Blog for all health-conscious: Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Meals With 4 Ingredients or Less {Guest Post}

Friday 20 April 2012

Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Meals With 4 Ingredients or Less {Guest Post}

Link to Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy

Meals With 4 Ingredients or Less {Guest Post}

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 10:00 PM PDT

While I’m gallivanting around on vacation, I’m delighted to bring you another guest post with some great ideas for really quick and really healthy meals.

It's 8pm. You just came home from a long day of work and you're exhausted. You're hungry. You don't have the energy to make a fancy dinner but cannot bear another day of TV dinners or take out. If you want something easy to make but that still hits the spot, you're in luck! There are several hearty meals that you can cook with just four ingredients or less:

Whole Wheat Pasta: A great alternative to the most savored yet carb-filled dish, this healthy option gives you satisfied, happy, and full, with energy to burn off later. This is a great option since you are able to add ingredients from a wide variety of available toppings.
- Light:
  - Add chopped basil into your olive oil (garlic infused olive oil is a great touch for additional flavor) and top with chopped tomatoes.
- Feeling extra hungry?
  - Add grilled chicken to the mix and you've got yourself protein to last you the day and some shaved parmesan.

Green Salad: A little cliché, but this is the healthiest option out there, and filling if you add the right ingredients. The best part? It's great with whatever you have in your fridge. Here are some ideas for lighter or heavier options, depending on your appetite for the day.
- Light:
  - Mix baby spinach with honey roasted peanuts, goat cheese (regular or herbed), with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The sweet peanuts mixed with the creamy goat cheese and the acidic balsamic vinegar is a combo your taste buds will thank you for later.
- Feeling extra hungry?
  - Combine mixed greens with avocado, sliced tomato, green onions, and cucumber slices with any clear salad dressing (Homemade Italian option: mix olive oil, chopped parsley, garlic, 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, and a pinch of red pepper flakes for spice)

Wild Rice Mix: Using either black rice or wild rice, a hearty and healthy ingredient from the lands of Thailand and Indonesia, both of have a mildly sweet flavor to them that pair great with ingredients you would never think to mix.
- Light:
  - Mix cooked rice (black, wild, or brown), baked pieces of butternut squash, toasted pecans, and slices of tangerines. I love to add chopped green onions to this dish too, so if you like them as much as I do, don't be shy!
- Feeling extra hungry?
  - Simply make that a side dish and cook up some chicken, flavored with salt, garlic, and rosemary.

Omelet: Simply, easy, and yummy, omelets are another great option to add whatever you have in your fridge. Plus, it's great for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
- Light:
  - Make a two egg omelet with ingredients such as cheese (cheddar, Jack, muenster, gouda), chopped onions (white or green are usually paired better with eggs), tomatoes, and some avocado slices, yum!
- Feeling extra hungry?
  - Sautee onions, bell peppers (any color will do), and tomatoes lightly in olive oil with salt and pepper. Transfer to the 2 egg omelet and sprinkle goat cheese (or Feta) on top of mixture before you cover the omelet. Sprinkle – yes you guessed it! – green onions on top.

Yogurt, Yogurt, Yogurt: A healthy and deliciously sweet snack, yogurt is a quick and easy ingredient to mix with whatever your heart desires. Personally, my favorite yogurt is the mapleflavor of the Brown Cow products, but really you can add these ingredients to any flavor your particularly interested that day. It's dessert time!
- Light:
  - Grab a bag of delicious granola from the bin aisle in Whole Foods and add it to your plain or flavored yogurt with sliced fruit. Pineapple, peaches, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, you name it! The list is endless with this sweet treat and every addition is a good one.
- Feeling extra hungry?
  - Toast some almond slices in the oven and add to the above yogurt mixture. Then drizzle honey on top – to your heart's desire – and dive in. Honey is a great touch to add extra sweetness, especially if you have a plain yogurt and need to spruce it up a bit.

Debbie Lawrence is a content editor for an online schooling blog at OnlineSchools.com. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Spanish from the University of California, Santa Barbara. When she unplugs from her daily work, you can find her scrapbooking, baking, hiking, or researching one of the top culinary schools where she hopes to master her cooking skills one day.

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