easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

hey everyone,

this is my first post in this forum

I am a 20 year old college student living off campus without a meal plan for the first time. So I finally have to feed myself.

This is proving to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I put on some weight really fast, because all I am eating is ramen noodles.

I was wondering if any of you had recipe suggestions for meals I could make on my own (preferably inexpesively) to help me stay in shape.

thanks everyone

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

fwiw i box two days a week and do judo two days a week for exercise

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

Grill chicken.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Grill chicken.

[/ QUOTE ]

Chicken breast + sauce / seasoning / marinade -> Grill

Salmon / other fish + seasoning / sauce (cajun is my standard) -> Grill

Add vegetables as side dish

A little olive oil on the salmon to keep it from sticking to the grill

Salad, carrots, etc

fruit

healthy cereals / oatmeal

sliced deli meat

protein shake

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

You can look up the proper thawing and cooking guidelines for anything. Buy big bags of frozen meat, like chicken, so you always have some on hand and you don't have to spend a fortune either.

I'd suggest buying dark meat chicken as it is tastier and doesn't dry out as much when you overcook it.

If you don't want fresh veggies, canned and frozen veggies are good. It doesn't really matter that much so definitely go for convenience.

Another easy way to make good food is with a crockpot/slowcooker. You just put meat, veggies and broth in there and it cooks all day. After about 6 hours I think it's ready to eat.

Also, a question for experienced cooks, what is a good book that will teach you how to cook well? I want to know how to create something tasty that I've never created before, and that requires more than just adding a store-bought sauce/seasoning.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Also, a question for experienced cooks, what is a good book that will teach you how to cook well? I want to know how to create something tasty that I've never created before, and that requires more than just adding a store-bought sauce/seasoning.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've only been cooking seriously for a few months, but Joy of Cooking is helpful for learning cooking principles. In an old 2+2 thread on this topic, Mark Bittman's books were recommended highly as well.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

easier and prolly cheaper way to learn to cook:

1) watch food network while you workout
2) find recipe online, and try to do what they do
3) ????
4) profit

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

George Foreman Grill + Chicken = 12 quality meals a week.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

What sorts of sauce do you guys use for chicken, that is still "healthy"? Teriyaki? Soy sauce?

Basically for chicken I'm rotating three "recipes". I'll stick two breasts in the oven and mix with a bag of light Caesar salad mix. I'll do BBQ chicken in the oven, putting the barbecue sauce on about halfway through cooking. Finally I sometimes make chicken stir fry, basically cubing the chicken, cook it, put refrigerated veggies in, cook them, then throw some soy sauce on it and call it a meal.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

Incredibly easy buffalo style chicken breasts w/ veggies and/or sweet potato:

Marinate chicken breast in Italian Dressing overnight.
Grill chicken breast.
For the buffalo sauce, take one tablespoon of olive oil and combine with one tablespoon of Frank's Red Hot pepper sauce (or your preferred pepper sauce) and combine in small bowl.
Drizzle buffalo sauce over chicken breast.
Take one tablespoon of ranch or blue cheese dressing and add to bowl that had buffalo sauce in it. Stir to combine with residual buffalo sauce goodness for a spicy ranch or blue cheese dipping sauce.
Get frozen veggies in the microwavable bag. Heat per instructions.
If you are eating a sweet potato, poke it with a fork multiple times, wrap it in plastic wrap, and microwave it until soft (probably 4 to 5 minutes).
Slice up chicken breast, dip in ranch or blue cheese spicy sauce and enjoy!

I typically grill several chicken breasts at a time and refrigerate the leftovers for future meals.

For the calorie/fat conscious, use low fat or no fat Italian Dressing and ranch or blue cheese. Also, adding cinnamon and/or cayenne pepper to the sweet potato is a nice alternative to using butter. Fresh lemon juice is also a nice topping for the veggies, especially broccoli.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
George Foreman Grill + Chicken = 12 quality meals a week.

[/ QUOTE ]

Frying pan >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t; foreman grill.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
What sorts of sauce do you guys use for chicken, that is still "healthy"? Teriyaki? Soy sauce?

Basically for chicken I'm rotating three "recipes". I'll stick two breasts in the oven and mix with a bag of light Caesar salad mix. I'll do BBQ chicken in the oven, putting the barbecue sauce on about halfway through cooking. Finally I sometimes make chicken stir fry, basically cubing the chicken, cook it, put refrigerated veggies in, cook them, then throw some soy sauce on it and call it a meal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Using low salt soy sauce, you can get a really decent combo out of that plus fresh garlic, lots of black pepper, and olive oil.

