Healthy Eating: One-Pot (or Almost One-pot) Meals

I need to eat healthy foods. I'm overweight and have high blood pressure, and I need to get with it. I also have young children who need healthy foods. However, I'm also often lazy about cooking. I work full time, and I frequently just don't feel like cooking when I get home. I could buy prepackaged, prepared foods, but they're usually very unhealthy. They contain a lot of sugar, fat, and/or sodium. There are some healthier prepackaged foods, but they usually cost more, and I'm on a budget. One-pot meals are my solution.

My husband sometimes makes one-pot meals, too, but his usually consist of rice or pasta, ground beef, and cream of mushroom soup. I might as well be using frozen food rather than that! But if you're willing to use good ingredients, and include vegetables and fruits, a one pot meal can be quite healthy as well as tasty.

Now, you can truly make everything in one pot. For instance, I make Spanish rice by toasting rice in a large, deep frying pan, and then adding tomato sauce, canned diced tomatoes, and water (include at least twice as much liquid as rice), along with chopped onion, canned beans, herbs, and spices. It all cooks together. If I want meat in my rice, I can brown the meat in the frying pan before adding the other ingredients, or I can use the pre-cooked meat that I often keep in the freezer.

For other recipes, I actually use an almost-one-pot technique. I cook rice or pasta in a separate pot of boiling water, and then add it to the other ingredients after it is cooked. For example, last night I made an Italian-style pasta dish. I browned two pounds of ground beef and sautéed chopped onion simultaneously in the big frying pan, while heating water for pasta. I then put half of the ground beef/onion mixture in a freezer container for a future meal. I added tomato sauce, canned diced tomatoes, herbs and spices, canned mushrooms, and a can of diced carrots (drained) for good measure. This simmered together while I cooked pasta shells, which I then added to the sauce after they were cooked. It's almost one pot - boiling water for the pasta isn't much trouble and doesn't make much of a mess.

You may have wondered about my addition of carrots for the pasta sauce. This is a great way to make sure you and your family get enough vegetables. Carrots blend in perfectly with tomato-based sauces, and are an excellent source of Vitamin A. If your kids are the type to refuse the sauce if they see the carrot chunks, puree or shred the carrots before adding to the sauce. They'll never notice.

Another good vegetable additive is spinach. Spinach is a great source of iron, and can be finely chopped in a food processor to hide it in food. My family enjoys added broccoli in various foods, especially those that are cheese-based. Macaroni and cheese with broccoli - fresh or frozen - mmmmm!

Fresh vegetables are wonderful, but canned and frozen vegetables make great additions to your one-pot meals as well. For canned vegetables, you may want to try low-sodium versions, or simply rinse the vegetables under running water before adding them to your meal.

In creating one-pot recipes, try to include most of your major food groups - a grain, protein (could be meat, dairy, or beans), and one or two vegetables or fruits. Add more grains with bread or rolls, and an easy salad to be even healthier. It's not so hard to eat healthy foods, and it will make a difference in your life.