By: Michelle Meyers

Since I took on the 12 Healthy Habits challenge to start cooking and making more meals myself, my vegetable vocabulary has expanded greatly. My family and I have found that we love roasted Brussels sprouts, buttery-sweet parsnips, and nutty butternut squash, which I buy pre-peeled and chopped to save oh-so-precious time.

To keep from slipping back into a cooking rut, I include my family in the meal planning. I’ll ask my husband or my kids for a main course suggestion, and then I’ll pick out a few recipes to try. They give me feedback on what they like, and we’re building an index of recipes and dishes we all like. It’s nice to have the whole family involved!

Because I’m an early riser, I do most of my prep in the morning before work. I marinate some chicken or fish, chop veggies, etc. I found that using convenience products has made my life a lot easier. I’ve always been hesitant to use frozen vegetables or pre-made products—I like to use fresh ingredients and cook from scratch—but I never realized how many great products are out there, especially when you have easy access to stores like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. As someone who likes to make their own sauce, I’m proud to admit I’ve even started using jarred sauces. Some of my other favorite short-cut products are chopped mangoes, frozen pizza dough, and jarred peeled garlic. Yum!

I’ve built a nice pantry of staples, too—canned beans, hummus, and different kinds of broth. I feel like if I have the staples, some fresh or frozen vegetables, and a starch like rice or pasta, I can usually throw a healthy dish together easily on days when I’m pressed for time.

One of the biggest improvements I’ve made is changing my grocery-shopping habits. Before 12HH, when I headed to the store, I was on a mission: Get what’s on the list, and get out. But lately I find myself browsing a little more. I’ll purchase an item “just to have,” and I challenge myself to figure out creative ways to use it. Also, I always grocery shop on the weekends, so to keep from making so many last-minute trips during the week, I’m taking a bit more time and trying to organize my list better. So far, so good!

See More: Top 10 Healthy Convenience Foods

If you read my first blog, I mentioned I love to grill. Well, would you believe a guy with a weed eater whacked my gas line and temporarily put me out of the grillin’ business? Astonishing, isn’t it?  Dismayed, but not disheartened, I pondered my options.

Then came my second source of dismay: My stove. I hate it. It is relatively new. It is the type with a flat surface where you can’t see the burners unless they are lit, which brings me to my next problem. While trying to boil water for pasta, the burner kept going off, then coming back on. Just about the time bubbles would form and there was one tiny, little tornado in the center of the pan, off went the heat. I was convinced there was a short in the wiring. Or, perhaps, as the old adage goes, “A watched pot…”  I checked with the appliance store. Unbelievably, I was told it was made to cycle off and on that way. Who knew? Certainly, not I. Tip: Don’t buy a stove because it looks “cool.” My shrimp and peppers were sautéed and my angel hair pasta was lifeless.  Reflecting upon these happenstances, I wondered if the forces of the universe were trying to tell me to “Back away from the stove with your hands in the air.”  Humor helps and I did eventually eat.

This March challenge of “Get Cooking” has been a time of reflection. I’m not great about prep….remember, I’m the “Get in, get out, get done” personality. Keep it simple. I often think how my test-kitchen buddies would cringe at my corner-cutting technique. However, I have begun to adjust my mindset. Instead of, “Who is going to get my fast-food business today?” I have begun to think, “What am I going to prepare?”  I have experimented: I made spaghetti with ground turkey rather than beef. It was surprisingly flavorful.

I’m encouraged and I’m trying, and in the end, isn’t that what it is all about?

Great news, folks: Marsha's husband Jason is so excited about the home cooking he's eating, he wants to jump in and help Marsha keep the kitchen momentum* going. In fact, tonight he has started Man-made Mondays, the night where he cooks dinner.

(OK, they haven't named it that, but go with me on it.) Jason has Mondays off, so Monday is a great day for him to cook, and it lets Marsha come home after work to a him-made meal.

This evening's meal will be Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry which he picked out of the March issue of Cooking Light. Marsha sounded a little nervous about how it's going to go, which seemed odd as Jason's no stranger to stir fry. But Jason's stir fries usually involve meat, a vegetable and soy sauce. This recipe is quick and easy, but it calls for ingredients like hoisin, ginger, and garlic which are new to Jason.

