#I’m a line cook baby I’m wash every single part of that pot and than the lid and THAN sticking it in the dishwasher if it’s not nonstick

[lilmissbeanie]

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Toru Oikawa x F!Reader Song ~ Marry Me by Jason Derulo Genre ~ SFW Fluff Warning - Swearing, hinting at smut. Word Count ~ 3.3K

Part 1 | Part 2 <you are here> | Part 3

I have changed Iwaizumi wife’s name since Wedding dress to Emiko it was Mako or Miko I can’t remember now :’) this one did start leaning towards smut but I stopped myself, I’m not ready for that yet!

Y/n and Toru had returned to Argentina a few days after Emiko's and Iwaizumi wedding, they were still talking about how beautiful the day was. 

"Oh, Toru! Emiko just looked so stunning!" Y/n gushed as she fluttered around the kitchen, making dinner. Chuckling as he watched her, he loved watching her cook. She did it with such grace even if the kitchen always ended up a bomb site.

"Baby girl, you know you don't have to use every single, pot, pan and piece of kitchen wear we own right?" 

Shrugging, she pulled the milk bread rolls out of the oven, placing on a cooling rank. Watching out the corner of her eye as Toru crept closer, reaching out for one of the rolls before he could even touch one a wooden spoon flew over and whacked him across his knuckles.

"Y/n! That hurt!" He whined, rubbing his knuckles. 

"You just watched me take them out of the oven." She scolded him waving the spoon in his face pointedly. "Sometimes I wonder if your my boyfriends or if I'm just your babysitter." 

"I love you too, baby girl." He chuckled, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind pulling her securely against his chest, as buried his face in the crook of her neck. It was the little things like this that made her happy, the little touches, the way he would brush her hair from eyes, it always made the butterflies erupt in her stomach. After three years of being together, they still had the butterflies and fireworks, the fire that would ignite in her belly when he said her name. "Trust me, I'm definitely your boyfriend, or do you need me to remind you?" 

"Perhaps I do." Y/n winked at him over her shoulder, which caused him to growl spinning her around and trapping her between the counter and his body. His molten brown eyes held an intense gaze, the tip of his tongue darting out over his bottom lip before his head dived down, locking his lips with hers in a searing kiss. This kind still made Y/n toes curl after all this time, damn he was a good kisser, he always had been, it wasn't too rough or soft, but without fail every time Toru kisses her it would always be passion taking his time, he will never rush. Toru Oikawa would always pour all his love and emotion into every kiss. He wanted Y/n never to forget just how much he loved her. His left hand cupping her cheek as he continued the slow sizzling kiss, he loved when he pulled away from her that she chased after his lips for more. 

"How long till dinner?" He questioned cheekily at her dazed, breathless look. He loved that he still had that effect on her. When she saw the proud look on his face, she didn't answer. Y/n just wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, pulling him back down into another heated kiss shocking, giving her full control. It was deep as their lips danced together. Her tongue had snuck into his mouth, running it against his before pulling away.

It was her turn to give him a proud look even though her heart was still beating rapidly in her chest from his kiss. The red tint to his cheeks made him look even more handsome. She planted another delicate kiss on his cheek before slipping past him she went over to the slow cooker she put on this morning before she left for work.

"I'd say ten minutes, I just need to cook some green beans, and we'll be good to go." stirring the bœuf bourguignon, before tapping the wooden spoon against the side of the pot, removing the excess juices before putting the lid back on.

"Wonderful, I'm just going to take my contacts out, and I'll lay the table." Kissing the top of her head before smacking her ass, "Toru!" the grin grew over his lips as he heard her squeal from the contact as he headed towards the bathroom.

Once inside and the door shut, he whipped out his phone. He quickly called back the number he missed a call from, so glad it was on vibrate in his pocket.

"Hello?"

"Hi Mateo it's me Toru Oikawa, you called is everything okay? Sorry I couldn't answer before."

"Oh Mr Oikawa, yes, yes everything is perfect. I was calling to say everything is ready for you. You can come and collect it tomorrow."

"That's great news. Thank you, Mateo, I shall see you tomorrow." Oikawa couldn't help the grin that spread across his lips, he said goodbye before hanging up the phone and calling Juan.

"Good evening Blue Beech, Juan speaking how may I help you?"

"Juan, hey its Toru, Friday at eight pm."

"One bottle of Cristal and her favourite table. I'll have it ready."

"Thank you." And just like that, everything was set in motion. Taking his contacts out, he slipped on his glasses and ran his fingers through his hair, letting it fall naturally against his forehead.

He sent a quick text to Iwa saying everything was falling into place and it was going to happen on Friday.

