How to Cook Easy, Healthy, and Quick Meals

10/25/18 • 20 min

Fabulous Over 50

Do you ever feel like the lone employee in "Mom's Diner?"

Sarah Moore shares how to end that, and enlist help to make meals fun again.

Today Sarah Moore discussed:

When it comes to meal planning - "simplify, simplify, simplify."
Google meal plans so you don't have to come up with your own. Simple, easy, and healthy.
Assign themes to each day: Pasta Monday, Taco Tuesday, burger day, pizza day, British food day, Indian food day, etc.
Make the same theme each Monday, Tuesday, etc so you don't have to think about what you're making.
Use the "bar" approach: salad bar, potato bar, taco bar, etc.
You can buy all meals out on Saturday, then eat leftovers on Sunday and have no cooking at all!
Give yourself permission to make the same thing twice a week if that's what works.

Breakfast:

Try making a "Chunky Monkey Bowl." You'll find the recipe on Sarah's website Urban Earth Mom.
Don't make different things for every meal, or you'll feel like it's "Mom's Diner."
Making the same thing for breakfast every day Monday through Friday to make things easier.
Kids can make their own breakfast. Plan ahead and make it simple.
On weekends she makes pancakes, Eggs Benedict, etc. and turns it into a family activity.

Lunch:

Eating leftovers from dinner is a simple way to cut down your cooking time.
Sit down with each child and make a list of pre-approved lunch box options that can be mad quickly. Entrees, sides, and dessert are already decided, so it's easy for you to plan, and you know it's food they'll eat.

Dinner:

Always have dry pasta and frozen vegetables on hand for quick and health dinners. Use a no-cook sauce made from pantry and fridge staples, and add fish or meat.
Rice can be cooked ahead and stored ahead in the freezer so it's instant.
Quinoa cooks quickly
Use dip and keep it in the fridge, like pesto, tapenade, or hummus. Use it for a sauce for your pasta, quinoa, or rice. Add veggies and meat and you're done!
Make enough each evening to have enough for everyone to have lunch the next day. or make 3-4 times the normal amount of dinner and have the same thing the next day for lunch and dinner the night after that. Or freeze it for dinner another night.

A word from Sarah:

"Hi, I'm Sarah Moore. I've been eliminating chaos since 1989! My left brain discovered a long time ago that it has the mind of a Lego master builder when it comes to filtering out all the busy work and time wasters of a process or project leaving only what is necessary to achieve the desired result.

My right brain is a little woo and I believe that everything is energy. My left brain is OK with that because Einstein thought so too. Your thoughts are energy - they are electrical impulses traveling down neurons. Food is energy: plants fix the energy of the sun. But it's really easy to get that energy stuck. Ever had the same song playing over and over in your head all day? Exactly, Stuck energy.

When you combine the two halves of my brain you get a project manager who has a laser focus on the critical path: the only bits of a project that actually need to get done to achieve the desired result. Whether that critical path is the a to z of a huge corporate project, a small entrepreneur's project or the pathway to getting dinner on the table with no fuss...I have the ability to cut through the fluff and leave only what truly matters.

These days I prefer to work with overwhelmed women who have too much on their plates and piles of stuff threatening to take over their homes. I bring you discipline and simplicity to help you find balance. With a big helping of no excuses tough love too."

You can find Sarah Moore:

Website: https://www.urbanearthmom.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbanearthmom/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/UrbanEarthMom/

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanEarthMom

Want to connect? You can find me at HardyMom.com

Thank you for joining me, Jen

p.s. Like the show? It would be great if you could help out by subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

Our music is "A New Day," by Scott Holmes

This episode is sponsored by the book, "The Sick Mom's Guide to Having Fun Again: If I can do it, you can too!" available on

Do you ever feel like the lone employee in "Mom's Diner?"

Sarah Moore shares how to end that, and enlist help to make meals fun again.

Today Sarah Moore discussed:

When it comes to meal planning - "simplify, simplify, simplify."
Google meal plans so you don't have to come up with your own. Simple, easy, and healthy.
Assign themes to each day: Pasta Monday, Taco Tuesday, burger day, pizza day, British food day, Indian food day, etc.
Make the same theme each Monday, Tuesday, etc so you don't have to think about what you're making.
Use the "bar" approach: salad bar, potato bar, taco bar, etc.
You can buy all meals out on Saturday, then eat leftovers on Sunday and have no cooking at all!
Give yourself permission to make the same thing twice a week if that's what works.

Breakfast:

Try making a "Chunky Monkey Bowl." You'll find the recipe on Sarah's website Urban Earth Mom.
Don't make different things for every meal, or you'll feel like it's "Mom's Diner."
Making the same thing for breakfast every day Monday through Friday to make things easier.
Kids can make their own breakfast. Plan ahead and make it simple.
On weekends she makes pancakes, Eggs Benedict, etc. and turns it into a family activity.

