A Typical Weekday Meal For Me (Part 2)

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In the last post, I talked a bit about how my family goes about eating in a healthy and cost-effective manner through the week.  Doing so requires that we 1) are smart shoppers when it comes to buying groceries, and that we 2) are willing to minimize variety.

In this post, I want to talk a bit about what is the general template for a healthy weekday meal for us.  That template is beans, greens, rice and sweet potatoes.

Good Ole Beans

Beans are great for weekday meals.  They’re healthy, containing plenty of nutrients, fiber, and enough protein to make them a good meat replacement.

They’re cheap, too.  We buy ours for approximately $1.20/lb, and at about 13 servings per lb bag, that’s $.09 per serving!  You really can’t beat that.

On top of that, there are tons of varieties of beans you can cycle through to change it up a bit.  Pinto beans are what you see pictured above.  There’s also black beans, red beans, kidney beans, navy beans, lima beans, garbanzo beans, and cranberry beans to name just a few.

Rice:  Brown Rice, That Is

Combining brown rice with beans creates a complete protein and helps us feel like we’re not missing anything when we eat our weekday meatless meals.  Brown rice also contains some nutrients and fiber.

Cost-wise, it’s not bad either.  My wife and I buy organic brown rice that’s $3.49/2 lbs, and at 18 servings per 2 lb bag, that amounts to about $.19 per serving.  That’s still not bad, is it?

Now, I know some folks are like, “man I can’t stand brown rice!”  While I understand that brown rice is definitely different than its white counterpart, I have to respectfully disagree with you :).  Brown rice, in my opinion, has a heartier, fuller taste, and I’ve grown to enjoy the texture as well.  And trust me, if you cook it enough, you eventually learn to make it fluffier and all of that.  It won’t be fluffy like white rice, but let that remind you of the fact that brown rice is the whole grain and therefore shouldn’t be as fluffy.

Greens:  Nature’s Green Gold

I don’t even have to go into all of the benefits of greens.  Whether you’re talking cabbage, collards, turnips or kale, greens are absolutely packed with vitamins, minerals and fiber, and they’re so low in calories that you would need about 2 cups of them to even break 100 calories.  That’s tremendous.

As far as cost, I’ll have to approximate a bit.  We can buy organic cabbage for $1.49/lb or lower.  Based on experience, we buy about 5 lbs at a time and eat on that for up to 3 days, which for me, the wife and the child amounts to about 15 servings per 5 lbs.

Doing the math…

$1.49/lb X 5 lbs = $7.45/15 servings = $.50/serving

Sweet Potatoes:  Something Sweet to Be Happy About

Sweet potatoes are incredibly good, and incredibly good for you as well.  They’re loaded with nutrients, especially Vitamin A.  They’re easy to cook, and in a second I’ll show you the quick, easy way we cook ours through the week.

We buy sweet potatoes for about $.98/lb.  Because 1 lb is approximately one serving for us, that means about $.98/serving, making sweet potatoes the most expensive part of the meal.  That’s still hardly expensive.

Total Cost for Our Weekday Meal Per Serving

Adding up the cost for 1 serving of our weekday beans/rice/greens/sweet potatoes meal gives the following:

$.09 + $.19 + $.50 + $.98 = $1.76/serving!

I personally think that’s awesome.  Even a burger and fries meal from a cheap fast food joint will cost you at least $3, and it ain’t even healthy.  Think about that.

How We Prep Our Weekday Meal

Moving on, I thought I would give you just a few more details on how we actually prepare this meal.  I’ve also included several pictures to show how it’s done.

First of all, the beans are soaked for at least 24 hours before we cook them.  Apparently, this enhances digestibility and reduces anti-nutrients, which is cool of course.  Main reason I do it though is because mom did it.

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We boil a smoked turkey wing for about 30 minutes to add flavoring…

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…after which we add the beans and simmer them for up to an hour, or until the beans are tender.  We add more water as needed, and we season to taste with salt, pepper and garlic powder.

We also add chopped white onion to them, as you see below.  The red onion is actually for the greens.

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As far as greens are concerned, this time around we went the easier route this time and bought pre-cleaned and pre-cut.

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For the greens, we first saute the onions in oil (most of the time it’s olive oil)…

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…and when they’re just tender, we add the greens.

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Add maybe a cup or two of water after that, cook them down for roughly an hour (depending on how tender you like your greens), then season with salt and garlic powder.

We soak our rice for up to 24 hours as well.

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Basically, you just turn it on and cook it on medium heat until almost all the water has cooked out, then turn it on low and cover it to let it steam.  You might also want to fluff it with a fork somewhat to keep it from becoming gummy when it’s almost done.

With our sweet potatoes, our typical method of cooking them is roasting.  We skin them, cut them into cubes no larger than an inch (all dimensions), place them in glass cookware and put about 1 tbsp of butter and a light sprinkling of salt over them.

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We place them in the oven at 400 degrees like this for about 5 minutes, which is just long enough for the butter to melt, then we remove them from the oven and stir them to distribute the butter and keep the potatoes from sticking.  After that, they cook in the oven for about 30-45 more minutes until they’re good and tender.  To make them even more special sometimes, we sprinkle cinnamon over them.

And there you have it!  That wasn’t too bad, right?

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Do you have any easy/healthy/cheap weekday meal ideas?  If so, feel free to share.

Shawn McClendon
Shawn McClendon is an author, podcast host, fitness entrepreneur and owner of Back to Basics Health and Wholeness LLC, an organization dedicated to empowering people to take responsibility for their own health.

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