Marsha has pulled the ingredients to make it easy for him, but he's still got a little performance anxiety. I think that's a good thing; the recipe is solid and if his nerves don't get the better of him, he's going to feel really good about this dish.

As for Marsha, after cooking together for the last month, her main take away was that the best way to cook more was to prep more. She's now grocery shopping once a week (instead of every other week) to keep the produce fresh. Sure, it takes more time, but she's saving money if she isn't throwing out bad produce.

My obstacle to frequent cooking is a relatively luxurious one—there aren’t children with ballet lessons or little league politics hindering my path to the kitchen. It’s more my inconsistent dining partner. My husband travels a few weeks out of the month for his job. When he’s home, he wants “manly,” steak-y things. Or he (easily) helps us justify a festive trip to our favorite Mexican spot since we often haven’t seen one another in a few weeks. I confess I need to learn to show my “food love” through a healthful, home cooked meal instead of a margarita and a bucket of chips and salsa.

With this goal in mind during the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to make it work for us. I’m perfectly happy with a salad-y grain- or legume-based main dish. So I’ll whip up something easy (Bulgur with Dried Cranberries, pictured here, has been in heavy rotation at our house) while the hubs grills a steak or chicken breast to “man” up his meal. We’re both participating in the kitchen and both eating (kind of) the same thing.

We’re still opting to eat out every now and then for things we can’t or won’t make at home (my sushi-making skills need some work). But toasting our time together in the kitchen is cheaper, more healthful, and—we’ve found—tastier than we thought it’d be.

Find more tips and recipes to help you Get Cooking this month.

I'm worried about Marsha. She's gone from someone who can't find time to cook to someone who is so fired-up about cooking that she's buying groceries at lunch and running home to get her crock pot dinner started. "It's so easy, I'm really just opening cans and puttins stuff in the pot. I run in, go to the grocery store, put it in the crock pot, done," says Martha.

Have we created a cooking monster?

She had a successful home-cooked weekend with her houseguests, and made most dishes in advance. Char Siu was the big winner there (pictured below), and the kids and adults loved the breakfast Sausage Rolls. For the dishes she couldn't make ahead, she did all the prepping (chopping onions, broccoli) in advance, which made her feel a bit fabulous when she could just "whip it together" last minute.

When I told my husband I was going to the Home & Garden show last weekend with a friend, he burst out laughing. I said, “What’s so funny about that?” He replied, “Garden? I can count on one hand the number of times in 20 years of marriage you’ve gotten dirt under those pretty manicured fingernails.” 

I grew up in the city and lived in apartments or condos after college, so the only experience I had with living plants was watering a philodendron weekly. He grew up helping his grandmother and mother on the farm, planting and harvesting vegetables. So when we moved into our house, we hired a landscaper to design a plot for a small herb garden near the back porch. The whole notion of gardening now seemed manageable and something I could do.   

My husband was patient when I over fertilized and killed a few plants or under watered when we went a week without rain. But over the weeks as I nurtured the garden, it was rewarding to use what I’d grown in my cooking. My little garden inspires me to go through my cookbooks and magazines looking for new recipes. 

Marsha has a jam-packed work and childcare schedule, moved into a new home 1 month ago and this weekend her best friend from college is coming to visit with her family.

Yowza!

Plus, Marsha is committed to the March "Get Cooking" healthy habits challenge. In fact she cooked five times last week (yay Marsha!), and enjoyed it. The Saturday morning "cook together" time with her 5-year old daughter is really working out; she taught her daughter to crack eggs for the first time, and even taught her how to cut a red pepper with a butter knife. When Trinity said, "This is fun!" multiple times, Marsha knew she was doing something right. Plus, their cooking yielded results like Slow-Cooker Oatmeal, Thai-Style Pork Stew, and this Shepard's Pie:

which is perfect for St. Patrick's Day leftovers this week.

This month, I'm coaching Marsha, a time-pressed mom who wants to find a way to make home-cooked meals for her family. After our first session, it was clear that her slow cooker would become her new best friend, an eager, tireless sous chef.