"Hey, baby girl, I thought maybe we could go out for dinner on Friday. We haven't been to Blue Beech in months since you were so busy with helping Emiko with the wedding and me with training." Toru said as he grabbed the cutlery from the draw and taking it set up on the table on their apartment balcony as Y/n followed after him with two wine glasses and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

"It has been forever, and I am craving Moules, are you sure you'll be able to though? Your practices have been late recently."

"For you, I'll always make time. Don't worry. I'll call Juan tomorrow and book it for eight then you can come home and have plenty of time to get ready." He smiled at her as he pulled the cork from the bottle, letting it breathe a little.

"Okay if you're sure." Y/n said before disappearing back inside to get the bread and plates of food.

"French tonight I see." 

"Yep," She grinned as he poured her a glass. Toru loved her new passion for cooking food from everywhere. Y/n was obsessed with French food at the moment. It was a different recipe every night. His favourite so far was bouchée a la Reine, well her's as well, Y/n complained though it was never as good as the one she had on holiday in France with her family back in high school.

The days flew past in a blur, Friday rolled around quicker than expected, once five a clock rolls around Y/n was out of her office door in a flash excited to go out to dinner was Toru. At her favourite restaurant Blue Beech, it was a fancy place but with Toru being a pro volleyball player and Y/n was an up and coming interior designer they could more than afford it. 

She walked through the door around half five after stopping at the dry cleaners to pick up her favourite turquoise dress. Jumping into the shower, the second she got home as she knew Toru would want one when he got back from training at half six. Washing her hair with her peach-scented shampoo and conditioner, before moving on to her raspberry body wash. Groaning when she realised she should shave as well, it wasn't bad but the hairs where beginning to return.

Wrapping the towel around herself before wrapping her hair up and heading into their bedroom taking a seat at her vanity, rubbing the excess water out of her hair, before grabbing the hair drier. Running her fingers through her hair as the hot air blew through her h/c tresses, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the feeling of the warm air. It wasn't until a soft hand pried her fingers away from the device taking into his own hands.

"Hey, baby girl," Toru said, leaning down and kissing her shoulder blade before continuing to dry her hair for her. 

"Hello, my love," Y/n hummed in reply eyes closing once again feeling him massage her scalp. Once it was all dry, he turned off the hair direr back on the hook. "Thank you." Gentle eyes met in the mirror. 

"Imma take a shower." Planting a kiss on the top of her before he disappeared out of the door. Watching him as he went Y/n just smiled after him. Switching on her curling wand as she waited for it to heat up Y/N slipped on her dress before she began to do her light make up, matching her eye shadow to her sliver jewellery she was planning to wear that matched her turquoise knee-length a-line dress with a square neckline. 

Toru reappeared not long after Y/n had finished her makeup and was moving on to doing her hair, he slipped on a pair of black slacks, with his favourite fitted turquoise blue shirt that reminded him of his Seijoh days and gave him that extra confidence boost he was going to need. His head flicked in the direction of the giggling, where he found his other half sat curling her hair with bitting her lip looking at him through the mirror. When spotted her matching turquoise dress, he couldn't help but chuckle himself.

"I can wear another shirt if you like," He asked as he wandered towards her, shirt hanging loose on his shoulders where he hadn't buttoned it up yet and his chiselled abs and muscles on full display for Y/n to see, she would never get tired of that sight.

"No, it's fine, I think it's cute how we accidentally match." Y/n said as she unravelled the last piece of hair, she was curling. Before she started to pin half back and grab the can of hair spray.

"Give it here," He slipped the can out of her hands and set her hair in place. "There, beautiful as always." 

They both finished getting ready, and Y/n slipped out to the cloakroom to grab the super comfy black heels. While Toru opened the top draw of his dresser and grabbed the little black velvet box that was hidden in amongst his ties. He tossed the box up with a grin before slipping into the pocket of his slacks. Grabbing his jacket from the bed before noticing Y/n jacket was there too, lying them both over his arm before going to look for Y/n. 

He found her by the front door going through her handbag, making sure she had everything. Mumbling to herself, saying what was in her bag. 

"Ready to go, baby? The Taxi is here."

"Yep, I just need to grab my coat." 

"I got it. Come on, or Juan will be mad we are late." 

"No, he won't he loves me." Y/n winked as they walked down the steps of their apartment block and getting into the Taxi. 

"Y/n, Toru, Welcome back! It's good to see you both again," Juan cheery voice carried over to them as the pair stepped through the entrance of Blue Beech. 

"Hello Juan," Y/n smiled at him, Toru giving him a nod, as Juan took their jackets. 

