Contributed by Jennifer Peachey

Were you one of those people who made a New Year’s resolution to eat better? Have you resolved to do away with junk food and eat every last morsel from your Urban Harvest box? These thoughts are noble and worthy of praise but if two weeks or two months from now they have been thrown to the side it can be very discouraging.

Instead of trying to change your eating habits over night I would propose a few tips to make the process more successful. These are only suggestions and ideas that have helped me:

Plan meals in advance: a weeklong menu will save time at the grocery store - you only go for what you need. Plan light meals for nights of activity and save complicated recipes for the weekend. Write it down and post the menu on the fridge.

Keep the pantry well stocked: and only keep healthy foods in the house. Beans, lentils, pasta, grains and rice will keep indefinitely and are instance accompaniments to vegetable dishes. Bottled sauces (black bean, curry, peanut. . .) are always handy for spicy pick-me-ups.

Plan lunches: eating out or buying “lunchables” might sound easy but the payoff isn’t worth it. It’s expensive and less nutritious. When you make a salad, make three times what you need and take it for lunch the next day. Add some nuts and seeds, bean sprouts, a whole-wheat bun and some cheese slices and you won’t go hungry!

Snack, snack, snack: what you eat between meals can make or break your nutritional intake. Nuts, seeds, vegetable sticks with dip, an apple, orange or banana is enough to hold you over and keep your blood sugar stable. If you don’t snack, and your blood sugar drops, you will be more tempted to reach for the quick fix, less healthy foods.

Shake up breakfast: it can be tempting to grab a coffee and bagel when you’re rushing through your morning. A much more nutritious, and faster option is a shake. Fruit juice or milk/milk alternative blended with frozen or fresh fruit is fast and delicious. Adding a scoop of protein powder and drizzle of flax seed oil makes this even better

Remember that you can’t change everything over night. Working on one thing at a time will make those resolutions easier. It’s taken me five years to prefer spinach (sautéed with garlic and Little Creek dressing – oh, so tasty) to bacon. But there’s no going back!

This week’s example menu:

* (I’ll start on Wednesday because that’s when we get our box)

Wednesday: vegetable and tofu curry stir-fry with brown rice

Thursday: vegetable wraps with cheese and/or peanut sauce (sautéed veggies if cold outside, raw if not)

Friday: crustless broccoli quiche with green salad

Saturday: vegetable lasagna, green salad

Sunday: sushi, vegetable sir-fry with rice noodles and black bean sauce

Monday: fish and oven baked potatoes and yams

Tuesday: soup with anything left from this week’s box, fresh bread, and green salad with roasted almonds, flax seeds and sunflower seeds

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Instructions

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