Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40

87 | Dinner Bowl Ideas/Getting a Healthy Dinner on the Table Quick

February 20, 2023 Courtney McManus Episode 87
Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40
87 | Dinner Bowl Ideas/Getting a Healthy Dinner on the Table Quick
Moving through Midlife
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Show Notes Transcript

Outline:
What’s in the bowl?
1:39

Start with the vegetables.
3:20

We like to change up our theme bowls every week.
4:53

Deconstructed sushi bowl.
6:35

Bowls with chicken, vegetables and tofu.
8:19

How to make ramen noodles?
10:29

Dinner ideas for picky eaters.
12:24



I wasn't able to find the recipe for the Couscous bowl from SkinnyTaste but feel free to reach out to me and I will share the specifics with you. 
Here is the Piri Piri sauce you can use:
Dips to Increase Veggie Intake
Dinner Ideas for Picky Eaters

Try Thrive Market for your Groceries


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Unknown:

Welcome to raising healthy humans. I am your host, Courtney, personal trainer and movement specialist and the founder of form fit community where I help busy moms feel better through movement. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mom of three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise healthy families. It is my goal to help to provide you with the information you need to help raise healthy humans. The question that plagues all of our minds, what's for dinner? What are we going to make for dinner, I want to make something quick and healthy. And I need an idea. And then you might spend hours scouring Pinterest or websites or asking people what they're making. And it can be difficult to figure out what you're going to have for dinner. So I wanted to share with you something that we do as a family quite often, that finds one quick, I'll see. I know that no one's going to complain, because I'm providing an open space where everybody's putting what they want on it. And that is bowl dinners. So they are a great option for you when you're trying to be healthy and get dinner on the table quick. I usually will use rice or quinoa in the bowl. But you can also use salad, pasta, potatoes or hashbrowns, something like that in the bottom, and then create the meal around that. This is also a great option for all of those picky eaters, because what we do is I'll make whatever the bowl is going to be the bottom of the ball, then I'll make the protein and sometimes and I'll go into detail with you more about this. But you know, it might be chicken, it might be fish, it might be something like that beans, anything. And then I leave out a whole bunch of vegetables for people to choose from to put on top and other various things that you can put up on top of your bowl. And that's it. I don't make any requirements other than you need to have a little bit of, you know, whatever the bottom is, you need to have some protein. And then you need at least one or two vegetables or toppings. That's it. That's all I need to do. So that provides them the opportunity to determine what they're going to put on their bowl. So when you make your own bowl, make sure to start with a base and get creative with this. Like I mentioned I add rice, quinoa, you can do couscous. Have you ever tried those pearled couscous, so instead of the real teeny, tiny, blue scoots greens, these are pearls so they're almost like a little pasta. And they're a favorite with my kids. You can even do like oats for a savory morning breakfast, or you know, having breakfast for dinner. Then you're going to add a protein. Again, get creative needs are always a great fiction, beans, tofu, eggs and nuts can also help build the protein that make for a delicious bowl. Then you want to pile on the vegetables. And I want you to think about using as many different colors for your bowl to make it by catching as we eat with our eyes first. So make sure to pick all different colors. You know, like if you've got if one thing you're thinking is onion, why not make it red onion, and peppers. Maybe you do a little bit of green and red peppers. Feel free to also add fruit to the dish as well. I've made taco bowls before and use mango and pineapple as a fun option for them to add on top. Just like you would I mean if you think of an apple salsa and things like that, you can add those things to your toppings. Then top it off with a sauce always add some sort of delicious sauce that you can put on top to create that wow factor for them. And then my favorite is go with a theme. So here are some ideas for you with themes. We like to change up our theme bowls, so we'll have Taco Night and if it's a taco night I'll you Usually do either shredded lettuce or rice. Then we always have chicken and beef lettuce. And then we'll do obviously tomatoes, onions, avocado, jalapeno, your toppings, our salsa, sour cream, cheddar cheese. What am I missing? If we don't do avocado, sometimes it'll be guacamole. So that is one, he's got your taco meal and they can choose if they want shredded lettuce as their bottom, or if they want rice as their bottom. Another one is Greek bowls. Now this is a favorite of ours, and I actually got it from skinny tastes. So if I can find the recipe, I'll put it in here in the show notes for you. But it is a couscous bowl, and I use the pearled couscous so the thicker of the couscous, that is the bottom. And then chicken is the protein. The vegetables are tomato cucumber. