Feed Yourself: Easy Meals for Busy Lives

You're a writer, you're a student, you're a young professional. You have things to do, but you also need to eat!

Enter my new blog series: Feed Yourself: Easy Meals for Busy Lives

The idea that I, of all people, am writing about cooking and food is a little bit laughable (though it did make it into my older daughter's recap of my most salient features—see below—and I was very proud of that!). But I was thinking about how, when I was in grad school, I was so busy that I actually wished for a pill that could turn my hunger off, not because I wanted to lose weight but because I felt under so much pressure to get things done that it constantly felt like an imposition to have to take breaks to eat (note: I don't think this was a healthy way to think about the normal human task of eating, and the joy that can be associated with it!). And then I remembered a friend from grad school, who told me she regularly opened a can of black beans and ate them directly out of the can (unheated) while she wrote her dissertation—she needed to eat and she couldn't manage anything more complicated than that.

If you can relate to any of the above, then YOU are the audience for my thoughts on food! If you're, like, using real recipes, or cooking from scratch, you may not get much out of this post.

Alt text: An adorable drawing made by a super-talented 8-year-old lists the following attributes of a mother who is apparently knocking it out of the park: My Julia, writer, cook, she is a present. Julia/mama: nice, fun, brity (pretty), funny, colorful

The Meal!

Here is the meal idea—it's really very simple. It actually only requires 2 ingredients—I have to admit that the pomegranate was a little aspirational and I was probably showing off to include it (though I did put it in my salad!).

Ingredients:

Salad-in-a-bag

Chicken nuggets

Optional add-ins:

Fruit, nuts, or cheese—all of these make a salad delicious

Canned chickpeas or other bean (legumes still have a place in my world!)

Method of preparation:

Microwave the chicken nuggets according to package directions. Empty your salad into a large bowl. Ideally, you've chosen well and your salad-in-a-bag comes with good add-ins and a good dressing (a dressing that you like is really the key to enjoying the whole salad experience, isn't it?). I recommend the Taste of Inspirations and Taylor Farms brands, both of which you can get at Stop and Shop (and probably other places too). Both of these brands deliver when it comes to the most important components of a salad: a) a tasty, creamy dressing and b) crunchy add-ins like freeze-dried corn, breadcrumbs, tortilla strips, etc.

I should say, just as a side note, that, for a long time, I've endeavored to make my own salad dressings. I've had other people's homemade dressings, and they taste so good! But mine never turn out that well, and the leftovers harden and congeal in the fridge, and I end up just not eating that much salad! Which is a shame, because I like salad. So this is an area of life where I've come to embrace taking shortcuts (like buying a salad in a bag) because it means that, overall, I eat more salad, and I have a quick way to feed myself a healthy, well-balanced meal. The perfect really can be the enemy of the good.

When the nuggets are done, use kitchen scissors to cut them into small pieces over the salad bowl. Add dressing, whatever add-ins came with your salad kit, and any other add-ins you've chosen yourself, you saucy kitchen minx (okay, I think I'm writing this post on too much caffeine).

Stir it all together—et voilà! You have a healthyish, well-rounded meal.

It's better than beans from a can!