Desperately seeking easy healthy dinners

[VikingNorthUtsire]

I am adjusting to life with a chronic illness. I want to eat as well as possible to maintain my general health, but have very limited energy for cooking and shopping. Trying to avoid ready meals as much as possible but very open to cheats and hacks!

I'm also not a big fan of eggs which seems to rule loads of things out.

Had anyone got any good recommendations please? Looking for maximum nutrients to minimum effort prepping (long cooking times is fine, I am often WFH)

Thank you

I have to admit, I do find vegetarian food often is a bit more fiddly and hard work. Pasta sauces might be a good option for that.

One veggie meal we like is roasted veg served with pita bread and hummus. And it's fairly easy - you can even buy frozen mediterranean veg for easy roasting these days to avoid any chopping etc. Just add a punnet of cherry tomatoes and some fresh garlic cloves.

If you can face the stirring, rissott is quite low effort and if you do pea risotto and top with mozzarella it's minimal chopping too!

One of the roasting tin books is vegetarian, so that might work.

If you like liquidised soup, they're different worth it, if not then they probably aren't.

Can also freeze portions of stew or soup as back up on the bad days. Slow cooker is recommended.

Sorry, definitely, not different!

I definitely agree that the veggie element makes it more complicated. I love vegetarian food but there seem to be far fewer simple bung-it-in-the-slow-cooker choices unless you want chickpeas seven days a week.

yes, and often more chopping too! :) I also like vegetarian food but we don't eat it nearly as often as we should. Salads are a good example - everyone in this house happily eats salad. But my god, it can be more work than a roast dinner sometimes!

In greek week, Lidl does lovely spinach and feta pies, and other vegetarian greek treats - dolmades etc. Might be worth checking out?

Tray bakes. Just stick things on the tray at various intervals & the oven does all the work.
This is my favourite, & could be made veggie 📧
www.hairybikers.com/recipes/view/spanish-style-chicken-bake

I'd suggest buying an Instant Pot type multi cooker if you don't already have one.

An instant pot is a slow cooker and pressure cooker in one, it also can be used for ordinary frying/sauteing.

I cook all homemade meals and try to keep them very nutritious too.

Soups are a good start, generally every soup recipe comes out well. You can make a big batch easy and that's lunch for a few days.

Also try a bean chilli or veggie chilli recipe. These are basically meat free versions of chilli con carne. Can be eaten with rice, jacket potatoes or served with a nachos style meal.

Can also make nice and healthy curries using chick peas, it depends how healthy you want to go and what your tastes are.

Can send you some actual links to recipes if that's what you need.

Roast loads of veg with garlic and then add it to jars of passata or chopped tomatoes, then portion this up to freeze. Then to some you can add a tin of mixed beans and some chilli flakes to make veg chilli, then what is left some you can use as a base for veggie lasagna and some to just pour over pasta. Make a lot at once as it goes quite a long way.

Yes please to actual recipes!

Just had a nice lunch for anyone else needing low effort food..... Four eggs, tub of cottage cheese, various bits of chopped up cheese from the fridge (mostly cheddar and Jarlsberg), chopped up ham (no veggies today). Lots of s&p, mixed it all together, into a greased pyrex dish and baked for 25 mins. Served with a zero effort bagged watercress salad and chopped avocado - really tasty and basically mostly mixing.

Weird because I don't like omelettes but this was much nicer

Another thing, I pulled out 7 recipes from my pile that could be simplified and were really tasty. I now use the same ones over and over so I can use pretty much the same shopping list every week. Saves mental energy.

This is the quickest recipe.

Quick Tomato Soup (4 portions)

200 g frozen chopped onion
2 tins tomato
2 dl water
1 vegetable stock cube
2 tsp dried basil
200 ml cream
Salt & pepper

1. Throw it all in a pan
2. Cook for 10 minutes until onion is cooked
3. Blend it
4. Serve with fresh crusty bread with cheese

Mac and Cheese (serves 4)

250 g macaroni
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
300 ml milk
1 chicken stock cube
150 g ready grated cheese
2 tsp oregano
1 bag mixed salad

1. Cook the pasta
2. Melt the butter in a small pan
3. Whisk in the flour
4. Whisk in the milk and bring to the boil so sauce thickens
5. Remove from heat and add 2/3 rds of the cheese, the stock cube and oregano
6. Put it in a dish and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top
7. Grill until top is golden and crispy
8. Serve with salad

You can leave out the grilling part if needed and mix in all the cheese.

Indonesian Chicken (serves 4)

600 g pre chopped chicken
300 g frozen wok veggies
200 ml cream
1 tsp frozen garlic
1 tsp curry powder
1/2-1 tsp chilli powder
1/2 jar mango chutney
200 g rice

1. Chuck everything apart from the rice into an oven proof dish and bake @ 200 C for around 30 mins.
2. Cook the rice in a rice cooker
3. Enjoy

Let me know if you want the other ones. I don't want to type them all out if you have enough already.

You could add the rice ti the traybake, may need a bit more liquid, but would cook at same time if @VikingNorthUtsire is really struggling.

Are there specific foods you like, as that might make recipe links easier (for me I love Indian for instance, but mildly spiced 🙂) ?

Good call. I'm going to do that myself next time.

200 g rice = 400 ml water

Thank you - if you have time to type them out, I'd definitely be interested. Especially anything vegetarian.

Honestly I am a pretty wide-ranging eater. Like most cuisines. The main issues I have are (a) really really minimal effort and (b) ideally vegetarian as that's when I run out of ideas!

Lovely ideas on here thanks