Making food for myself and meals for my family...

casscamp

Not sure if anyone else is in this boat or not. .. i am very focused right now on clean eating. However my husband and son are not. So dinner is 2 meals. Mine and theirs. Sometimes I find it tempting but most of the time I can do it with no problem. Any ideas on easy recipes to make them? Tips to help keep me going strong? Any one in the same boat that wold like to help motivate ? Feel free to commeht or Add me as a friend.

StealthHealth

Advice is going to depend upon your definition of "clean eating".

But generally (as someone who preps most of the food in our house) I'd say to the others, eat what I prepare or make your own.

LKArgh

What foods are you avoiding?

kommodevaran

Clean eating means different things to everybody who uses the term, so it doesn't really mean anything. If you want to eat better, just improve your diet. It doesn't have to be a revolution, an evolution is much easier to keep up with. Would you want to make two separate dinners every day forever? I'd suggest eating the same foods, but portion it out differently, ie, you grab more vegetables and less starch.

RodaRose

Drop whatever your idea of "clean eating" is.
You need to set up your environment and your schedule in a way that maximizes your chances of success on your plan.
Cook for the two guys mostly the same food you cook for yourself. Maybe add extra side dishes for them.
Here is a recipe for pork chops:
http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-perfect-pork-chops-in-the-oven-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-194257

Pawsforme

I have no idea what "clean" eating means to you. In our house I'm the cook. I eat the same meals my husband and teenage sons do. I just eat smaller portions.

Ninkyou

StealthHealth wrote: »

But generally (as someone who preps most of the food in our house) I'd say to the others, eat what I prepare or make your own.

I'm of this persuasion too. I make the food, either they eat it or they can make their own.

kristen6350

I don't make 2 meals in my house. He eats what I make, and sometimes I'll make extra stuff and I'll only eat some of it. But I never bothered with "clean" eating. Not even sure what that is. I just eat a balance of protein, fat and carbs and enjoy my food.

elaineamj

Sometimes, I make variations of the same meals. Yesterday I made baked pasta with a meat sauce.

I cooked up the meat sauce and assembled their version with the meat sauce, pasta, and cheese. Then I threw spinach into the leftover meat sauce and chopped up eggplant. The version DH and I ate was a big pile of eggplant mixed up with the spinach and meat sauce and much less cheese.

Sometimes they get completely different meals. E.g., DH and I had a Cobb Salad and they had homemade pizza on Saturday.

Many times we also eat the same meals.

Francl27

kristen6350 wrote: »

I don't make 2 meals in my house. He eats what I make, and sometimes I'll make extra stuff and I'll only eat some of it. But I never bothered with "clean" eating. Not even sure what that is. I just eat a balance of protein, fat and carbs and enjoy my food.

Ditto. I might just skip the pasta or rice if I don't have calories for it.

lucys1225

90% of the time, I am cooking two different meals, like you, one for me and one for my husband and son. The other 10% we eat the same protein. What I tend to do is batch cook for me over the weekend, portion it out and freeze it. Since I do this just about every weekend, I have a large variety to choose from. I make sure that I always have roasted vegetables and spaghetti squash on hand. Then, in the evening I only have to make their meal.

Lizzy622

I made a chili with TVP (vegetable protein) that my husband thought was turkey. There are tons of dishes you can make that are "clean" and will satisfy the "dirty" eaters too.

kommodevaran

How can, if anything, fake meat ever be "clean"?

See how useless the term "clean" is regarding food?

StealthHealth

kommodevaran wrote: »

How can, if anything, fake meat ever be "clean"?

See how useless the term "clean" is regarding food?

Exactly.

@casscamp There are people who can help you with this but you need to let us know what types of foods you like and what types of foods you might want to minimise or avoid.

AigreDoux

I do all the cooking for me, my DH who loves white carbs, and my 2 picky kids. What I do is make us all the same protein but maybe different sides. So I will eat pork chops and broccoli, my DH will eat pork chops, broccoli and rice, and my kids will eat mostly rice and a little pork.