"Your usual table is ready for you." Juan guided them through the sea of tables, and people they were seat at their regular table on the balcony under the heat lamps, the tabled was laid up just as beautiful as always, the cutely sparkling to perfection, the crystal glasses twinkled under the fairy lights.

"I'm loving the fact you two are matching." Juan gushed over them as he passes the menus. 

"It was by pure coincidence, thank you, Juan." Y/n laughed as her head dived into the menu.

"I will grab you a bottle of the Picpoul de Pinet." Smiled as he disappeared to fetch their usual bottle of wine. 

"Ooo, Toru they have the moules on the menu." 

"Get whatever you like sweetheart." He said, reaching over to grab her hand that was on the table as he looked over the menu. 

"Are you ready to order?" Juan questioned as he poured their wine and water.

"Yes please, Juan, I shall have the Crab and prawn cocktail to start followed by the moules." Y/n replied, passing the menu back to the waiter as he turned to Toru.

"I shall get the scallop tartlet followed by the lobster please." Handing back his own menu. He was starting to feel nervous now, the time was approaching he planned to ask her after the main course while they had a break before pudding. He wasn't going to let on that he was nervous though, he relaxed, and the pair fell into a natural conversation about their days and how work was. They thoroughly enjoyed their meal, Y/n devoured the moules like they were going out of fashion, Juan had brought her over extra fries for the white wine sauce without her even asking, he just knew her that well with how often his favourite couple came to the Blue beech. 

"I'm just going to pop to the ladies, I'll be right back." Y/n smiled as she kissed his check walking pass him running her hand over his shoulders, he caught it, planting a kiss on her knuckles. When she was out of sight he sighed in relief, she had flawlessly timed her bathroom break, he had a moment to collect his thoughts and called Juan over. 

"It's time." Juan's eyes lit up, and he nodded running off to get the champagne and have it ready on the table for when Y/n reappeared. 

"My pretty boy, why do we have champagne?" Y/n questioned as she retook her seat, giving him a questioning look "And Cristal at that. Toru, what are you planning?" 

He smiled, the little velvet box twirling in his fingers under the table as he stood up and went to her side, 

"Y/n, my love, my other half, my queen." He began has he got on one knee, he watched as her eyes widen and a gasp slip past her lips as her hand rose to cover them. "I knew from the second that Emiko introduced us all the way back in high school that you would be the one I would fall so deeply in love with, you laughed at my jokes all that night, sat and talk about aliens and conspiracy theories with me. I love the way your e/c eyes sparkle with excitement when you are doing something you love,  I love the way that when you smile at me, I still get those butterflies when I kiss you it's like fireworks exploding, I love the way you snuggle into me in your sleep." 

His tender loving smile also reflected in his eyes as they locked ith her joyous tear-filled ones,  "I love coming home from a long day of training to find you there on the sofa watching some kind of trash on TV or cooking the most delicious meals, the way you listen to me complain about everything that went wrong that day and not every saying, just letting me rant as you always run your fingers through my hair. I want to come home everyday to you but I want it to be with you as my wife,"

Toru popped the velvet box open showing the blue topaz gem sat on the platinum ring, the gem was surrounded by diamonds, "So will you please, make me the happiest man ever and marry me?"

"Yes, Toru, I would love to marry you!" She flew out of her chair, tackling him to floor as the tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks, neither of them paid attention to the crowd watching them and clapping. Juan had been taking photo's on Toru's phone as he had asked him too. Standing up, Toru slipped the ring on her left ring finger before cupping her face and pulling into a deep romantic kiss. 

"Congratulations you two!" The pair pulled away at the voice gawking.

"You finally got the balls to do it then, huh Shittykawa." 

The newly engaged couple just stood there gaping like fishes at their best friends.

"W-what are you doing here?" Toru said, pulling Iwa into a hug as Y/n and Emiko gushed over the stunning ring. 

"Did you really think that we would miss you proposing to Y/n, we got you together we need to see you propose to her. I recorded the whole thing so you can always remember it, Emiko brought her camera, so she got loads of professional photo's of you both too."

"Thank you." Toru felt the blush form over his cheeks as he rubbed the back of his neck, he glanced over at this fiancee who was excitedly talking to Emiko, as they looked over the photos on the camera. "How did you know we would be here?" 

"It's Y/n's favourite restaurant, of course, you would bring her here. The last time we visited, all Y/n could do was rave about how much she loved this place and how it was her favourite restaurant" Iwaizumi scoffed, shaking his head.

"I thought you two were still on your honeymoon for another week, how come you're here and not Italy?" Y/n and Emiko had joined the boys again snuggling into their sides, both of them had their rings on full display as they rest there hands on the partner's chest, proudly showing off that they had managed to bag these incredibly handsome men for the rest of their lives.

