The phrase “meal planning” can immediately trigger a sense of dread. But brainstorming healthy recipes, cooking, and portioning out all your meals for the week doesn’t have to be a slog.
On this episode of On Nutrition, we talk with Chef Jen Welper – author of the cookbook “Cook Smart, Eat Well” – about her favorite methods for meal prep. She’ll share strategies for conquering the kitchen, from family meals to holidays.
Listen to Meal planning 101
Read the transcript:
Tara Schmidt: Grandma’s don’t play. This is “On Nutrition,” a podcast from Mayo Clinic, where we dig into the latest nutrition trends and research to help you understand what’s health and what’s hype. I’m Tara Schmidt, a registered dietitian with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. On this episode, meal planning, aka the dreaded task many of us have to do if we want homemade meals throughout the week. How can we make it more efficient, healthy, and most importantly, taste good?
For all the tips and tricks I spoke with Jen Welper, the executive wellness chef at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Chef Jen helps patients establish healthy meal planning habits. You can find more of her advice in her cookbook, “Cook Smart, Eat Well,” published by Mayo Clinic Press.
Tara Schmidt: Hey, Chef Jen.
Jen Welper: Hey Tara.
Tara Schmidt: Thank you for being here. We are talking about all things meal prep today, and I think we are going to make this easy and realistic for everyone, ideally because when we think about meal prep, we are imagining some buff guy in their kitchen, probably shirtless, with grilled chicken, broccoli, and brown rice. Why do you think that that method became so popular?
Jen Welper: Because we think we’re trying to be efficient and I commend that. That is not the only way to do it, especially with very busy lifestyles, so on and so forth.
Tara Schmidt: If eating grilled chicken and broccoli and brown rice for lunch every day is your jam, you do you. If that is what keeps you on track, if that’s what keeps your portions in check, if that’s what helps you with balance of nutrients, I’m all for that. I think you and I just want to make sure that people are also familiar with different ways to prepare meals and there are more than one of those.
Jen Welper: Absolutely. This is what I always try to tell people. I want you to approach it as killing two birds with one stone. If I’m in the kitchen cooking something I want to maximize time there so that I can be more efficient.
If I’m boiling water for pasta, can I be steaming broccoli on top of the pasta at the same time? I can do that because that broccoli is actually for tomorrow’s stir fry.
Tara Schmidt: I don’t think most people would have thought of that though. That’s very chefy of you.
Jen Welper: That’s my job.
Tara Schmidt: But that’s why we’re here, to learn from you.
Jen Welper: That’s right.
Tara Schmidt: I can have two other pans of boiling water and two of my hard boiled eggs. You’re like, “No, Tara, same pan.”
Jen Welper: Let’s talk about some of the benefits of meal planning. I think the most obvious ones are physical health benefits, but maybe there’s a little bit of a mental benefit, too, if we think about stress and time burden tell me what you find are the biggest benefits.
A big part of that is it gives you the ability to nourish your body. In a way that is actually very easy, and I don’t have to go out to eat if I have a family. I don’t have to get everybody there, try to handle everybody’s order, all of those things. There’s a lot of practicality in just knowing. I just have to warm this part up and maybe I have to cook this, but I’m just going to kind of assemble and execute and gosh, that just really streamlined the process. That is if we can just kind of grasp that idea, but just the planning is going to be so important for the execution to go smoothly.
Tara Schmidt: I love the phrase that you just said, assemble and execute, because how nice does it sound to walk into your kitchen after a day of work or a day at home with kids or a day of volunteering, whatever you do, and just be like, “Okay, I’ve three steps until dinner’s done.” That sounds lovely.
Jen Welper: I think it’s important for us to understand if we set our environment up for us to be successful. It’s not just setting ourselves up for success, it’s our family as well. We can make it easy for us to just eat more balanced meals. They may not be perfect, but they’ll be balanced.
