WE’VE ALL DONE it.
Hell, some of us do it three or four times a week.
You slump home after a long day at work, college (or wherever) to a fridge bereft of contents.
The easiest way to quell those growls in your stomach? The phone in your hand, and the takeaway around the corner.
It doesn’t have to be that way, insists nutritional cook Susan Jane White.
She should know, she’s been there…
As the best-selling food writer notes on her site, thirteen years ago she was “an addict”.
Everything I did related to or led to my next sugar fix. I even convinced myself that college projects required kilos of coffee and Curly Wurlies to charge my brain cells, that I couldn’t possibly perform without them.
So… We’re not alone then.
TheJournal.ie asked for one killer tip to get us eating healthier when Susan Jane dropped by the office. One that wouldn’t break the bank, to boot.
Her wise words…
“On Sunday evening – I swear by this – on Sunday evening I sit down and I look at my week ahead and what I have to cook, and I just plan everything.
“I write down everything I want to cook from snacks to evening meals with my family
And once you write down everything, it’s quite exciting actually – looking at all that food you’re going to have the following week, then I can write a shopping list so I don’t have to run out during the middle of the week.
And if you come in late one night, and you’re stuck for ideas?
“In the evening time you might think ‘I’ve no time to make something – I’ll go get a takeaway’.
“But you’ve a solution if, say, you have smoked mackerel in the fridge – and you can get a pack for €2.
“You can have that – you can have a side of grated carrots, apple and fennel or grated carrot, apple and beetrooot, and just mix that with a bit of dijon mustard and it’s really, really good.
“You can have a side of bread if you want,” she adds (noting that she’s not generally renowned as a bread advocate).
Building up a repertoire of simple evening meal ideas can introduce a “different way of thinking” that makes it much easier to stick to healthy habits, Susan Jane says.
“Falling off the bandwagon is all part of the journey. You need to have that. You need to have setbacks to appreciate what you have.
So if you’re good for a week and then fall off the wagon and end up feeling really heavy and lethargic that’s a good learning curve.
The food writer admits that as she changed her lifestyle “the biggest problem I had was parting with my money”.
Check out the German discounters’ range of products if you’re stocking up for the week, she recommends.
They have an “excellent range, at a fraction of the price of the health food stores”.
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