Easy Healthy Meals You Can Eat Every Week

Hello and welcome! Finally 2021! It can only get better from here on onwards, at least that's what I want to believe. And the way I want to start the year is I want to show you four healthy recipes that I eat practically every week. Each one of these recipes is featured in my six-week clean eating program. This is something that you can do as well if you want, so check out in the description. I have more information for you there. Now without further ado, let's get right into the recipes. So we're going to start with the easiest breakfast ever, overnight oats. I eat this at least once a week and the amount that I eat is three quarters of a cup, but you can obviously add more. And to that I add the same volume of milk. You can use any milk you love, either nut milk or regular dairy. And the way I sweeten it, because I live in Canada, is maple syrup, but you can use any other natural sweetener like honey or coconut sugar. And then I add just about a tablespoon. I just put on a lid and place this in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning your oats will look somewhat like this. Nice and creamy and soft without being mushy. And at this point we're going to add some fruit, some fresh fruit, whatever is in season or on sale. And ta-da! This is the perfect breakfast for pretty much every single day. Something I eat for dinner at least once a week are roasted vegetables. And for that I choose at least three, what? This is the three different vegetables that cook in about the same time. So cauliflower, asparagus and bell pepper are great because they need approximately the same roasting time. I make sure that my roasting pan is not too full and I season everything with just avocado oil, because avocado oil has a high smoke point. Sea salt, pepper. And now before I add the other things, I add what I call seasoning, which is half a red onion and about three cloves of garlic. And then paprika, about a teaspoon. And oregano, about another teaspoon. Whoops, that was more like two. Then I use my clean hands and massage the oil and seasoning into all the vegetables. Now this is going to go in the oven. It depends on what vegetables you chose, but this is going to take approximately 20 minutes. So I'm taking advantage of the oven time and I'm going to also put in some chicken thighs. These are four chicken thighs and they take 20 to 25 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. So approximately the same time as the vegetables. Great protein and veggies at the same time in the oven. So while our chicken and the veggies are roasting, we're going to cook a carbohydrate. I tend to choose either baby potatoes or fingerlings or quinoa. So all you have to do is either boil the potatoes in water and boiling water for 15 minutes or cook the quinoa. And I have a full tutorial on how to do that on the stove or in the Instant Pot, whatever you prefer. Every main meal, at least lunch and dinner, I try to add a carbohydrate, vegetable and protein and healthy fat. Of course, in this case, it is just the oil that we're roasting the vegetables in. So always try to have the three in your main meals. After about 20 minutes, your vegetables should be nice and roasted. So give them a quick stir. My chicken is still in the oven. I'm going to leave it in there for another five minutes while I start plating. Add about half a cup of quinoa, about a quarter of your veggies, without spilling everything on the side. And now let's go get the chicken. Now sprinkle it all with a little bit of cilantro or fresh parsley and we're done. Or you can also serve it in a meal prep container or two or three or four and you're done for the week. The next recipe is what I call healthy white rice. I love, love, did I say love white rice? Because it cooks so fast and it's so easy to digest. But of course, it kind of lacks the nutrients and minerals that brown rice or other wild rices have. So I add some nutrients by adding vegetables and lots and lots of herbs. So the first thing that we're going to have to do is get a blender. And to that blender, we're going to add a whole bunch of cilantro. With the stems, we're only going to take off this part and I'm adding all of it to my blender. And then you can either add water or chicken broth. I'm adding chicken broth. I'm going to add one and a half cups of chicken broth. And now we're going to blend this. Okay, nice and green, lots and lots of herbs. So this is what we're going to be cooking the rice in, which will make it a lot more nutrient dense. Now, next step is we're going to put this away and we're going to pull out the Instant Pot. Once your Instant Pot display says hot, you're going to add a drizzle of oil, wait a couple seconds and then add a yellow onion and saute for about a minute until they start to become translucent. And at that point, you're going to want to add one to two cloves of garlic. The reason I don't put both in at the same time is because the garlic burns so much faster than the onions. You're going to saute that for about, I don't know, another minute maybe. And at this point, we're going to hit cancel on the Instant Pot to turn it off and avoid anything from burning to the bottom. If there are burnt bits, then I recommend you add just a tiny splash of your cilantro water to deglaze the bottom and avoid the