If I go into the refrigerator and there’s clementines in there, I might be like, “Oh yeah, that sounds good, but no, I don’t feel like peeling that thing.” But if I go back into that refrigerator and they’re all peeled, I will easily grab that. Right, and so that’s what I mean about really setting your environment up for it to be easy for you to be successful.
Tara Schmidt: I talk a lot about that with kids, and I think I would reference myself as a teenager that unless it was on my chore list, I would have never been like, “”Oh, I should cut that watermelon up. That’s not my job. Unless my mom put it on my list and then I would do it. But then you come home and there’s cubed watermelon in the fridge and you’re like, let’s go.
I heard one time on the internet that when you come into your kitchen and you open up the cupboard or the fridge, you’re likely to eat one of the first three things that you see, and how sweet is that if it is cubed watermelon or a clementine, peeled or not peeled. I’m willing to peel it, but is my toddler now like, “Mom! Do it yourself.”
Jen Welper: My fingers are dirty. Jeez.
Tara Schmidt: Exactly. With this planning ahead, like you said, which is kind of the key step, how do we initiate that?
Jen Welper: I usually try to tell people, if I have this blank piece of paper out in front of me, I’m looking at how I got to fill it in. That’s daunting. Cause you’re thinking I’ve got chicken. There’s a bazillion things I can do with chicken. I wouldn’t start there versus, “What if I pick a sauce?” Teriyaki sauce kind of drives the rest of the menu. I can have rice, I can have chicken, I can do that with anything. I can do tofu, shrimp. Now I have rice. I’m going to make enough rice to have another meal. Another cuisine that has rice in it—Mexican. I put salsa or pico de gallo or whatever. Now we got tacos. We can have chicken tacos. What I’m saying by that is I can take this chicken breast here. I can just do salt and pepper, whatever. Maybe I’m gonna add some cumin and lime juice to it, but I can grill it all in the same pan, and there’s a couple ways to approach this.
I could fully cook all of it and then for tomorrow’s tacos I can just put that in, like warm it up. Or I can just pan sear this or grill this, let it cool and put it to the side. When I get home tomorrow from work, I’m gonna put this in the oven and finish cooking it because the rice is already made. I just gotta maybe chop some cilantro and squeeze a lime in there. We’re good to go, I had stir fry the day before so I should have some extra peppers. Now I’ve got peppers here. I just have to sauté those, take the chicken, sauté that and then build my tacos.
Again, when you’re looking at planning, you want to cross utilize your ingredients, and when you’re doing the actual execution of the planning, I think it’s good to start with a sauce because it can help drive the rest of the menu versus “I have chicken and green beans.”
Tara Schmidt: I drive my menus by the protein, and I’m gonna stop that because we’re gonna fish again this week, for the 52nd week of this year, and I’m gonna eat for the rest of my life, and I’m trying to eat more fish, so I like that idea.
Jen Welper: In my cookbook I have a sheet and I call it mix and match. I’m putting this on fifth grade level, maybe fourth, but I can go down the list of sauces and I’m like, lemon dill. Okay. Salmon. That sounds good versus just putting salmon. Sounds boring. But if I can pick a sauce and drive the rest of the menu, if I decide to put sweet potatoes on my menu, I might want to have sweet potatoes somewhere else in my menu and bake them one time and then maybe the next time you have them mashed, or maybe you do like a sweet potato bowl. The sweet potato is already cooked. Maybe I will pull some quinoa from the freezer. I could chop up some chicken. I threw some feta cheese, some oregano, and lemon. I don’t know. Throw in some spinach and there we go. One of those things is already done.
Tara Schmidt: You’re talking a lot about cross utilization of ingredients, which we talk about when we’re talking about budgeting for grocery shopping and meal planning. Also because we don’t want to waste food because I hate them like, “Oh, I had really good intentions of using this.” And then I just never did, I didn’t plan my meal plan well enough to use up what I bought.
Jen Welper: Also being very intentional about the ingredients that you’re buying, that it is on the menu. Not, “Oh, I’m going to buy some salad because it’ll be nice if I could have one. Often people will buy a head of cauliflower because it was on sale. Did they plan to eat it? Nope, and we need to be better about that. We will save a lot of money.
