Making Meals Healthier at Home

Making Meals Healthier at Home :

           As a homemaker in this generation of fast food and microwaveable ready meals, preparing healthy meals for one’s family is becoming increasingly difficult. Children’s tastes seem to have been so acclimated to the grease in French fries, cheese burgers, and pizza, that making them eat home-cooked meals becomes a major feat. How does a mother make meals healthier at home for her loved ones, especially when the family prefers to buy take-out on the way home? Here are some tips on how to incorporate take-out meals that children are familiar with into healthier alternatives:
1. Rotisserie chicken is a relatively healthy take-out food since it is roasted and not fried. But you can transform this boring takeout dish into a healthier choice by getting the skin off. You can then chop the meat and put it into roll-your-own burritos, mixed with rice, tomatoes, and other vegetables. This makes the activity fun enough to grab the kids’ attention, and teach them a little about food preparation.
2. Chinese takeout usually spells food high in oils. If you want, you can toss in some more greens into the usual noodles that you buy in those takeout boxes. Leftover dumplings and similar little items can go into a healthy soup filled with lots of green vegetables. You can opt for fresh spring rolls rather than fried.
3. If you can convince your kids to make their own pizza, by all means, do so. You just have to buy ready-made pizza dough at the grocery store, and at least you can pick what goes into them. You can put pepperoni you buy at the supermarket, cheeses, onions and tomatoes, but at least you know exactly what goes into your pizza. Then you can pop the whole thing in the oven, and even if you are no kitchen expert, nothing can go wrong with this as long as you keep it at the suggested temperature and time. Also, it shows your kids that preparing food at home is actually fun and can still be tasty.

4. Once you get your kids’ approval of a home-made pizza, it would be easier to convince them to eat home-cooked meals. As soon as you get that chance, you can try involving them in roasting or baking meals, steering them away from fried things. You can show them how to make baked potatoes in French cut to replace the greasy French fries, or you can make microwave popcorn with them. Popcorn is essentially much healthier than French fries or potato chips. Alternatively, you can bake potato chips that you thinly slice from fresh potatoes.
5. You can go Oriental and try a cook-it-yourself meal like the Asians enjoy. All you need is an electric cooking pan that you place in the center of the dining table. If you have one with space for soup in the middle, that would be better.
Then you arrange all the different raw ingredients around the pan, such as fish, shrimp, chicken, pork, beef, and bean sprouts, along with fish balls, squid balls, and other balls. Each person gets the chance to cook whatever he wants on the electric plate, or dump whatever ingredient into the soup. Just prepare some stock beforehand to put into the soup.
You will wind up with a healthy roasted mix of ingredients and a healthy soup, with no excess oil anywhere. Plus, it turns out to be a fun way to enjoy healthy food. To add spice to the experience, you can teach the kids how to use chopsticks and they can use them to maneuver the food into and off the cooking plate.
Once you understand how creativity plays an important role in encouraging kids to enjoy home-cooked meals, you will find it an exciting challenge to grab their attention and convince them that this is better than the takeout food they have become so accustomed.