burn warning on the Instant Pot. Now, if you are cooking on the stove, basically what you would do at this point is remove it from the heat, of course. Okay, so I have no burnt bits anymore, so I'm going to add one and a half cups of white basmati or jasmine rice. I'm going to give it a quick stir to mix with the onion. And now I'm going to add the rest of the cilantro water. Because I used salted broth, I'm not going to add salt, but if you're using low sodium, then I recommend you add some salt as well. Now give this all a stir and make sure that all the rice is submerged in the cilantro water. The reason we hit cancel or took it off the heat is so none of this liquid evaporates. Okay, and at this point, I'm going to add the vegetables and I'm not going to mix them in. I'm just going to put them on top because else any rice that is higher than the water won't cook and the vegetables will cook. So at this point, I'm adding the lid and I'm going to set it to manual. Three minutes on high pressure, put the venting knob to ceiling and let it do its job. And we're going to wait for a natural pressure release. Now, if you're cooking on the stove, I recommend you use a small pot with a small circumference and a very tight fitting lid or else you're going to need more of the cilantro water. Right now, I'm using a one-to-one ratio in the Instant Pot because there's no water evaporation. If your lid has a little hole in it, there will be a lot of water evaporation and that means you need more liquid. And it also means that your rice will be more mushy at the end, unfortunately. But this is the best that I have compared to the Instant Pot to cook rice. At about the 18-minute mark, your safety pin will drop all on its own. And at that point, your rice is ready and it's just time to fluff it up and mix it up with the vegetables. And then it's time to eat and serve it with some sort of protein that you love. I love serving this with either a fried egg or let me show you another option with some pan-fried sole fillet. Next up is what I call a grain bowl and you can use literally any grain, leftover grain or freshly cooked. I'm using farro today but quinoa is great or brown rice or barley or anything really. So you can make it as simple or as fancy as you like. And I always like to start with a base of lettuce. In this case, I'm using arugula. And you can add your grain and then remember a protein. I hard-boiled an egg and then I'm also going to add some, you know, fresher veggie and obviously the egg. Now this with the dressing that I'm going to show you in a minute would be the simple version. But we can obviously make our bowl very fancy and of course I'm going to show you how to make that. So I love roasted chickpeas. They are absolutely delicious and the texture is amazing. And the way you do this is you add a sea salt, pepper, cumin and paprika. And then you use your hands to make sure all the chickpeas are coated. And now because we already have to put this in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, we have, we can take advantage of the oven time and also roast some sweet potato wedges. I peeled and cut the sweet potato into wedges. I'm going to add some oil and make sure that every wedge is perfectly coated. No need to put any seasoning on this. It's absolutely delicious just like that. Now put that in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes. At about the 12 to 13 minute mark, you're going to want to flip your sweet potatoes of course because else they will just burn on one side and not cook on the other. And just give your baking sheet a little bit of a shake so the chickpeas roast evenly. So a way I like to fancy everything up is to use two different types of lettuce. And I also like adding some fruit, blueberries or any kind of berries are absolutely amazing for salad or grain bowls. Now let me go get the chickpeas and sweet potato. You can add your crispy chickpeas and your roasted sweet potato wedges. Add your hard boiled egg and then some red onion. Now for the dressing, you can make it super simple and just add two tablespoons of avocado oil or olive oil, whatever you prefer. About half a tablespoon of lemon juice, about half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and about half a teaspoon of maple syrup. Then shake and pour it over a salad. But of course I'm going to show you the fancy version of a dressing. And for that you're going to need a large jar that fits your immersion blender. So to that jar you're going to add a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, half a small avocado, about half a teaspoon of sea salt, freshly cracked black pepper, the juice of half a lime, about half a teaspoon of maple syrup and then some water. I'm going to start with about a tablespoon. I want it to be pourable but not completely liquid. Okay this is still too thick so I'm gonna add a little bit more and just a tiny bit more. Perfect. At this point I'm adding about a tablespoon of dill. I'm going to give this a quick mix and now I can pour it over my grain bowl. Now let's give the grain bowl a try. So yummy. The sweet potato wedges, the best. I hope you're gonna give one or all four of these recipes a try. If you do please don't forget to snap a picture and show me. I love seeing when you make any of my recipes and I'll see you with my next video. Bye!