Tara Schmidt: Think about a restaurant buying an ingredient and they don’t have that ingredient on the menu. That doesn’t make sense. I’ve actually done that from the farmer’s market, like, “Oh, that looks beautiful. Okay.” Then I’m like, “Oh, wait. I don’t know what to do with that.” And then it just sits there.
Jen Welper: Now I gotta cut that. Ugh. What a chore.
Tara Schmidt: Absolutely, because this is time. We’re not going to pretend like meal planning does not take time. But what we’re trying to do is save you time, whether that’s when you’re coming home from work, or you’re saving time when you’re like between three sports, or was saving time because you’re not going out to eat, which I promise you does save time, even though you think it doesn’t. It does.
Jen Welper: Right. What about when people do have these places to run off to? I come home from work and I have to place X or I have to get a kid to place Y? What do you like to do on those nights? What you have to think about is, “Okay, prepare to fail.”
When we prepare to fail, we have at least set ourselves up to some sort of success because we have some backup plans, whether it’s a frozen pizza, and you can throw some vegetables on that or its side salads, or maybe you’ve got chili, you’ve got cans of soup.
Tara Schmidt: Grilled cheese and tomato soup, baby! And by prepare to fail, you mean having something easy on hand for times when you don’t have time to make something from scratch, right?
Jen Welper: Exactly. When it comes to that, you almost want to think ideally, if Tuesdays are crazy, you’re actually going to cook that on Monday night and you’re just reheating it on Tuesday. It’s really about that kind of approach, but always prepare to fail and have something ready.
We want that for like once or twice a week because otherwise you might fall back on that. Even if you have a pan of lasagna in the freezer, you pull that out Monday and then Tuesday it gets warmed up, however that looks. Or maybe you have some frozen bags of rice, broccoli, and you have some pre-grilled chicken in the fridge. You plan that and you’re just going to throw that together and you’re going to put a sauce on it and anytime you cook something from a frozen state, you usually jack up the temperature because you have extra moisture and you’re trying to get rid of that. Just a little tidbit there, but how easy is that? And I’m having a whole vegetable and here’s the thing, do not put things in the freezer just so you don’t have to throw them away today. If you haven’t eaten something in your freezer in three months, there’s a good chance you’re not going to. Like I buy frozen blueberries because it’d be really great for me to make blueberry pancakes. That was two years ago. Those blueberries are still in my freezer.
Tara Schmidt: It’s like one big blueberry.
Jen Welper: I’d rather go to the store and just go get some fresh ones at that point. Don’t do that.
Tara Schmidt: Another busy family night tradition we do is fish, because fish takes 15 minutes to cook compared to chicken. We do fish, and then we do a steamer bag of edamame, which I think is fabulous. Then we do a minute rice. Are you judging me because I use minute rice?
Jen Welper: It’s super convenient, but again you bought a product that is your backup plan.
Tara Schmidt: Exactly.
Jen Welper: You prepared to fail. And not that I’m calling you a failure. That’s certainly not what it’s doing, but you see what I’m saying? If that’s what’s going to be the best for you and your family, I would go with that.
Tara Schmidt: What are the main foods or ingredients that you prep ahead of time? What strategies do you have for people to follow?
Jen Welper: I would say prep it all. But this is what I mean by that, you break it down because when you first get started, that’s a lot. That’s the Super Bowl then. That’s that mindset versus thinking. I’m going to get a frozen bag of rice for tonight’s dinner.
That’s a shortcut for me. Then I’m prepping all of these vegetables. Basically every night that you’re cooking, you might be making another component for another meal because you’re already assembling and executing. If I’m baking lasagna, why can’t I put some sweet potatoes in the oven too? Those are gonna be for tomorrow. That saves me so much time.
