Convenient? Yes. Healthy? But of course!

Very often people want to find ways to save time: ways to get things done faster, and ways to get things done without really having to commit the time necessary to do something right. This also applies to making the time to eat healthy meals. This is a fancy-shmancy way of saying that the word 'convenience' often dominates overour lives. I see it around me everyday: we drink breakfast shakes to save time in the mornings; we eat many of our meals at Wendy's to save time at lunch or dinner because we have found ourselves burdened by a scedule that often leaves us feeling too exhausted and unmotivated to prepare our meals ahead of time for the workplace or to contemplate putting aside the time and effort we believe it would take to prepare a healthy meal for dinner once we have arrived home from work. I confess that I've been there, I have done many of the things that we know are not so healthy stop gap tactics to help us save some time:

* I have eaten a dubious breakfast meal at a McDonald's in the early morning hours, or stopped off at a convenience store for a coffee and breakfast pastry because I had convinced myself that I just "didn't have the time" in the morning for a healthier alternative.

* I have found myself eating taco chips, chocolate filled croissants, microwavable pizza-pockets or pepperoni-cheese sticks for my midday meal because there they were at the store and I just didn't want to spend the time to consider a healthier alternative.

* I have found myself eating at 'fast food' restaurants when I have been out for the evening to watch a show and convince myself that it would be oh so much more convenient to do this.


* I have brought home my evening meal in a frozen tray, a cardboard box or in a can or in a bag simply because I couldn't be bothered to put more effort into it.


See? I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to living our lives at the whims of whatever is most convenient or efficient. Heck I'm sure that there has even been a hint of economics in many of my past culinary decisions.

Until my current girlfriend started working on me to start giving up some of my less healthy habits, I was firmly bogged down in the above behavior. I would buy a coffee before work instead of spending the five minutes it would take to grind my own and have it ready to brew before work. I would say to myself "Meh, I'll just go to Tim Horton's for breakfast", instead of having it in my home. I would go across the street to the supermarket at lunchtime instead of making the effort to buy the right groceries ahead of time with which to make my lunches the evening before ( again, another five minutes of my time to actually make that lunch the night before work, but ... nah) .

So what else helped change my mind?

Now if you are reading this while eating you might want to just skip ahead to avoid these next couple of lines because they are a bit disturbing in nature. One night I was lying wide awake in bed at two in the morning wondering what was wrong with me: it felt like I was coming down with the flue or suffering from some kind of food poisoning. Whatever it was, I was lying there feeling quite nauseous and thinking to myself that I could still feel the previously frozen pizza that I had consumed for my dinner the evening before just sitting there in my stomach going nowhere. Well I was quite mistaken about that, because no sooner had I mused on my feelings of fullness, that I started to feel much more nauseous and felt the urge to get up out of bed and rush to the bathroom. No sooner did I get there then the contents of my stomach decide to evacuate themselves through my throat- forthwith.

How did this all turn out?

Well, lets just say that there was a frightening amount of orange muck everywhere in my modestly-sizedbathroom after I was done. I have never really been able to eat a frozen pizza ever since then(the idea of doing so just gives me shivers).

Honestly though it is very easy for someone to condemn bad habits but what are the alternatives?

Okay, here are a few of the alternatives I have been playing with so far:

*If you regularly buy your morning cup of coffee and give the reason that your home-brewed ground coffee just doesn't quite taste as good as the freshly ground coffeeshop stuff you get on your way to work, then try this: spend the ten or twenty bucks necessary to get yourself a basic countertop coffee grinder. Next buy a bag of better quality roasted coffee beans (even buy Starbucks beans, if you want-but go to somewhere like a wholesaler or warehouse store to get them at a better price), and start enjoying your morning coffee at home or on the way to work without having to buy it on the way to work. You won't notice any real difference and the money you will save grinding your own will pay for the grinder before you know it (and thinking of the money you are saving over time will make your morning cup a joe taste just that much better).


* Save more money by bringing your lunch with you: even make it appetizing by buying a variety of fancy buns, veggies, deli meats and condiments (and even some small bags of potato chips if you really have to) and you won't even miss that Tim Horton's sandwich at lunchtime. Of course if you figure out how much making your own lunch is saving you in time saved not lining up to buy lunch or in money by not dropping your dough at the end of that lunch line, your homemade sandwich becomes even more appetizing.

* Get yourself a rice cooker: it's healthier than using instant rice and just as easy to prepare (if not more so). It also tastes better, I think.

* Learn to regularly cook with that toaster oven that has been sitting idle in the corner of your kitchen counter. It is truly surprising just how versatile it can be and the stigma that some seem to have cooking with their oven is not there with the trusty toaster oven (it also takes less time to heat it up to the needed temperature). Remember it is not a microwave: you can cook a moderately-sizedroast with it.

* Invest some money in a slow cooker. This is something that my wife has encouraged me to start playing with recently. One of the more widely known ones out there is the Rival Crock pot. I know, I know: this is starting to sound like some kind of 'welcome to my happy kitchen' kind of diatribe, but don't worry it's not as scary as it sounds, guys. Basically, with a Crock Pot the idea is that you throw in the meat and vegetables that you want for dinner, turn it on and let it do its thing - set it and forget it. If you do this in the morning, you can cook it on a lower setting, while if you set it in the afternoon you just set it to cook at a higher setting. Yes guys, it really is just that easy once you get the hang of it.