How to start cooking healthy meal at home

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When I was an undergrad student, I frequently bought my meals outside. Fast food, oily dishes, I ate all of them for the sake of ‘I need to focus on my study, no time to cook’.

After I graduated and moved to my own rental apartment, I became lazy to buy ready to eat meal. So, I started to prepare my meal at home. But lazy me, I resorted a lot to instant noodles, sausage, chicken nuggets. Basically, easy meals from instant ingredients.

Only when I was about to get married, I learnt how to cook, ha! I gradually transition from instant meal to healthy meal.

Grilled chicken with mustard – one of my family favorite

To my surprise, my husband has a very healthy diet. That means, every meal is a real food. No more sausage or fish balls. No more ready-to-use seasoning. MSG? That’s a big NO NO. Fast food? Bye bye.. We only ate it when we had no other choice, and that is very rare.

This was a BIG transition for me. I was constantly on look out for healthy recipes. I asked friends, learnt from my mothers, and browsed the internet.

It takes time to adjust to this healthy life style, but every bit of it was worth it.

Not only our health improves (I recalled that my husband would fall sick at least once every month in the first year of our marriage) but that doctor visit gradually decreases over time).

When our son was born, we even have more reasons to eat healthy. We want our children to have healthy life style. So, as parent, we should provide healthy food and set example, right?

Another quick meal that’s a staple in our house

When we moved into United States, we even have more reasons to cook healthily. Why not? We don’t have that many options to buy food outside due to our restricted diet. But I guess, it’s a blessing in disguise. I began experimenting with a lot of new healthy recipes. I even made our own tempeh (you know, that soybean fermented cake that is full of protein and vitamin B).

My husband got chubbier and endorsed me as a great cook. Give me a pat, people.

Now as I looked into the past years of my healthy cooking journey, I wanted to share some tips on how to start cooking healthy meal for newbies.

That healthy meal does not always taste bland. If you think that healthy meal is simply raw vegetables which taste ‘blah‘, then you seriously need to read further about healthy cooking. In fact, a lot of healthy recipes combine various herbs and spices such that the end result is a very rich-taste and delicous meal, which is far tastier than the instant food.
Healthy cooking requires a lot of time. Well, that can be true and false. Yes, of course it takes longer to prepare compared to instant meal that you can simply reheat in a microwave oven. But, don’t be surprise to know that some of delicious meal can be prepared in under 30 minutes. Once you master these quick healthy meal, you will be more comfortable to indulge in hearty, sumptulicious food which may take longer to prepare, but worth in every single bite.
Baby step makes easy transition. Deciding to embrace a healthy cooking may seem like a huge commitment to do. Take one step at a time. You may start with one-day healthy meal per week, and gradually increase your healthy meal consumption for the whole week.