If I’m making rice, I don’t have rice for the week. Those other days I do a different ingredient to get me ahead. Maybe the day that my starches are done, I’m getting a bunch of my proteins cooked. I always tell people, you don’t have to cook your proteins all the way through because I think what happens is, people always say, “Chicken’s so dry,” and I’m like, “That’s because you’re overcooking it, and then when you overcook it, what are you doing? You’re drowning it in sauce, and if you’re from the midwest, it’s barbecue or ranch, which is really caloric.
Let’s work on that. Let’s see if we can just cook right to the temperature that we need it to, but we can pan sear things. I can take a whole pan. I can do four chicken breasts that are cajun seasoned, wipe out the pan. I can do another four chicken breasts. That’s maybe basil and oregano. It’s maybe more like a chicken parm flare to it, and then I can pull that out and then tomorrow I can finish that in the oven.
Maybe I do a different take on chicken parm that way, and so you’re looking at just kind of preserving the natural integrity of the juiciness of the protein by just doing the pre-searing because if I just have to take chicken out of the refrigerator already seared and seasoned and loved, and put it in the oven oh, I’m so happy.
Tara Schmidt: You’re going to get what feels like a super fresh, warm meal. Not like I have to eat leftovers, which I know people have opinions about.
Jen Welper: Yes. I try to have people have that switched mindset of calling that prepped food.
Tara Schmidt: Love it.
Jen Welper: Because if you’re at a restaurant, you think they’re making individual rice and mashed potatoes for your plate. No. Some of that rice was done a day or two before and fried rice, honestly, is way better if it’s dried out rice or what you’d call old rice, which is really prepped rice. You got to flip the script on that one a little bit.
Tara Schmidt: I like that. I heard you say, “Hey, if you’re going to be in the kitchen cooking or waiting for something to be done cooking, do something else, like turn on a show, turn on some music, get a nice cup of whatever you’re going to choose to drink and get stuff going.
You’re going to have to be in the vicinity of your kitchen anyway, if something has to do with heat. Do something else, so now in the morning, take it out, put it in. You are done.
Jen Welper: Assembling and executing.
Tara Schmidt: We should have another cookbook called Assembling and Executing.
Jen Welper: Hey! I’m right here.
Tara Schmidt: I’m waiting. Let’s do it! When it comes to meal planning, lead with taste. Having a specific flavor in mind can help you brainstorm and cross utilize ingredients for different dishes. That way, when you assemble and execute your meals, you can have different veggies and proteins seasoned and cooked way ahead of time. Think of your kitchen as a restaurant.
If an ingredient isn’t on the menu, don’t buy it. Instead, prepare to fail. Reserve extra packaged or frozen items for those busy days when you don’t already have a meal ready. You can cut down your kitchen time by cooking ingredients for different meals together, like steaming your vegetables above your boiling pasta, or seasoning and pre-searing chicken so it doesn’t take as long to cook later in the week, and the freezer is a great tool for having easy meals ready when you are, as long as you aren’t using your freezer as storage for foods you’ll never get to. Now let’s talk about navigating picky eaters and conquering the kitchen, even when you really don’t want to.
Let’s get into the actual meal planning, which again can sound really daunting to you. Do you start with the grocery list, or do you scan your pantry first, or do you have this blank sheet of paper that you’re talking about and you do like the sauce thing? Where do you start?
Jen Welper: I usually start with a plan, but I keep a couple of things always consistent, but that’s because it works for me.
Just because it works for me doesn’t mean it’s going to work for anybody else. I always want to preface that I always go to Costco and buy the baby romaine lettuce, and I have five Caesar salads.
Tara Schmidt: You’re such a gym-bro.
Jen Welper: That’s my plan. It doesn’t always have to be Caesar, but that is unfortunately my favorite. Sometimes I also do that for a taco salad, but I just absolutely, naturally love salads. That is just my thing. But then from there I typically only have maybe three different meals for the week. I’m happy with that. I like that. My life definitely revolves a lot around Italian and Mexican food. If it’s going to be pasta, I’m either going to do bolognese or pesto. I can interchange that very easily. I know that I’m just looking at getting pasta, rice and meat into my lettuce and usually tomatoes cause I can cross utilize and then build on that.