"Oh, when I got the text from Loserkawa the other day saying everything was, planned for Friday cancelled the rest of Italy and we booked the first flight to Argentina, we wanted to be here for you just like you were for us when we got engaged." Emiko explained, "We'll be in Argentina for the rest of our honeymoon."

"Well, shall we all finish dinner together?" Toru offered, "Juan, can you please make this a table for four our dear friends will be joining us, oh and grab two more champagne glasses." 

The four enjoyed the rest of the evening, drinking champagne, eating desserts and celebrating the event that took place, they laughed at the fact that Y/n had tackled Toru to the floor. Emiko took more photo's of them on the beach, showing off the ring and some engagement photo's so the pair could put it on their social media, Y/n had quite the following because of Toru, and they were very excited to announce it, they also wanted some to send to their parents. Y/n favourite picture was the one on the beach with the moon behind them, reflecting off the water. Toru had his arms wrapped around Y/n waist, and Y/n was cupping his face, the ring sparkling under the starlight, as they kissed, there was one where their foreheads were leaning against one another. Soft smiles of pure love spread across their lips as they stared into one another's eyes. 

Laid in bed together that night, naked bodies tangled together after a slow passionate session of lovemaking, Y/n head was rested against his chest as she stared at her ring.

"Do you like it?" Toru asked as he watched her hypnotised by the ring, as he played with her hair.

"Like it? I love it Toru, it's stunning thank you." She said as she sat up, letting the sheet slip from her body as she straddles him smirking at him, as she leaned down trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses up his chest to just below his earlobe "So much so I think you deserve a treat." She whispered into his ear before nibbling on the shall. His hands slid up her thighs as his breath hitched in his throat, knowing exactly where this would lead.

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[prodigal-sunlight]

How to Make Friends and Influence Demons - Chapter 1

Pairings: Moceit Characters: Patton, Janus, Thomas Chapter warnings: Minor blood, generic demonic activity Word Count: 8,317

Summary:

Patton stood up, dusting off his hands and checking the book, still open on the counter. There were a couple steps he’d had to tweak. Just little things, like a circle of scorched tallow (he didn’t know what that was) or the bones of a martyr (he did not have any and did not want to.) But he’d baked enough to know how to make recipe substitutions, so he figured he could do something similar with a demon summoning.

Patton M. Sanders is as sweet as a cupcake and gentle as a kitten. So why on earth would he possibly summon a demon? That's exactly what Janus wonders when he appears in dinky apartment surrounded by scented candles and offered a piece of homemade cake. Surely he doesn't think selling his soul to a demon is going to make him friends.

Right?

Ao3 Link

It had taken a whole weekend, but the preparations were at last done, and Patton was prepared to summon a demon.

Patton hummed cheerfully as he set out the last unlit candle around the edges of the chalk summoning circle. He had a bad habit of impulse buying candles that smelled good or had cute names, so it was nice to finally have a use for all of them. The library book didn’t say the candles needed to be unscented, so he figured Butterscotch Kitten Morning wouldn’t be a problem.

He stood up, dusting off his hands and checking the book, still open on the counter. There were a couple steps he’d had to tweak. Just little things, like a circle of scorched tallow (he didn’t know what that was) or the bones of a martyr (he did not have any and did not want to.) But he’d baked enough to know how to make recipe substitutions, so he figured he could do something similar with a demon summoning.

Of course, he hadn’t just followed the book. He had a pot of coffee brewing, and a vanilla allergy-friendly cake cooling on the rack. Demonic or not, Patton figured that any guests needed a warm welcome. He was a bit worried that he didn’t have any tea to offer if the demon didn’t like coffee, but he’d have to make do without.

While he considered whether to add sprinkles to the cake now or to let the demon add their own sprinkles, his phone began to ring. Patton pushed his bangs out of his face, grabbing his phone out of his pocket and answering with a cheery, “Hello hello! Patton Sanders household, Patton speaking! Can I help you out there?”

“Hey Pat! It’s Thomas,” came the cheery response. Patton quickly pulled out a kitchen chair, sitting down with a smile to listen. “I wanted to call in to see how you’re doing!”

“Thomas! I’m doing great,” Patton said, glancing around the messy apartment. “Just so peachy! But what about you? How’ve you been kiddo?”

“Great! This campus is incredible, and I’ve made so many new friends. There’s these students named Jamaal and Talyn, and they’ve been showing me all the best places to hang out. I love it here!” Thomas said.

