Sunday, May 17, 2009

Fast Food For New Moms

Are you having a baby or a surgery soon? I have a short list of food items you might want to stock your fridge/freezer with before the big event. We didn't have help with meals other than my dad bringing soup two or three times a month.

Frozen fruits and vegetables can potentially have more vitamins and minerals than fresh. They are typically frozen at peak freshness, which is when foods contain the most nutrients.

1. Bird's Eye Steamfresh Vegetables - Very tasty and inexpensive. Steam in microwave 5 minutes (don't poke any holes). Perfect every time. Wide variety available.

2. Bob Evans mashed sweet potatoes (microwave, stir, microwave some more). Found in the refrigerated case near the meats at Super Walmarts. Packed with nutrients! Or bake fresh sweet potatoes in microwave.

3. Frozsun Fruit Sensations - large bag frozen mixture of peaches, pineapple, honeydew, red seedless grapes. This is always very tasty. Put out a small bowl to thaw at room temperature. Don't thaw more than you'll use that day. It doesn't keep well in the fridge after thawing. I've seen people bring this to picnics partially thawed. It's refreshing on a hot day. (No sugar or glaze added, just fresh fruit)

4. Buy whole fresh chickens for about $.88/lb at Super Walmart. They are about $1.24/lb if you prefer them without hormones or saline solution. Easy to bake and lasts for two meals. You can make chicken burritos or tacos the next day.

5. Super Walmarts also have bags of dried cranberries (Walmart brand) for less than $2.00 (found near the raisins). Excellent source of nutrition. They have other varieties of dried fruit, but this one packs the most nutrients for the buck. There is added sugar.

6. Frozen Blueberries/strawberries/raspberries/blackberries - Walmart brand is a good deal. Packed with nutrients. No more worrying about them rotting in the fridge because you don't have time to prepare them.

7. Whole Wheat Tortillas - Use with leftover chicken and/or with grated cheese. We buy the 7% lean ground turkey for tacos and burritos as well. Always a quick meal. Packed with fiber and nutrients, especially if you add beans (black beans or refried). Kids who won't eat bread might go for whole wheat tortillas.

3 comments:

Liz said...

Hi Pam -- I put whole chickens in my crockpot and cook them on low throughout the day. At the end of the day it is falling off the bone tender and juicy. It doesn't get much easier either

Evenspor said...

Great list. We were buying frozen strawberries, but we realized that even a even a halfway decent price on fresh is better than how much we were spending on the frozen ones. So now when the fresh ones are on sale we buy several pounds. Half of them we wash and hull and freeze whole. They other half we wash, slice up and mix with sugar before freezing.

Evenspor said...

Re: freezing the strawberries: We just use Ziploc freezer bags. I'm sure the generic ones work just as well, as long as they are freezer bags. What you should really do for freezing things like fruit (and I would definitely recommend this for the smaller, more delicate berries like raspberries) is first spread everything out in a single layer on a cookie sheet or something similar for freezing. This allows them to freeze more quickly, damaging fewer cells, as well as keeping them separate from each other. Once they have frozen on the cookie sheet, you can throw them into the freezer bag. With the strawberries, though, we often skip this step and just throw them straight into the bag to freeze.

Another tip for freezing fruit, especially something that browns like peaches, is sprinkle on some "Fruit Fresh" immediatly after you slice it up. If you don't want to spend your money on Fruit Fresh, you can make your own by grinding up Vitamin C pills into powder.