When I do Mexican and when buying tortillas, the other plan with that is understanding that I don’t buy that for one meal, I plan on having burritos, and having a chicken Caesar wraps or a buffalo chicken wraps. I’m having quesadillas. Maybe I’m having an egg burrito. Whatever. Because how often do people buy tortillas and have zero plan to use the remainder of those tortillas?
Tara Schmidt: If you buy a pack of 10 and you’re gonna eat one or two your nine tortillas are gonna just wait, either for you to use them or for them to get moldy. And one of those is a better option than the other.
Jen Welper: I really just look at it like, “What is my consistency?” But I don’t overcomplicate it because I know my lifestyle. And I’m honest with myself.
Tara Schmidt: That’s why there’s no one like meal plan or even theory or strategy for people to do meal prepping and planning because I have kids at home and some people do not have kids at home and you may live alone and you may live with your in-laws and there may be six people. I don’t know.
It’s all different. And then we also have the concept of are you home during the day? Okay. Are you not home during the day? You have to do what works.
Jen Welper: But I also want to mention a little bit as I see a lot of patients that come in and they’re either about to be empty nesters or they have a house full of picky eaters. And here’s the thing, you are not a short order cook.
Tara Schmidt: Heck no.
Jen Welper: You have to make sure that unless you have a severe allergy, this is what’s for dinner. Because I have met with patients that have to make something special for their husband, something special for this child and this person. You will learn very quickly in life that if you’re hungry it might not be your favorite food, but you’re going to eat it.
Tara Schmidt: I work with families a lot on engaging the other family members in meal planning. If we’re having fish and broccoli, I may say, “Oh, you know what? Maybe my kids’ favorite foods are not fish and broccoli, but we’re going to eat it. Suck it up. Hey, do you guys want to have the wild rice as our side?”
You guys want me to make couscous like they get to pick. And then at least know they’re going to eat one thing. We call that a safe food sometimes. And most of the time they’re not just going to eat the safe food. They’re going to end up eating the other foods on their plate.
Jen Welper: It makes the chef’s job more daunting. And why would I want to do this? Why would I want a meal prep? Why would I want to plan if it’s always a fight and a battle and it shouldn’t be? When I grew up, it was eat or be eaten to be completely honest with you. My grandma was like, “First of all,” if I ever said anything was gross, she would be like, “You mean you do not care for it.”
Tara Schmidt: Yes. My kids say, “This is not my favorite.”
Jen Welper: But she said, “Missy, there is bread, there is peanut butter, and there is jelly. Help yourself.” And I was like, “Oh, she is not playing.”
Tara Schmidt: Grandma’s don’t play.
Jen Welper: Yeah, she did not play. And not that you have to be that stern, and not that life is like that, but I just don’t want to. The people who are preparing the meals feel like they’re going to war because that’s not what it’s about, and it’s okay to hold boundaries within the meal plan.
Tara Schmidt: I completely agree. I know that there are different takes on this, and I know that every child especially is going to have a different severity of their picky eating. I’m not making a generalization, but for a lot of kids who say, “I don’t want to eat this,” my encouraged response is, “You don’t have to, I’m not going to force you to eat all of the broccoli.” I’m not even going to force you to have three bites of it. I’m going to ask that you try it. I’m going to demonstrate trying it and we’re not going to make a big deal out of if you took a bite or not. I think sometimes the more neutral you are, the less craziness there is. And guess what? A lot of times they end up trying it.
Jen Welper: Exactly.
Tara Schmidt: Then I try not to celebrate that either because I’m trying not to have a reaction. I just had a patient today and she said, “My husband needs to lose weight.” And she’s like, “I’m always saying we’re going to try this new thing.”
Jen Welper: You’re trying to cook healthy. I said, “Because he’s already going to go in at it with a negative mindset.”
Tara Schmidt: Yes.
Jen Welper: No big deal.
