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Fast (Fresh) Food: The next best thing to cooking

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By Laurie Courage

Fast Food, but your way.

There is nothing better than a fresh home cooked healthy meal with seasonal veggies. Yum.

But sometimes life gets in the way and you walk in the door, exhausted, and the drawer with the take out menus is calling your name. You are hungry but didn’t get to the grocery story in time or it is too late to start from scratch.

When weeknight cooking isn’t an option, assembling already cooked fresh ingredients may be just what you need. I call it just in case food, which loosely translated means oops, what’s for dinner?

A little planning can make a big difference.

Why put one pot on the stove when you can put 2 or 3 at a time? Recently, when I cooked some brown rice, I also cooked whole grain pasta at the same time with no specific recipe in mind. The next night, I added some butternut squash sauce, peas and chickpeas to the pasta. Stir. Add salad. Voila.

I use the same concept with brown rice, quinoa, steamed veggies, baked potatoes, vegan sausage, taco crumbles made from tempeh, beans. I can decide what to add based on what needs to be cooked that night and the flavors that work best together. For example, to brown rice I might add some organic frozen corn (fire-roasted is good), black beans, tomatoes and cilantro along with other veggies  and low-sodium or fresh salsa. Add salad. Dinner is served.

Never boring (since there is always different seasonal food to try in my fridge, from my garden or from my CSA), and no more excuses about not having time to eat healthy fast food!

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