a convenient, healthy and fast meal anytime you want.  I recommend putting a rubber band around the container to prevent it exploding apart in your car or gym bag in-transit.

I tend to use the disposable containers that we get from the market and this means I can throw one in my bag for a plane ride or trip and just abandon the container when I’m done.

This whole process takes maybe an hour on a weekend day.  After my chores on Saturday or Sunday when no one else is competing for the kitchen I set up my production.  I don’t know how much time it saves me by batching it up like this but it certainly makes it more likely that I’ll eat that salad during the week.

I’ll put on some podcasts and listen while I’m doing my chores on the weekend, and this is no different.  It’s a very efficient use of time that pays off in convenience and speed and frankly, better choices during the week.

Fruit and vegetable smoothies for post workout.

The second thing that I batch up on the weekends is a mixed fruit, veggie, berry smoothie.   I use these for post workouts because they have lots of good antioxidants and some protein in them.  I have never liked vegetable juice, like V8, and my concoction is much sweeter.  It is awesome after a hard workout.

I don’t have any special equipment.  I have an old Osterizer blender that I think we got as a wedding present 30 years ago. It’s so old it was probably made in the U.S.  It’s got a glass blender pitcher that holds about 1.5 Liters – which conveniently translates to 3 X 500ML bottles.

I put in some almond milk as the base.  On top of that I throw in a couple kale leaves and one medium sized red beet.  I cut them up to make the blender’s job easier.  On top of this I throw in a couple cups of berries.  Fresh or frozen blueberries, strawberries and raspberries – whatever I can get.

On top of this I will slice up whatever fruit I have lying around.  Grapes work great because they have a lot of water in them.  I’ll also use apples, peaches, nectarines, citrus – whatever I can find.  I typically don’t use bananas because they make the slurry very thick, for the same reason I stay away from avocados.

Some good news here is that the fruit doesn’t need to be fresh.  If you’ve got stuff that is starting to over-ripen it works great in a smoothie.  You can even slice up the overripe fruit and stick it in the freezer until you’re ready to use it.  If you’re market is like mine it might sell ‘soon-to-pass’ fruit at drastically reduced prices – that’s awesome stuff for smoothies.

There is no set recipe.  I use whatever is available.  I try to not put in too much of one thing or it will overpower the flavor.  Experiment with the fruits and berries you like.  The deep colored slurry that you end up with is chock full of colorful antioxidants and doesn’t taste too horrid if served cold.

Once you have this sweet berry and fruit base you can add other healthy stuff depending on your nutritional philosophy.  Like all those wonder supplements that some huckster talked you into buying for your buns of steel, etc.

The ‘extra credit’ stuff that I throw in is what I have laying around.  I put in a tablespoon or so of chia seeds.  I put in a tablespoon or so of flaxseed meal.  I put in some powdered cinnamon.  I put in a heaping teaspoon of baking cocoa – you can use cocoa nibs if you have them.  I will also slice up some ginger root as well.

Now all you have to do is slap the cover on, hit the ‘liquefy’ button and let it scream for a few minutes until the smoothie is formed.  All the chunks should be gone when it’s done.  It will be a thick, colorful and sweet slurry.  If it is too thick you can add some water in.

Then I pour the slurry into 3 X 500 ML plastic water bottles and toss them in the fridge.  Now I can just swing by the fridge and toss one into my gym bag on my way to a workout.  It’s is a convenient, healthy and healing concoction at the end of a workout.  It’s better than any processed crap you’ll get out of the cooler at the convenience store.

There you have it.  Two ways to use the weekend time that you have to prepare healthy food for you to use conveniently during the week.

Hopefully that will give you some ideas of your own to experiment with.

Chris,