Tara Schmidt: Making less of a show about it is always beneficial. How do you help people or what do you encourage people to do if they hate grocery shopping or feel like they don’t have the time and they’re considering a subscription type service? Is it back to you and what works for you?
Jen Welper: Yes, but you know, sometimes I tell people, “Okay buy three meals because three meals could be a bag of rice, pasta, chicken marinara, teriyaki and a bunch of vegetables right there. We could have a chicken quesadilla. We can have stir fry, we can have chicken parmesan.
That’s three meals. How many ingredients do we have? Like seven? That’s not a full cart, that’s a basket, and if you dumb it down like that, and even if you make them question what condiments do you have in your refrigerator right now, I bet you got a pretty full condiment section.
I mean, I even have to do it to myself. I was like, “Oh man, I got pad thai sauce in here.” It’s really being a little bit more realistic within that. And again, like you said, you do you, if it doesn’t make sense for you, then that’s okay. Go do a subscription box.
Tara Schmidt: I can have this conversation super easily because we both love to cook, and kitchens are jam. The kitchen is not everyone’s jam. When someone is not comfortable in the kitchen or they hate cooking, as I hear some people tell me, what methods do you have?
Jen Welper: I always usually try to find, okay, where they are at in this because if you were to say you need to roast a whole chicken, they’re like, “Next I’m going to fast food, but if it takes the weight off their shoulders buying a rotisserie chicken, I’m like, “Okay, well, yeah, I can make a salad. Okay, cool. Well, then let’s do that.”
Tara Schmidt: You don’t even have to make a salad from scratch. You can buy a bagged salad.
Jen Welper: Exactly. But here’s one thing that I really want people to try to start to embrace, especially if you live in an area where there’s a Whole Foods, they have like these salad bars, and it’s plain quinoa and cucumbers, right? You can literally buy your prepped ingredients there, so you don’t even have to do some of that work.
The quinoa’s made. I’ve seen roasted sweet potatoes. I have seen kale blanched, sometimes they have a seasoning, sometimes they don’t. It just depends. And usually if you’re at a fresh market or Whole Foods they usually have a little bit more of your health in mind when they’re preparing it. I absolutely buy the pre-packaged things because if that is better than going to fast food all of the time I’m going to meet you where you’re at, and if we can get you one step closer, perfect.
Tara Schmidt: I’ve had patients who regularly buy, on a weekly basis, a veggie platter that you would bring to a party and their rationale was, “I’m not peeling carrots and I’m not buying an entire cauliflower because that’s way too much cauliflower.” And guess what, that’s how we eat vegetables. That’s how we don’t waste. That’s what’s going to work for me. And it’s more expensive, but you can rationalize that because you are paying someone to do the chopping and the washing and the cute little organization for you.
Jen Welper: I get that question even when it’s conventional or organic. I just want you to do the apple. I don’t really care which one it is.
Tara Schmidt: You know this in your sleep, but seasoning food is a little bit uncomfortable or unknown for people. You can whip out this chicken and do basil and oregano, and this is fish, so we’re going to do dill. Not everyone has that encyclopedia in the back of their brain. How do you help people season food without just butter and salt and pepper?
Jen Welper: Always have a foundation and I always take onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. That is my foundation. If I season everything with that, it’s at least going to taste good, but that might not be quite exciting. If I want a little spicy, or if I had a little cayenne? Or I want something Greek. But I could add lemon. And that’d be nice, I could change two variables. But if I keep my foundation the same, it’s no different than if you have rice. I can go rice and I could have Mexican, I could have Asian, I can do what I call all American in my casserole.
Tara Schmidt: Rice with butter and salt?
Jen Welper: There you go. But we can start using fresh herbs. And one thing I’ll mention about. I get this a lot from patients like, “Well, I love getting fresh herbs, but they don’t last long.” I said, but do you plan to use all of it up? Whether you put it on your chicken and a couple of days later, you roast it on your potatoes. But dried herbs need some moisture.