Also check out all the flavored vinegars out there, including rice vinegars. Rice vinegar is extremely low cal and can be very good. You can also spice up whatever type you get. All it takes is playing around with a 15-25 buck spice rack to make plenty of really ordinary stuff pretty interesting, and make you curious to try out more experiments.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Incredibly easy buffalo style chicken breasts w/ veggies and/or sweet potato:

Marinate chicken breast in Italian Dressing overnight.
Grill chicken breast.
For the buffalo sauce, take one tablespoon of olive oil and combine with one tablespoon of Frank's Red Hot pepper sauce (or your preferred pepper sauce) and combine in small bowl.
Drizzle buffalo sauce over chicken breast.
Take one tablespoon of ranch or blue cheese dressing and add to bowl that had buffalo sauce in it. Stir to combine with residual buffalo sauce goodness for a spicy ranch or blue cheese dipping sauce.
Get frozen veggies in the microwavable bag. Heat per instructions.
If you are eating a sweet potato, poke it with a fork multiple times, wrap it in plastic wrap, and microwave it until soft (probably 4 to 5 minutes).
Slice up chicken breast, dip in ranch or blue cheese spicy sauce and enjoy!

I typically grill several chicken breasts at a time and refrigerate the leftovers for future meals.

For the calorie/fat conscious, use low fat or no fat Italian Dressing and ranch or blue cheese. Also, adding cinnamon and/or cayenne pepper to the sweet potato is a nice alternative to using butter. Fresh lemon juice is also a nice topping for the veggies, especially broccoli.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry but dipping in ranch or blue cheese is the opposite of healthy. I like the stuff too, but let's not get carried away here.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

I eat so much chicken since I dont like seafood. I dunno if you guys have Nandos in the states (portugese chicken place...mainly cooks with peri-peri sauce. I love their sauce and its relatively low cal. Heres most of my favorite chicken dishes:

Nandos Stirfry (chicken/veggies)
Szechaun Stirfry (azn sauce..delicious)
Chow Mein with chicken/veggies (with szechaun sauce v. ez)
Chicken Tacos
Chicken Fajitas
Grilled Chicken (nandos suace marinade)
Grilled Chicken (Jamaican Jerk sauce marinade..0 cals but a bit of sodium)
Grilled Chicken (plain...eat with lots of louisiana hot sauce which is obv awesome and 0 cal)
Chicken Burger (nando's sauce marinade...use a portugese roll for bun..I do anyways theyre a bit smaller than a normal bun and fit the breast better. better with mayo but I usually skip it)

I also do a couple pastas but they take a bit longer and you need recipes (search google obv)

Wherever I say marinade I usually dont marinade for long (10 min or so) altho itd prolly taste better with longer marinades (but im lazy)

-Mike

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

i eat a ton of chicken also. my standard is baked potato + lots of carrots + 2 cups of white rice + half a chicken.

is there a health preference with grilled chicken breast vs. microwaving a precooked rotisserie?

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Incredibly easy buffalo style chicken breasts w/ veggies and/or sweet potato:

Marinate chicken breast in Italian Dressing overnight.
Grill chicken breast.
For the buffalo sauce, take one tablespoon of olive oil and combine with one tablespoon of Frank's Red Hot pepper sauce (or your preferred pepper sauce) and combine in small bowl.
Drizzle buffalo sauce over chicken breast.
Take one tablespoon of ranch or blue cheese dressing and add to bowl that had buffalo sauce in it. Stir to combine with residual buffalo sauce goodness for a spicy ranch or blue cheese dipping sauce.
Get frozen veggies in the microwavable bag. Heat per instructions.
If you are eating a sweet potato, poke it with a fork multiple times, wrap it in plastic wrap, and microwave it until soft (probably 4 to 5 minutes).
Slice up chicken breast, dip in ranch or blue cheese spicy sauce and enjoy!

I typically grill several chicken breasts at a time and refrigerate the leftovers for future meals.

For the calorie/fat conscious, use low fat or no fat Italian Dressing and ranch or blue cheese. Also, adding cinnamon and/or cayenne pepper to the sweet potato is a nice alternative to using butter. Fresh lemon juice is also a nice topping for the veggies, especially broccoli.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry but dipping in ranch or blue cheese is the opposite of healthy. I like the stuff too, but let's not get carried away here.