During our session, I mentioned a favorite slow-cooker breakfast of mine, oatmeal. When I was training for the NYC marathon, I had it before every early-morning training run. It put something warm in my belly at an hour I'd rather be asleep, plus it was hearty and homemade, a breakfast that made itself while I dreamt. Plus, the aromatherapy benefits are fantastic.

Please enjoy our email exchange below, and let us know if you give this a try!

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Allison,
I have been thinking since we talked yesterday about your suggestion of oatmeal in the slow cooker and I would like to try it one day this week.  I figure it would also allow me to actually eat breakfast at home with my daughter one morning.  Do you have a recipe you use?
 
Thanks!
Marsha

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As a gal who has grown quite accustomed to "flying by the seat of her pants" for a very long time, accepting the March challenge of cooking more is my valiant attempt to reign myself in and reapply some discipline in my life (especially when it comes to food). I have taken quite a bit of ribbing from friends regarding the "lapsed" label and what appears to be a rather large skillet I am wielding in the photo. 

Well, all ribbing aside, I have been doing mental exercises about how to approach the March challenge. I took to heart Phoebe's comments in her blog about setting goals.  As a former teacher, I decided using the "KISS" method (Keep It Simple, Stupid) was exactly what my approach needed to be.  I took the grocery ads from the Sunday paper, sat down with pen and paper, and actually began making a grocery list.  I began to think about how I wanted to manage a day's meals and then a week's. Our weather had turned very nice and I love to grill, so I began to get excited about the possibilities of fresh food prepared daily. Then, on March 2nd, I got hit with a stomach virus. Temporarily, food lost all appeal.

Another Sunday, more grocery ads. A new list. New resolve. Keep fruit and yogurt handy. No fast food drive throughs. Do not sit down when you first arrive home. Last night, I prepared an omelette. I haven't done that in a very long time. I love omelettes! So, apparently, does my cocker spaniel.
I'm not quite ready for "en papillote" (I had no clue what it even was) as suggested in one of my tips. However, I like the wine and friends idea—a lot. I'm also gearing up to try the Quick Breakfast recipes collection on CookingLight.com. 

I experienced some satisfaction with this tentative step and would love to know if any of our readers have tricks they would like to share—mental ones or food preparation ones. Sometimes, cooking for one (and a willing doggie) doesn't seem worth the effort. What have you tried?

Whether you live alone, have a roommate (and cook separately), or can remember, once upon at time, what it was like being single, most everyone has had to cook a meal for one before. And it's easy, when flying solo, to lapse into the land of snacking for all three meals. Without proper motivation such as company/guests, a family, etc., it's tough to toil in the kitchen after a long work day, and here we are with March's Healthy Habit, asking you to cook more.

When cooking for myself, I try to make dishes that fall into one of two categories:

1) Quick & Easy
Have a few staple dishes that you know always turn out well that you can whip up without poring over a recipe.
- Think seafood. It cooks up quickly (especially fish), and you can simply add your favorite grain side or green to round out the meal. A little bit of seasoning also goes a long way.
- Think vegetarian. Aside from prepping and washing, veggies (especially leafy greens) cook quickly. Quick-cooking grains, such as brown rice, bulgur, and quinoa, are fantastic for a weeknight.

2) Tasty Leftovers
The key is picking dishes you'll be excited to eat more than once. Make a batch large enough to feed 4-6 people and just reheat it as the week goes on. If you make a dish on a Sunday night, you have lunch to bring to work or a ready-made dinner for the rest of the week (just prepare a fresh side every night).
- Use your dutch oven or slow cooker. I'm not a leftovers kind of gal, but when it comes to slow-cooked meals like braised meat dishes, the more you cook them, the better they taste. Leftovers, as a result, become spectacular. With these, I don't even feel the need to reinvent the dish as something new (like using the meat for sandwiches).
- Go for soups. They get richer and a more intense flavor when reheated. 
- Some tried and true favorites: Beef Daube Provencal, Classic Beef Pot Roast, Balsamic-Braised Short Ribs

Does anyone have any tips on cooking solo? How do you Get Cooking for yourself?