Or I'll make shrimp pasta sauce. DH will eat pasta with shrimp and tomato sauce. Kids will eat plain pasta and I'll take a few plain shrimp out before adding to sauce. I'll make a spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles for me and have the shrimp sauce with it. Can do the same thing with curry or stir fry (remove the protein before adding sauce so kids will like it better).

On the rare occasion that I make something that I can't modify for the kids, we usually have some plain rotisserie chicken that they can have with some raw veggies and ranch, and they like that as a meal just fine.

murp4069

In my house, whatever gets cooked is what both of us eat, I just eat it in smaller portions. The only time we do separate meals if I am working late (1-2 times per week). On those nights, he eats when he wants, either take out or leftovers, and I eat what I want whenever I get home. In no circumstances do we ever cook separate meals, I can't imagine that would be a sustainable way to live long-term.

One way around that though might be to meal prep all your meals on the weekends, so your dinners are already done. Then, you can still cook dinner for your family, but you already have your meal that just needs to be heated up (as opposed to actually cooking 2 separate meals from scratch every night).

LKArgh

Lizzy622 wrote: »

I made a chili with TVP (vegetable protein) that my husband thought was turkey. There are tons of dishes you can make that are "clean" and will satisfy the "dirty" eaters too.

This is the opposite of what I would consider clean. Replacing somethign natural wth something artificial?

chulipa

I have little bags of boiled chicken ( 3oz ) and have what vegies i like cut up so my meal takes me only minutes to make. My husband likes his food fried in lard and lard in his beans. I dont use any oil in my food So I just make most things different and it works.

callsitlikeiseeit

we all eat the same food in this house (except my son as he has sensory issues)

i just eat less.

why make more work for yourself?

WinoGelato

kommodevaran wrote: »

Clean eating means different things to everybody who uses the term, so it doesn't really mean anything. If you want to eat better, just improve your diet. It doesn't have to be a revolution, an evolution is much easier to keep up with. Would you want to make two separate dinners every day forever? I'd suggest eating the same foods, but portion it out differently, ie, you grab more vegetables and less starch.

This.

cross2bear

I am of the same mind as most other posters - I do not run a diner - you eat what I make or you make your own.

casscamp

Thanks all for your advice! I am mostly prepping for ahead of time like some have recommended.

dietenv

Why doesn't your husband just cook for him and your son and you cook for yourself?

Alyssa_Is_LosingIt

We all eat the same thing for dinner. My husband and kids eat what I make. If my husband cooks, we all eat what he makes. I just fit whatever we're having for dinner into my goals, which generally means eating less than I did before.

scolaris

I'm making a leap of faith here and assuming 'clean' just means wholesome and relatively unprocessed to you, and you are not participating in some kind of Gwyneth Paltrowesque elimination of all the foods. So if I'm correct in my assumption, I would not go out of my way to provide special snowflake food for an able bodied man and two children. Offer a special side they love maybe, which you might want to eschew, but not two entirely different meals. Unless you utterly enjoy undervaluing your labor in this family!

Ready2Rock206

Definitely not making 2 meals in my home. But I will do things like make actual pasta for my son and spaghetti squash for myself if we're eating a pasta dish.

ASKyle

Agree with several of the above- I would not ever make two separate meals. Tonight it's salmon, broccolini and rice- Depending on how many calories I have left, I will fill up with rice.

zdyb23456

Lately I have been making separate meals for myself just because to stay in my calories I'd have to have a tiny portion which just makes me sad.

Tonight I made sweet and sour meatballs over rice for the family and I made myself a quick salad with tuna as my protein. Sometimes I'll heat up some leftover rice (which we always seem to have) and broil a piece of fish along with a quick veg. If the meal I'm making for the family can fit in my calories I'll definitely eat it!

kbmnurse

Let them make their own meals. Why should you?