Lunch:

Eating leftovers from dinner is a simple way to cut down your cooking time.
Sit down with each child and make a list of pre-approved lunch box options that can be mad quickly. Entrees, sides, and dessert are already decided, so it's easy for you to plan, and you know it's food they'll eat.

Dinner:

Always have dry pasta and frozen vegetables on hand for quick and health dinners. Use a no-cook sauce made from pantry and fridge staples, and add fish or meat.
Rice can be cooked ahead and stored ahead in the freezer so it's instant.
Quinoa cooks quickly
Use dip and keep it in the fridge, like pesto, tapenade, or hummus. Use it for a sauce for your pasta, quinoa, or rice. Add veggies and meat and you're done!
Make enough each evening to have enough for everyone to have lunch the next day. or make 3-4 times the normal amount of dinner and have the same thing the next day for lunch and dinner the night after that. Or freeze it for dinner another night.

A word from Sarah:

You can find Sarah Moore:

Website: https://www.urbanearthmom.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbanearthmom/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/UrbanEarthMom/

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanEarthMom

Want to connect? You can find me at HardyMom.com

Thank you for joining me, Jen

p.s. Like the show? It would be great if you could help out by subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

Our music is "A New Day," by Scott Holmes

This episode is sponsored by the book, "The Sick Mom's Guide to Having Fun Again: If I can do it, you can too!" available on

Previous Episode

How to Tame the Paper Monster and Eliminate Clutter with Sarah Moore

Are you living in paperwork overwhelm? Do you have so many pieces of adorable children's artwork you just don't know what to do with it all? Do you need a simple way to control papers? Then this is the episode for you! This series is different, because instead of an interview, Sarah Moore will be giving 4 separate master classes that make up the 4 Organization episodes. Today's master class is about Taming the Paper Monster. Sarah Moore's 3 Step Paper Reduction Strategy :

1. Stop the paper coming in 2. Put something in place that makes it easy to deal with the paper going forward 3. Get rid of what you already have

Today Sarah Moore discussed:

How to accomplish step 1:

Asking to go paperless for bills
Talk to your kids' school about sending the flyers electronically in emails, not send papers with kids that make a mess then get lost
Get off of junk mail lists by going to this link: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolicited-mail-phone-calls-and-email

How to accomplish step 2:

Ambush the paper at the door, Sarah has a recycle bin, a shredder, and an action basket at the door.
No more mail on the kitchen counters
Use a 4 cube mail station with 1 cube for recycled paper, 1 for shredder, and 1 basket for action. Go through the action basket 2-3 times per week.
Use a clip or basket for your kids to put their paperwork in when they walk through the door, that way they don't get lost or make a mess. Put that clip or basket on your mail station.
Every day when her daughter comes home, Sarah has a "how was your day?" Conversation with her daughter, and her daughter puts her paperwork away at that time.
Kids artwork: Art gets displayed in one place for one week, or until the space is full. As pieces are taken down, they go into a portfolio. Every season, a few pieces are chosen to keep forever.
Or take pictures of all the art and create a photo book of all of it. That way you can save more pictures in a small space.
You can use kids artwork for wrapping paper!

How to accomplish step 3:

Collect all paperwork and bring it to the coffee table or kitchen table so you can watch tv as you go through it. Get yourself a cup of tea to enjoy as you go through it.
Get 2 boxes and a shredder/recycle bin 1 box of things to keep 1 box of actionable items (set aside a time each week to deal with them)
Go through every piece of paper and put it in one of the 2 boxes

A word from Sarah:

Next week we'll be talking about how to feed your family fast, cheap and healthy

You can find Sarah Moore:

Website: https://www.urbanearthmom.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbanearthmom/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/UrbanEarthMom/

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanEarthMom

Thank you for joining me today!

Want more? Go to

Next Episode

Abandoned at the Airport

UPDATE:

I'm no longer in a wheelchair when I get tired, or a walker. My cane has been gathering dust in the garage for three years! I've moved to paradise, changed my mindset, overcome my trauma (most days) and am a different person from the one who created this episode! Reach out to me here, and I'll tell you more.

In today's episode, I'm talking about being abandoned in an empty terminal, in a wheelchair, at the Nashville Airport by the United Airlines flight crew.

There are a lot of feelings in this episode. I discuss not only this weekend's trip (there were actually four incidents that occurred in 2 airports all with United Airlines on my weekend trip) I also discuss what it feels like to have a disability and feel different, unloved, and unwanted because of it.

Thank you so much for listening. I encourage you to share this episode with everyone you can to raise awareness and bring change to our current climate of disablity intolerance.

Want to connect? You can find me at HardyMom.com

Thank you for joining me, Jen

Like the show? It would be great if you could help out by subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

Our music is "A New Day," by Scott Holmes

#unitedairlines #disabilityawareness #fail