This week as part of the Keeping It Real tour for this month, I’m going to talk about real food. What does that term “Real Food” mean to you? Well, last week, I asked on my Facebook page what it meant and several people replied that it means not from a package or a box. Or even just fresh fruit and vegetables. I think it means all of the above. Whether you have a clear idea or no idea or are somewhere in between, the one thing I want you all to remember is that we all have to start somewhere!
I’ve got a few tips to help you get started making and serving more real food to your family.
The Two-Thirds/One-Third Rule
When I teach a meal planning workshop I like to tell parents to try the “Two-Thirds/One-Third” Rule. I think this is a rule I made up but I’m not totally sure because I’ve been a proponent for so long!
The idea is this: make 2/3 of the foods on your plate familiar foods and 1/3 a new food. Maybe that means frozen chicken nuggets, French fries (maybe sweet potato fries) and garlic roasted broccoli. Or maybe that’s pizza, sliced cucumbers and maybe a garden salad with a new homemade salad dressing. Of course, you’ll want to try to keep things balanced with variety, but hopefully you get the idea!
Three Easy Ways To Eat More Real Food
Here are a few other simple ideas to help you add more fresh and real foods to your menus.
Cook it a different way. For years I almost always steamed vegetables for a side dish.
Like Every. Single. Time.
It’s easy to do and requires little preparation time. But other than steamed corn and peas, my family never really loved steamed anything else. One day I tried roasting our broccoli and oh my gosh! We all gobbled it up! My kids actually request it regularly now! My husband, on the other hand, prefers his broccoli raw so when I’m preparing it I just leave a little to the side for him. See, everyone has a different preference but I was stuck in the steamed veggie rut for so long I thought it was just the veggie itself that was doomed.
Provide variety. When I first started making salads regularly with our dinners, I had a toddler and a preschooler. My husband ate them pretty regularly but my kids did not love lettuce so much.
But I kept making them.
And serving them.
Several times a week.
In addition to the lettuce, I’d mix things up by adding other vegetables like sliced carrots, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, avocado, etc. Usually the kids would just have one of the cut up vegetables. I remember it was probably at least a year later that my daughter said she wanted a “real salad”. That meant with lettuce. Flash forward several years later and now they are both fans of “real salads”. But not always. My son has been known to have a “salad” of all cucumbers or maybe cucumbers and tomatoes or carrots. That’s ok! We let them pick and choose how they make their salads. But whatever way that is, they’re getting fresh veggies! Win-win!
Use your silent electronic kitchen assistants. I LOVE, love, love my slow cooker. And my rice cooker. And my bread maker. (By the way, you can find my favorite models in my Amazon Shop by clicking here). These are all my silent kitchen assistants that let me prepare real food for my family with little hands on time from me. Best of all, they all have a “keep warm” setting or some have a “cook later” setting that means we don’t have to eat it the minute it is done and it will be ok!
Do you need all of these? Nope. (I’ve acquired mine over several years or received as a gift). But even if you have just one of these, make sure you’re using it to its full potential. I probably use a combination of the first two for sure at least three times a week. I even have an ice cream maker that I splurged on several years ago and while we don’t make homemade ice cream all that often, when we do it sure is handy to let that thing just churn away for a half hour or so hands free!
For more real food recipe ideas, be sure to check out my Recipe Index by clicking here.
What other tips do you have for getting real food to the table more easily at your house? Please share ideas and recipes in the comments below.
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