Everyone knows the benefits of cooking at home vs. eating out, but when it comes to preparing meals, people are never short on excuses. ‘I don’t have the time’ and ‘I don’t know how’ are the most popular. After reading this article you won’t be able to claim either.

Eating out takes a lot longer than you think. Between looking through menus, placing orders, and waiting for delivery, the process usually takes 30-45 minutes. If you follow these basic steps, you’ll be able to prepare healthy meals at home in 15-20 minutes.

Stocking Up on Food

I hate going to the grocery store, so when I do I load up for 2-3 weeks. Although I love eating fresh produce, it goes bad quickly. Buy as much fresh produce as you can eat in a week, along with a bunch of frozen and canned food.

Some types of canned or frozen food tastes terrible, while others are surprisingly good. I absolutely hate canned vegetables, but find frozen veggies taste great. Things I buy frozen include peas, broccoli, green beans, and other vegetables. Canned foods I eat include beans, lentils, and tuna.

With meat, I generally buy massive economy packs of chicken, beef, pork, or fish. When I get home, I open up the packages, separate the meat into single meal portions, place them in baggies, and put them in the freezer. This is a great way to save money and stock up for weeks.

Perfecting your grocery list takes a bit of practice, but it makes your shopping and cooking very efficient.

Food Preparation

Preparing meals efficiently depends on a few core principles:

• Routine - Eating the same meals on a regular basis will allow you to master the process.
• Simplicity - To cook quickly, you’ll need to eat simple meals that don’t require elaborate preparations.
• Multi-tasking - Having multiple cooking processes going on at once is the key to efficiency.

The Microwave is Your Friend

The fastest and easiest way to cook is popping something in the microwave. Most of the foods I’ve mentioned above (canned/frozen vegetables and grains) don’t need any other preparation. Note that this is much different than eating pre-made microwavable meals.

A Sample Meal Walk Through

To give you a concrete idea of the process, here is a step-by-step walk through of a typical meal.

1. Start by defrosting meat in the microwave. This takes approximately 5 minutes. While the meat is in the microwave, get everything ready for the next step by pulling out vegetables and beans and preparing them for the microwave. Also, turn on your Foreman Grill (a great way to minimize clean up time) or start heating a pan on the stove so it’s already hot when the meat is ready. If you’re cooking rice or pasta, you’ll want to start boiling water a bit earlier. Personally, I’ve been hooked on beans (and much leaner) ever since I tried the slow carb diet.
2. When the meat is done defrosting, start cooking it. Immediately place your frozen vegetables in the microwave (3 min). When the vegetables are done, throw in your beans (1.5 min), or take the next step in preparing your pasta or rice, since the water should be boiling. It’s easy to do this stuff while tending your meat at the same time.
3. Throw it on a plate. By the time the meat is done, all your vegetables, beans, or grains should be ready or close to it. Apply which ever seasonings you like and enjoy.

The total preparation time should be around 15 minutes, possibly a bit longer if you decide to make pasta or rice. The resulting meals are not only easy to cook, but they’re also remarkably nutritious and inexpensive. To cut down even more on prep time, cook the meat for multiple days at once and microwave it later.

If you can enjoy simple meals and don’t mind eating the same food most of the time, you can save tons of time and money by mastering a process, multi-tasking, and utilizing the speed of microwaving.

What are your healthy and efficient cooking tips?

Image by mullingitover

In the past couple weeks I’ve had the privilege of doing 2 very interesting interviews on developing a passionate career.

The first is with our very own Peter, over at his personal site, The Change Blog. The site recently got a new name and a brand new design. Head over and check it out.

Career Transitions: John Wesley talks about the Social Media, Taking Risks and Chasing Your Dreams

The second is with Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Nonconformity. The group interview includes several well known bloggers include Darren Rowse, J.D. Roth, and Leo Babauta.

Follow Your Passion? The Blogger Roundup 

The choice between having a career or making time for love is an extremely personal and individual decision. There are many factors which can affect your choice, and there are many people who have discovered how to achieve a healthy work life balance that allows them to have both.

Careers and love fulfill us in different but important ways. Having a solid career gives us a sense of accomplishment and self worth, aside from the practicalities of paying the bills. Many people develop their entire identity based upon what they do, elevating their career to a level of great importance in their lives.

Then there are those who measure their success in terms of having a pleasant and rewarding home life. They develop their identities based upon the accomplishments of their children, and derive their self worth through the love and support of a spouse.

So what happens if you cannot or do not wish to make room in your life for both? While the happiest and healthiest people have managed to develop a work life balance that allows for both, it may not be for everyone. Consider these factors when pondering which is more important for you.

1. Your Career May be More Important When You are Young

Many people these days focus on careers first and family later. The reasoning is that, while you are young and unencumbered, you have the time and energy to fully devote yourself to a career. If you have lofty career ambitions while you are young, it may indeed be the time to start making progress towards those goals.

Once you get married and begin to build a family, much of your time and energy – by necessity – becomes devoted to your family. This is as it should be. You should not start a family unless you are willing to devote time and attention to your loved ones.

Many people who accomplish great success in their careers when they are young, and establish themselves in a secure position, are then more willing and comfortable later on to devote themselves to family. By the time they do settle down, they are more prepared to handle the responsibility.
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It is an oft repeated axiom that money cannot buy happiness. While this is certainly true, poverty will not buy happiness either. Some people become very wealthy, yet struggle to enjoy their lives. On the other hand, others manage to go through life with very few money problems simply because they are able to make the most of what they have.

Ideally you should try to combine both prosperity and happiness. To do this I recommend the following steps:

1. Learn to Value Simplicity

The aim of life should not be to accumulate as many possessions and as much wealth as possible. We should learn to be content with what we have and appreciate the benefits of simplicity. For example, if we clear out our unnecessary clutter we will achieve a greater feeling of space and freedom.

If you feel happiness is directly related to material possessions, you are making a mistake. Happiness can be gained just through being content with a small amount of possessions. Our inner wealth is not just about what we have, but what we are content to live without.

2. Do Not Be Attached to Your Money

Does it pain you to spend your own money - even if it is for something useful? Even someone like Bill Gates can feel uncomfortable spending his billions; it is said he used to always travel economy class because he didn’t see the need to spend more money on first class. The problem with this, however, is that if we are always reluctant to spend money we miss the whole point of earning it.

A good attitude is to see money as a circular flow - that is, spending money enables more to come into our lives. It is not like a big dam where we just try to hold onto it all. We need to let the money out by spending on useful and necessary things. It is no good having a stockpile of water unless we use it to generate power; similarly it is no use accumulating large savings if we we feel miserable spending it.
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