Re: Need diet advice. Please
A key part to achieving the discipline needed to cook good meals for yourself on a daily basis is to ensure you have plenty of meat and other ingredients always to hand. If you try and cook on a "just in time" daily basis you will fail because it's a hassle having to keep going to the shops to buy food.
This is my regime
MEAT
I buy all my meat from a reputable farm shop with good provenance. I visit maybe once every 2 to 3 months and buy in quantity in those visits. Typically I will buy:
A couple of large packs of chicken breasts (about 20 to 30)
A large pork loin joint (half or full sized one)
A large pack of shin beef for stews
A large pack of mutton for stews
A reasonable sized joint of fillet steak or ribeye
Some sauages (processed I know but these have very little fat, nothing drips out when cooking).
Some packs of proper cut bacon
Any venison if it is available (haunches, saddle, liver and kidneys)
Some large packs of good steak mince
When I get home I portion all of the above into portions for 2 or 3 people. I bought a great meat slicer some years ago which has proven to be a real asset. This one:
Andrew James Meat Slicer.
It has interchangeable blades giving it a multitude of uses and costs about £50.
I use it to slice up pork loin joints into individual loins, to slice up steaks to my preferred thickness, to slice up Christmas Gammons (the ones with honey and cloves) and much more. A serrated blade let's me slice up home mead bread loaves as if they had been sliced at the supermarket.
A really good investment for any kitchen imo.
With the above my freezer is ALWAYS stocked with portions of good meat to make delicious meals from.
COOKING INGREDIENTS
There are some standard things you will need for lots of dishes. Tomato passata or equiv is one of them. Tins of chopped tomatoes are high in sugars but low in fibre due to how they are processed. Therefore, buy real fresh plum tomatoes in bulk from Macro/CostCo and simply quarter them, put them in a large saucepan with plenty of chopped garlic and simmer them until they break down. Then blitz them in a blender and portion into separate glass "tuppaware" style containers (loads in Ikea really cheap) and put in the freezer. Any time you want to make a Chilli or Lasagne or pasta you can just pull one out at the start of the day to defrost.
Other standard ingredients I also buy in bulk. Tins of red kidney beans, butter beans, chick peas. I always have a tray of each in my garage which I rotate. I have a large plastic storage box filled with different types of dried pasta which lasts a long time. I buy worstershire sauce bottles in bulk too, they add lots of flavour to dishes.
I cook only with Avocado oil or Rice Bran oil as these have high smoke points. I buy these whenever I see them on offer and buy plenty at that time.
I buy good Atlantic Sea Salt or equiv (like Maldon's) and always grind. Discard any refined Saxa table salt you have.
HERBS AND SPICES
Each to their own taste obviously. Buy herbs and spices in bulk quantities from Macro/CostCo etc as it is far far far cheaper than buying stupid little pots from supermarkets.
The bulk of my dishes see me using:
Smoked Paprika
Turmeric
Dried Chilli flakes
Cayenne Pepper
Mixed Herbs
Morrocon Spice Blend (for lamb stews)
Thus I always have large pots of these in the garage which I routinely replenish the typical small kitchen pots with.
FRUIT AND VEG
About once or twice per week I go out to buy good fruit and veg. I have yet to find a proper organic veg grower near where I live but that would be my preference. Until then it's about all I go to the supermarket for along with milk and yeast.
A supermarket shop for me thus takes about 15 mins. My defacto shop is:
A packet of 3 courgettes
A packet of 3 leeks
2 heads of broccolli
2 or 3 packets of stringless green beans or dwarf beans
A bulb or 2 of garlic
A good piece of ginger root
One butternut squash
4 baking potatoes
A pack of baby/salad potatoes
A pack of bell peppers
2 packs Chestnut or Portabello mushrooms
Couple packs of baby plum tomatoes (for salads)
Salad ingredients (lettuce, radishes, spring onions etc)
A pack of 6 apples
A bunch of bananas
A bag of waxless lemons
A couple packs of good cherries (expensive but worth it)
A couple packs of blueberries
A couple tubs of TOTAL 0% FAT natural yoghurt
Semi skimmed milk
It's that simple and takes no time at all, in and out. Once per week, possibly twice if the MIL comes round to join us for meals.
STRATEGIES
As can be seen from the above, each day that I cook a meal I decide what I want to cook and simply grab the meat/fish element from teh freezer, grab the main ingredients from garage/cupboards and the veg from my veg drawers. EVERTHING I need is already there for the entire week. It is no hassle whatsoever.
Most meals take no more than 30 mins effort.
To keep things easy I often oncorporate 2 strategies which are either TUMBLEDOWN meals or SLOW COOKER meals.
With tumbledown I simply make a large casserole saucepanful of the meal in question which is typically a good chill con carne or vegetable/meat pasta sauce. This will provide meals for 2 days for 2 of us, and the second day's always takes infinitely better as things have had more time to marinate. So, cook plenty, eat one portion today, put the other in the fridge for tomorrow. Simples. Little cooking to do tomorrow !
Slow Cooker meals are fantastic as the absolute best way to cook meat is to slow cook it making it tender and mouth watering. What I really like about these meals is the fact I can chop everything up early in the day, fry off any meat and bung it all in the slow cooker and just leave until the evening, job done and then I have the rest of the day to myself. Slow cooker meals are great if you don't know exactly when you will be eating. Sometimes my wife comes home late from work for example.
And as with tumbledown meals, you can cook a large slow cooker amount and eat half and save the other half for tomorrow.
CORE MEALS
I do try to vary things but I have a core set of easy meals that I will typically cook every week. You just tend to fall into a nice easy routine with them.
Chilli Con Carne
Quick and easy to make early, very tasty. Lob a couple of baking potatoes in the oven later to have with it and reheat when needed.
Lasagne/Pastas
As easy as Chilli Con Carne above. Same veg, tomato passata portion from the freezer. Make early and reheat when needed.
Meat and Veg
Simple portion of meat and 3 or 4 varieties of veg. If it's chicken I take 2 breasts, pop them in a plastic sandwich bag with the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon, a chopped garlic clove, teaspoon of paprike, teaspoon of turmeric and leave to marinate for 1 to 2 hours then just cook in the oven in a dish covered with foil with a bit of white wine thrown in. Really delicious. Serve with broccoli, beans, potatoes.
If it's pork loins/chops I chop a butternut squash in half, scoop out the seeds, score criss cross with a sharp knife and rub with a little butter. Fry off some chopped onion with chopped fresh ginger (in matchsticks) with a half teaspoon of cinnamon and a handful of raisins. It makes for a delicious christmassy warming set of flavours. I add the onion/ginger/raisin mix to the squash scooped out hole, cover in foil and bake in the oven for 45 mins or so. That alone with pork chops is really tasty and filling enough and very healthy.
For Shin Beef or Mutton it's a slow cook stew. Fry off the meat with a little flour. Fry off onions and mushrooms and add to the pot. Throw in some decent red wine, a glug of port, a bunch of mixed herbs (or morrocan spices for lamb), plenty of worstershire sauce, some cubed butternut squash or root veg like parsnips and leave to slow cook.
And so on. All very easy.
Dessert wise I have that TOTAL 0% natural yoghurt with cherries and blueberries (super fruits) and sprinkle with home made granola which is full of toasted oats, nuts, dried fruit and so on which adds the needed fibre element.
All the above really doesn't take much discipline at all TBH.
The key is to make things easy for yourself with tumble down meals and slow cooker meals and simple meat/veg meals.
There's much more you could do if you want to go further, curries for example but they can take longer to prepare.
Start simple, get your bulk ingredients in place and get into teh routine and go from there.