If I just put dry rosemary and chicken and throw it on the grill, you’re really not gonna get the same flavor as if you had fresh, dried rosemary in a sauce, I can get a nice flavor profile. There are charts you can follow. Adding an acid is always good. I always say if it’s the sherry cooking wine, lime juice, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, red wine, any of those with your foundation, it’ll add something different and just start to get kind of comfortable. There is a little research on the cook’s end, but I think if you understand having a foundation of seasoning, you’ll be okay. And I do recommend using kosher salt over iodized salt just because you can use a lot less.
Tara Schmidt: And we get plenty of iodine in our food.
Jen Welper: Definitely.
Tara Schmidt: What kind of foods still have integrity at the end of the week if they’ve been sitting in your freezer. I don’t necessarily want something sitting in my fridge for seven days. I want it in the freezer, but I also want it to not feel like I microwaved a frozen food. Any foods that are freezer safe if you want to do something on Sunday night, but not eat it until Friday.
Jen Welper: Absolutely. I think one thing to remember too, though, is if you’re gonna put something in the freezer, put it in the oven to finish the process. Versus the microwave. And I will tell you this, you can freeze pasta, you can freeze rice and grains and quinoa and farro and barley and all of the things.
I want you to take a measuring cup full of water, put that in the microwave and boil that. Take it out, pour it over your rice, pour it over your pasta, whatever. Let it sit. Strain it off. You’ve done two things. One, you’ve reheated it and you’ve rehydrated it because freezers, refrigerators are like dehydrators.
Tara Schmidt: Meal planning is not one size fits all. It really depends on your lifestyle. The amount of people in your home and their appetites can certainly dictate how much food you make, but they don’t always get to dictate what you make. Sure, take people’s taste preferences into account, but you are not a short order cook.
Simplify your work each week by making three or so meals for everyone. And if cooking is not your jam, there’s nothing wrong with taking shortcuts like a bagged salad or meals from the grocery store hot food bar. But if you want to spice it up, you can’t go wrong with these base flavors, salt, pepper, garlic, and onion powder.
And then do some research about matching herbs and flavors to take your meal to the next level. Now let’s get into the ultimate meal prep, holiday season.
The holidays are coming up and it can be really stressful to cook a ton of food for visiting friends and family. Obviously preparing things can be essential or really helpful because you don’t necessarily want to be stuck in the kitchen. Any tips for preparing a feast ahead of time or again, half preparing it?
Jen Welper: Yeah. I mean, even if you think like Thanksgiving, you can easily bake the sweet potatoes, mash them, put them in a container in the freezer and then pull them out and start to season them. And slowly warm them up. Think of it if you look at a convention center, they’re not always making everything from scratch two days prior. A lot of that stuff is done like a week before, and they start to pull and thaw, and then they assemble it. Scale that down to your little home.
Tara Schmidt: I’m going to make the salad dressing from scratch that can just sit on your counter. Likely if it’s an oil-based dressing. I can also prep the nut mixture that’s going to go on top that can just sit in the pantry.
Jen Welper: Assemble and execute. Like any type of panko crust, if you’re doing anything fancy, make that whole panko crust or whatever it is and then put that in the freezer and pull it out when you’re ready.
Tara Schmidt: Yeah, I don’t think people think of freezing things like that.
Jen Welper: Yeah, they don’t and I understand if you’re not used to like thinking that forward. Yeah It’s it’s hard to like get out of that mindset of not being like that
Tara Schmidt: The holidays, good or bad, are also a time where a lot of us are eating more red meat than normal. I’m definitely eating more dessert than I normally would. I’m very conscious of not liking everything. Do you have little tips or swaps that you also do to make things healthier, but not upset Uncle
Jen Welper: Of course mashed potatoes I always put in pureed cauliflower. I am your cauliflower queen. Boil it all. Get your little stick blender, if you have a food processor. Process it all, let it cool, put it in a bag, put it in the freezer. When you’re making your mashed potatoes, you’re adding that.
The cool thing about adding cauliflower, it’s pretty wet at that point. You don’t need as much cream or butter or sour cream or whatever to help whip that and get it fluffy. You can still add butter, but usually you don’t really need to add any milk. Add your garlic, salt and pepper.
