I’m not the most qualified person to have a blog that includes food because I really do creativity in this area.Give me a gym or even minimal equipment and I can be occupied for hours coming up with new workouts, but the kitchen….not as much. My Fitness Pal is proof that a lot of meals get repeated, but it’s ok because I like what I like and my energy and creativity is harnessed in other ways. Aren’t you just so excited to keep reading?! Don’t abandon hope just yet, because I have a brand new appliance that has sparked the experimental flame in the kitchen and adding some new flavor to my staple meals!
Best Choice Products was kind enough to send me an Air Fryer and to be honest, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing and would probably not have bought it on my own because as you know, I’m a bit of a minimalist in the kitchen. I think my minimalist tendencies actually work to my advantage with the air fryer because it is truly so simple and effective. I have tested a LOT in it over the past two weeks and I can safely say that it cooks most vegetables EXACTLY how I want to eat them--that roasty flavor, but with a crunch that I can’t seem to master in the oven. I would be lying if I said exactly how I know the little alien pod works, but from my end, I just cut the vegetables, spray with coconut oil and set according to the recommendation in the manual (usually 10-15 minutes) and it crisps them right up for me.
Probably one of the best examples I can give to describe the simplicity is that while I was babysitting last week (and too nervous to put the baby down for fear of disrupting the peace), I chopped a zucchini with one hand, threw it in, started it, got it on my plate and ate my dinner without a peep from my sidekick.
Another quick example is the dinner we ate last night. When I saw “we,” my sister is living with Drew and me while she finishes school and we love it when our dinner times coincide, but sometimes it means we are waiting on each other to finish using the oven since we usually eat different meals. Last night, we each ate something a little different, but all used the air fryer in some way:
Carrie: Pork tenderloin with air fried potatoes and asparagus
Madeline: Mexican cauliflower rice with roasted pepper, mushrooms, ground turkey and air fried zucchini noodles on top for crunch
Drew: Cauliflower fried rice, air fried butternut squash and air fried chicken cilantro wontons from Trader Joe’s.
Air Fried Meats
You may be wondering how the air fryer does with meats and to be honest, we have found that it’s better for smaller things like chicken nuggets, although the recipe book says salmon and steak are options as well (have yet to try).
All in all, it’s been a really fun new addition to our kitchen and I think it is 100% worth investing in if you prefer fried foods. I never cook with excess oil because of the unnecessary fats and to be honest, the mess and clean up. If you have a few recipes you can’t live without, this would be even more useful!
MEAL PREP
Lately, I have been simply tossing a big bunch of asparagus in the air fryer for about 12-15 minutes and the putting it with the rest of my lunch for the week in these glass containers provided by BC Products. Meal prepping my lunches is without a doubt the best use of an hour and a half on the weekends for getting ahead and staying on track throughout the school week. I really don’t like thinking about it each night before and wondering if there will be leftovers for dinner or if I’ll have to make something else, so I just do it all at once, measure it and log it into My Fitness Pal for the whole week. My schedule doesn’t allow me to go out for lunch, and it’s an easy way to save money by packing a lunch, so even if my job were from home or more flexible, I think I would still do it!
The Nitty Gritty: when it comes to weighing vegetables--
raw is most accurate.
My typical procedure goes like this:
1. Cut vegetables for the whole week into a bowl on the scale (example: 200g asparagus, 186g zucchini, etc....and write each one down
2. I'll make a new recipe in My Fitness Pal with all the raw ingredients and their weights (it doesn't take long at all)
3. Cook them up and divide them evenly by cooked weight into my containers (example: 5 containers with 150g cooked vegetables each)
4. Log into my daily lunch a 1/5 serving of the recipe that was created with the raw vegetables.
It's really much quicker than it sounds and you can chop it, write down the weights and then log it while it's cooking. Then I like to copy and paste the lunches for the whole week!
Tip: If you ever forget to weigh it raw, just SEARCH cooked butternut squash in our Fitness Pal Library and someone will have probably done the work for you!