Cook Once Review

I recently got the Cassie Joy Garcia cookbook "Cook Once Eat All Week". Essentially, she gives you three ingredients and three recipes that can serve your family for a week. She takes into consideration leftovers, days you need to eat out, and time.

Time.

Something most of us feel like we're quickly running out of.

One of the hardest parts of healthy eating is that we don't know how to make it convenient. Either we pack a salad or go out to eat. Most of us fear that's our only options. And even if we're going out to eat at "healthy" places, we're spending hundreds of dollars a month and not getting the proper nutrition.

I dabbled into the cookbook and made two of the three recipes from Week 3. The ingredients were roasted chicken and cauliflower. Now, if you follow my instagram, you would have seen the story from the time I got the ingredients until they were prepped. (Sorry, I forgot to actually save the video.)

The prep did not take me that long at all. In fact, I love sheet pan dinners and roasting stuff in the oven because I can put it in, go do something for 30-60mins and then come back to it. The multitasker in me loves that!

One thing I did notice was that I had a lot of dishes. Big pots and bowls that are hard to fit into the dishwasher. As someone who loves cooking and hates dishes, it was a bit of a buzz kill to have to hand wash them. But I digress, because throughout the week, all we had were plates and Tupperware. No other dishes, appliances or materials were needed.

My two meals (I omitted the third due to the busy week we had) were Loaded Cauliflower Casserole and Buffalo Chicken-Stuffed Avocados.

Both were meals I had never had before, but also really good concepts I had dabbled in. Best of all, they were just minutes of assembly and baking to have complete meals for my husband and I. Another reason why I love these meals so much - they take the components of a balanced plate and add their own spin.

I preach that half your plate should be veggies - adding cauliflower as the base is really a great way to do that. Having protein and healthy fats in your meal is also a winner. Even though avocados aren't for you, what could you replace it with to enjoy? Maybe a sweet potato? Say you don't like cauliflower and make it with potatoes, adding green beans on the side could turn the dish up to 11!

I love taking recipes, manipulating them and then turning them into something my family would enjoy. I encourage you to do the same. See if you find a recipe that you like and use healthier ingredients, substitutions or different varieties of the protein to get a different outcome.

Never hesitate to reach out to see what we would do!

~T&E Empowerment