Tara Schmidt: People are probably, if you didn’t tell them, probably wouldn’t know. If no one’s allergic to cauliflower don’t even say anything.
Jen Welper: I use a lot of quinoa with my meat because it is a complete protein, but my ratio from red meat is different.
Tara Schmidt: What can people bring to someone’s home, if they are not a chef, for a holiday gathering? They want to bring something healthy. We also want to impress people. What else can we bring that’s not just a veggie platter or fruit platter?
Jen Welper: Oh gosh, it depends. People usually like these because there’s not a lot of ingredients to them, but they’re so delicious. Sweet potato quinoa cakes.
Tara Schmidt: Yum.
Jen Welper: A fun little side dish.
Tara Schmidt: Are those in your cookbook?
Jen Welper: They are.
Tara Schmidt: Sometimes I get bougie and instead of parmesan cheese, I’ll use Gruyere.
Jen Welper: And sometimes I just switch everything up altogether. We’ll make it kind of smoky and do poblanos by the way. I’m a huge poblano lover. Huge. Otherwise, what I also like to do is crunchy. I’ll do a Ritz topping and do that with roasted cauliflower and broccoli. There’s a little bit of olive oil in the Ritz, like honey glazed brussel sprouts.
Tara Schmidt: Super fancy, but probably not that complicated at all.
Jen Welper: Not one bit. We can do things that are a little bit more exciting. You could do stuffed mushrooms with pesto. You can literally buy the pesto and the mushrooms, stuff it, and then make a topping. Easy.
Tara Schmidt: Throw it in the oven at that person’s house and look how fancy you are. I actually just got asked about this from the media recently about how much weight people gain during the holidays. it’s not that much.
But we absolutely do fall out of the routines of our healthy eating and our snacks. How do we get back on track after maybe a vacation or a cruise or the holidays? How do you get back into action?
Jen Welper: Sometimes what I do is a protein shake. I’ll get a fair life protein shake and then I go back to my salad regimen. In my mind, if I’m having a protein shake and I’m having something like a salad mix, then I’m doing okay.
Now I’m getting into the groove of things, and then I jump back into it, but also I think taking a little bit of time to plan for when you do come back, have some safe things in the fridge ready for you.
Tara Schmidt: You can always have shelf stable items, you can always have beans in your pantry. Canned beans are fine. No salt added, way to go. You can always have pasta or rice. There’s just a lot that you can start with.
But you have those things on hand that you’re going to regularly use, that you don’t have to worry about going bad. They’re just there for a super busy night, or a Sunday when you don’t feel like doing anything in terms of meal planning or prepping, or when you get back from the holidays and you’re like, “All right, let’s start tomorrow with a protein shake.”
Jen Welper: It has to be realistic and sustainable for sure.
Tara Schmidt: Jen, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I appreciate all of your wisdom and you’re even more fun to spend time with in the kitchen, but this is fine too, I guess.
Jen Welper: Well, thank you so much for having me. This was amazing.
Tara Schmidt: Is it really possible to have healthy meals during the holiday season? Absolutely! You can start by prepping items in advance to relieve stress. There’s plenty of veggie substitutes to mix into traditional recipes of healthy dishes you can bring to a gathering. And if a holiday break throws you off your game, give yourself some grace.
It helps to have shelf staples like beans and pasta or protein shakes to help you get back into meal planning mode. When you’re ready, you can jump back into your healthy, efficient meal planning.
That’s all for this episode, but if you’ve got a question or topic suggestion, you can leave us a voicemail at (507)-538-6272. We might even feature your voice on the show. You can find more information about Chef Jen’s cookbook, Cook Smart, Eat Well, in the show notes online.
For cooking demos, join the Mayo Clinic Diet online to see Chef Jen in action. For more “On Nutrition” episodes and resources, check us out online at mayoclinic.org slash on nutrition. Thanks for listening. And until next time, eat well and be well.
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