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I believe it was like pepper. But you know, think about your your Greek food might have said a cheese. I like to add pumpkin seeds onto the top to create a little bit of that crunch. And then a Piri piri sauce which I do have a recipe on my blog, which I'll post if I can't find the skinny taste recipe as well. But this is like a pepper sauce that you can put on top. And I always make extra because that sauce is amazing over eggs and potatoes and things like that is one. Another one that I enjoy is like a deconstructed sushi roll. And this again would be rice. You can make some tempura shrimp, chopped up cucumbers, carrots, avocado, and then amazing yum yum sauce on top, which is just mayonnaise and sriracha. And you've got a deconstructed sushi bowl Oh, and then we always do seaweed as well. So I buy the seaweed snacks and I kind of chop them up and put those on top. And amazingly enough my kids all love it when it's like that they might not enjoy the sheet but they like it when it's all chopped up because it's you know, this light feathery type item that's green and colorful. And I think it just provides that umami flavor for them. Teriyaki again, similar to the sushi bowl, you've got your rice, what I usually do is I will chop up some onions, zucchini, broccoli, I think that's it. And then put a little bit of butter in the pan and saute everything. And then you put that on top. And I'll usually either do chicken or beef and right now with food with me, it's getting so expensive. I've been doing a little bit of both. You can also add tofu or do a crispy fried tofu and your airfryer would be good as well, to kind of create that depth where you maybe do some chicken, but then you also have the tofu. So that's a great one as well. Shish kebab bowls is a great one. So this one I would say I would probably do over potatoes. And then I would have you know, think about your shish kebab. You'd have chicken or meat. You'd have tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, things like that in it, maybe even pineapple would be a great one. reel that all up. And what I would add to the top of it is like a chimichurri sauce. So a cilantro parsley sauce that you could pour over the top, which would be delicious. You could also do like a breakfast also a savory breakfast bowl where you would do hashbrown on the bottom, and some fried eggs and maybe some cheese and tomato and onion. You know, think of your vegetables that you can add in with some sort of sauce on that as well or you could just use the cheese instead. And then one of our favorite bowls is Buffalo quinoa bowl, and we cut up I'm sorry, we cooked up quinoa. We make it with chicken. I put the chicken in the pressure cooker And then I pour sauce over top of it, we cut up some celery, some onions, some celery, celery, onions and carrots. And then we also do some broccoli microgreens or any type of microgreens that you have. And then I'll do a blue cheese dressing a homemade blue cheese dressing. And that is also a favorite you could even do I'm trying to think of another one for you. So think maybe like an Asian style with ramen noodles. So you would have ramen noodles, which they are so quick and easy to make, you could make like a broth, say a chicken broth with some chicken in it, and maybe some Buck toy or cabbage, and mushrooms. And then if you have older children and say they're getting home at different times during the evening, you let that slowly simmer on the stovetop, and then they can bring they can grab like a block of ramen noodles. So I don't do the ramen that you can buy from the grocery store that you know the one we all hate in college. I buy mine through Thrive Market. And if you're interested in trying thrive, I'll make sure to put a link for you at the bottom. But they are just the noodles. And they come in blocks. So I'll put a block or two in there for the first group, and then say my son gets home from football, then we throw another block in there and then he'll have that block with his. So it's a great one to kind of have on hand for your children if they're coming in at different times of the evening. So those are some of the ideas that I have for a quick and healthy dinner. And like I mentioned with the ramen, you can do all of these are great for those days, when you have kids coming in and out. Maybe everybody's coming home at different times, you can just have everything staying heated in the oven, or you know staying warm in the oven. And then you are allowing them to make it in their own time. So hopefully this information helps. I also will put some links at the bottom to some other podcasts that I did about similar things with different dinner ideas for your picky eaters. And then let me know if there's one that you do. Because I mean, I can think I'm thinking of other things that maybe like a pancake bowl, different ones where you make savory pancake. Oh, and that was the other thing I was going to mention about the ramen is you could also put an egg on top to add more protein. Or if you have the ones who don't like chicken or tofu, they could maybe have an egg on top as well. So I hope this provides you some ideas. And if you give it a try, make sure to let me know. And I hope you all have a wonderful day. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast. I hope you found this information valuable and hope that you can immediately use some of the information that was provided. Make sure to check out the show notes for all the links that we discussed today. We would also love for you to come join us over on our moms raising healthy humans community on Facebook to provide us with information moving forward with the podcast. We also provide you with a monthly focus to help you and your family live a healthier and more fulfilling life. And if you're interested in diving deeper with us, we offer different memberships to participate in so that you can get to know us on a more personal level. We offer monthly challenges, live events on demand and live workouts, meal plans and so much more. Just head to form fit online.com to learn more. And as always make sure to keep moving