Spring Clean Your Eating: A Guide to Eating Fresh and Seasonal
It's no surprise to learn that busy lives and family schedules impact our food choices. There is hope! Carving out a small amount of time weekly for meal planning and prep can help reduce stress, save you money, and can actually gift you more time during the week. Most importantly, it increases the likelihood of healthier food choices. This month we share creative ideas and strategies to meal plan for one, two, four, or more.
Important Education Takeaways
This topic has been updated. Please read our March 2024 post for the latest information.
Give your kitchen a good spring cleaning. Go through your fridge, freezer, pantry, and cupboards. Throw out any expired food items and/or donate any foods that don’t fit within your dietary goals.
Swap out any highly processed food items for more fresh foods or home-made alternatives. Practice cooking more meals from scratch instead of relying on convenience foods.
Get organized. Practice meal planning, efficient grocery shopping, and appropriate food storage techniques to get the most out of your diet while minimizing food waste.
Eat seasonally and locally. Not only do seasonal foods taste better, they are often better for your health!
Additionally, regional foods help support our local economy and lessen our environmental footprint.
Recipes
Recipe of the month: Lemon Tahini Chickpeas
As always, this recipe is the showcase of our live taught, virtual cooking class. Our chef and registered dietitian bring the recipe to life as they walk you through food prep, swaps to meet dietary or taste preferences, plus tips and tools to support you being your own healthy chef at home.
Bonus recipe: Green Goddess Chicken Thighs
From Jamie’s kitchen to yours, our monthly bonus recipes are published on our website and social media the 4th Wednesday of each month. We invite you to browse our recipe collection and come back often to find more flavorful and heart-healthy recipes.
We invite you to join us for the live taught, virtual nutrition classes each month to gather more information on our nutrition topics. This is also an opportunity to ask topic-related questions of our experts as well as connect socially with attendees for idea sharing. As a registered participant for our In the Kitchen program, you receive a few reminders ahead of each scheduled monthly classes, but here’s an easy to remember schedule: Nutrition Education (30-minutes, 2nd Wednesday, 12pm), Cooking Class (up to 60-minutes, 3rd Monday, 12pm).
Contributing authors: Kayla Guillory, MS, RD, CDCES, diabetes educator, Providence Community Teaching Kitchen; Jamie Libera, RD, LD, CCTD, registered dietitian, Providence.