Reclaim ‘me time’ with this busy-mom-approved tip for healthy dinners
It’s Thursday evening, you have to pick up the kids from swimming lessons in one hour and this is your only chance to go for a run. The catch? There’s nothing planned for dinner. This is when you make a choice: skip the run and hit the grocery store, or order expensive, unhealthy take-out.
“My biggest nemesis is time,” says Arndrea, a marketing director and mother of two, who teaches Barre fitness on the side. “And my second biggest is groceries — that I actually have them. You’re always missing something, right?”
So how does she manage to keep fit and spend time hiking and mountain biking with her family, without sacrificing healthy eating ? Preparation is key.
“Meal planning is a huge help for me. I do my grocery shopping at SPUD.ca. I sit down and I go online and I figure out what we’re going to have, and then I know we need this, this, and this,” says Arndrea. “SPUD has these things on their website called Ready to Eat: Dinner for 4 and I’m obsessed with them. They come in your SPUD bin with the rest of your food and you just have to stick it in the oven and cook it and there’s a giant fresh salad on the side.”
“The Be Fresh [Ready to Eat: Dinner for 4] meals have been a godsend for me on Wednesdays,” adds Maggie, a physiotherapist and active mother of two, who loves to ski, mountain bike, practice yoga and hit the gym. “We have piano and soccer (after my work day) so it’s amazing to be able to throw a meal into the oven and know it will be ready when we all are.”
In addition to the convenience of shopping for groceries online when it suits your schedule, the SPUD site allows you to add a forgotten item to your order instantly, so you don’t have to worry about those impromptu cupcakes that used up the last of the eggs. You just have to add them to your order before 5 p.m. the day before your scheduled delivery.
“There’s this perception that it’s frivolous to buy your groceries online,” says Arndrea, “but I can’t stress enough to other parents that it’s freeing up your time. It’s letting me go to the gym before school pickups, whereas otherwise I’m having to hit the grocery store.”
Maggie also understands the benefits of planning weekly meals and ordering only what you need. “Saving time from being in the grocery store and buying unwanted or spontaneous things” is huge, she says. “I can also do this on my own time – at 10 p.m. when everyone else is sleeping.” To learn more about SPUD’s time-saving grocery delivery service, visit SPUD.ca.