We invited my fiance’s family over last week for a fun little dinner at home and I was amazed at just how easy it was to make a healthy dinner for 5, and for a very low budget too.
Ingredients
- 5 chicken breasts (all meat in this meal is organic and naturally raised)
- 4 beef ribs (I actually bought 5 but one went to the dog before it was cooked)
- 6 fresh ears of corn (vegetables are also organic and fresh)
- A bit of butter
- 4 fresh tomatoes
- A bunch of basil (I’m growing some at home but it’s not ready to eat yet)
- Some mozzarella
- A fresh loaf of sourdough bread
Preparation
- The Chicken and Ribs went on the BBQ and were ready in 30 minutes (less so for the chicken). I bought them premarinaded which makes things easier.
- The corn and and bread were wrapped in tinfoil and also put on the BBQ, bread was cut up into slices and both bread and corn were wrapped with butter already in the tinfoil.
- Tomatoes were sliced and then topped with slices of mozzarella and leaves of basil.
The entire thing took around 30 minutes of preparation (45 minutes if you count the shopping time for the ingredients). It also cost $50 total for a meal that fed 5 adults and had plenty of leftovers. Even better, I actually enjoyed preparing it. There were no complicated dishes here, nothing that required a lot of concentration. In fact, I spent most of the preparation time engaging in conversation with my guests.
I’m saying all this because I keep hearing from friends and family who say they don’t have time to eat healthy, they don’t have time to prepare home cooked meals and they don’t have the money to eat fresh. This meal was fun, fresh, healthy and cheap. Actual cost, if I subtract leftovers, was around $8 per person and I could have gotten that a lot cheaper if I spent a few extra minutes shopping for what was on sale (or skipped the bread, which I was tempted to but my guests liked it). The meal was incredibly satisfying and a load of fun to make.
Being Healthy Is Easy
I will say this again and again and again until all of you start believing it. BEING HEALTHY IS EASY! Eat less, eat better and move your body. Those are the three rules of being healthy and none of them is that hard. Eating better is easy, as this meal shows. Eating less and moving your body are just as easy. You just need to get over those mental blocks that tell you these things are hard, that you’ll feel deprived, that your life will be miserable. None of those things are true. A healthy life is fun and easy, and I want you to stop making excuses about why you can’t live healthy and just live healthy.