[/ QUOTE ]
Blarg, one tablespoon of reduced fat blue cheese dressing is 3 grams fat. Not a crime man.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

i really like stir frying so far. I cut up some peppers, onions, sugar snaps, broccoli, etc. and let them cook in some chicken broth, toss in some chicken, and put it over whole grain pasta. But ive had that 4 times already.

I just experimented with turkey burgers, it went pretty well so far

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

How many tablespoons do you eat per wing, and how many wings?

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

Thing I don't like about ground chicken and turkey is that to me they taste really bad unless they're hot. Even cruising down toward warm, they get much less tasty.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

[ QUOTE ]
How many tablespoons do you eat per wing, and how many wings?

[/ QUOTE ]
LOL, c'mon blarg did you even read my post? Or did your head explode after reaching the "ranch or blue cheese" portion of it. Seriously man, I only use one tablespoon for an entire chicken breast. I find when you dip something into dressing, you can use a lot less than if you were to pour the dressing directly over what you are eating, whether it be a salad, meat, w/e. I'm guessing this is b/c the dip hits your taste buds first and tricks your mouth into thinking there is a lot more of it than there really is. But maybe I'm just imagining things.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

We're just different. When I bother dipping, I usually dip a lot, at least for a while until my taste buds get saturated. Then I can go just on the memory of the flavor and be happier because I've overdone it for the first half of the dish. Then I pile it on again. If there's a sauce, I almost always run out. But when I make a salad, I don't need much dressing at all.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

Yeah we're just a bit different. Although I think the thickness of the dressing/sauce has a lot to do with it. It is very easy to pour just a bit of vinaigrette over a salad but becomes more difficult if you are using something thick like a ranch or blue cheese (whether it be full fat or not). So anyway, I think we're just talking around each other a bit but there is nothing wrong with the recipe as posted b/c I did include the disclaimer of using low fat/no fat dressings as an option.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

froz/fresh chicken breasts are pretty versatile. i love chicken so i regularly will make a meal of grilled chicken + a side (fresh asparagus, brown rice, corn on the cob, fresh green beans). i also swap salmon in a night or two a week, though eating salmon regularly isn't exactly cheap (but is delicious).

i cook numerous chx breasts up at a time and will save some for other things the next day or two. i buy prebagged light ceaser salads and will have chicken ceasers, and sometimes throw the ceaser in a wheat tortilla for a wrap. also i'll make egg beaters omelettes with onion/jalapeno/tomato/chicken occasionally.

any of those things above + some strawberries/grapes/blueberries/peaches/bananas as snacks keeps me satisified.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

I'm a big fan of cooking a bunch of stuff up in advance too. Stews, spaghetti sauce, chicken, whatever.

Re: salmon prices, unless you're getting the kind caught in the wild, it's almost always on sale somewhere. Every store has a weekly sale, too, so if one doesn't have it, another either does or will soon. I've pretty regularly gotten it at around half price just by checking the newspaper ads, or wandering into the store and seeing the sale. When that happens, I buy a huge bunch of it, cuz I love the stuff, and freeze it up and slowly go through it. It can wind up surprisingly cheap that way.

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

I know these are pretty standard, but imo they're very good tasting and i eat them almost daily:

breakfast:
2 eggs, 2 egg whites - ~180 calories
4oz lean ground beef - 160 calories
1-2 slices wheat toast - 100-200 calories

Adding the two egg whites really increases the size of the meal while having two yolks in there allows the egg to still taste good.


3oz whole wheat pasta -- 300 cals
1/2 cup pasta sauce -- 50 cals
then either:
4oz lean ground beef - 160 cals, 20g protein
or
150grams grilled chicken breast ~150 cals, close to 20g protein

this is about 500 cals, a bit bigger than what some people advocate for meals, but i've found that this lunch really fills me up and helps me hit my caloric goal. if you feel that its too big for one meal you can always drop to 2oz pasta, eat it without sauce, lower the chicken.



as far as preparation goes, the only thing I do is prepare the meat, then add the pasta sauce and throw a [censored] of hot sauce and pepper into the pan. Takes ~10-15 minutes to make (spaghetti boils a lot faster than most other noodle variations)

Re: easy, healthy recipe ideas
 

Here are 101 simple meals.

Take your pick.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18mini.html?

Especially considering the over abundance of grilled chicken in this forum.

jb