Patton’s heart sank a little. In less than three weeks, Thomas had made two new friends. Patton hadn’t made one single friend since he and Thomas had gotten an apartment, and that record hadn’t changed when Thomas left for school. He felt jealous, and he felt guilty for feeling jealous. He should be happy for his baby brother. “Well I’m real glad you’ve been settling in alright. Have you been eating well? Taking good care of yourself?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve been uh, all up on the home cooking and stuff! Totally not just getting pizza every week,” Thomas said sheepishly. “I’ll make good food once I’m caught up on homework and I get around to unpacking!”

“Promise?” Patton said, putting a hand on his hip and pouting. “Don’t make me march right on down there to cook and clean for you, mister!”

Thomas laughed, and hearing him so happy eased Patton’s worries a bit. “Alright, alright! I’ll take care of myself, I promise. So how have you been?”

“Well, I—“

There was the sound of someone shouting on the other end, and Thomas cut him off. “Oops, that’s Talyn! I forgot we had class. Sorry Pat, I’ve got to go! Catch up with you later!” Thomas hung up, and the phone went quiet.

Patton sighed, bowing his head. “Buh-bye Thomas,” he said, even though the call had already ended. “Have fun at class. Love you.” He set the phone down on the table and leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling.

He’d basically raised Thomas for the last few years. Between that and working two jobs, he’d been too busy to make friends or relax. Now, Thomas didn’t need him. That was bittersweet in and of itself, but it also meant that Patton had time to himself, and no one to share it with. After spending so many years worried about himself and his brother, Patton wasn’t even sure he knew how to make friends anymore. He tried, sure, but whenever he tried to greet someone he ended up tongue-tied and anxious.

Now that Thomas was all grown up, Patton was alone.

He shot off a quick text to Thomas, just a brief “Good luck!!!” with a string of heart emojis that looked far more cheerful that Patton felt. It’d probably be a few hours, or maybe all day before Thomas texted back. He was busy with college. He had a bright future. It wasn’t fair to hold him back.

Patton shook his head as if he could shake the bad thoughts right out. Thomas wasn’t the only one who was going to have an exciting new future. He put his phone away and stood up, stepping back into the kitchen proper.

He grabbed the box of matches he’d left out on the counter, kneeling down and striking a match. Slowly, he lit each of the colorful scented candles. They were all bright, and a few had cute patterns like flowers or puppy faces colored into the wax. The probably weren’t the right kind of candles for demon summoning, but they sure did smell nice. Once he’d lit the thirteenth and final candle, Patton blew out the match. He tossed it in the sink and washed the tiny smudges of ash that had fallen on his fingers.

Next, he picked up the library book in his left hand, trying to orient himself at the bottom of the circle, just outside the chalk and candles. Patton checked the instructions again. “Oh! A glass bowl, I almost forgot.”

He opened his cupboards and grabbed a tupperware bowl. It was transparent, so it was probably close enough, right? Figuring it’d do well enough, Patton leaned over to set it inside the chalk summoning circle, roughly in the middle.

Patton glanced at the library book again. “Okay, that’s pretty much everything! Looks close enough,” he said, feeling rather satisfied. Now the less fun part. He lifted his right hand to his mouth, biting down on the tip of his thumb. He flinched, but he tightened his grip until his skin just barely broke. He’d though this would be less scary than a knife, but maybe that wouldn’t have hurt as much. He leaned over, shaking his thumb until a few drops of blood fell from the tiny cut, into the tupperware bowl.

While he started reading the chant written in the book, he fumbled to wrap a spongebob bandaid around his thumb. “Okay… um, Bestias inferni, maledictus erit nomen tuum,” he read aloud. Suddenly, the kitchen lights flickered, then went out. Only the candles lit the room. A power outage?

By the candlelight, he could still make out the pages of the library book well enough to read. “Cadit regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in terris inferos.” The ground beneath Patton’s feet seemed to shake. The flames of the candles burned unnaturally bright, the color of their glow shifting from a fiery red to an unnatural, sickly yellow. Patton tried to keep his footing, tightening his grip on the book.

Patton swallowed the bile in his throat. “D–da hodie in servum vilem!” He said, his voice raising to a shout. The lines of chalk began to glow, shining with a golden light that pooled on the ground like a puddle of spilled water. As if a window had been thrown open, wind whipped through the tiny kitchen apartment.

“Et peccatis vestris daturum nobis, ut nos accipere debitum tuum,” Patton stammered, trying to rush through the last few lines. “Referte ad me, et libera me ad malum tentationis in unum.” The golden light burst outward, blindingly bright, so powerful Patton’s eyes burned even when he squeezed them shut. “Quia tuum est regnum et potestas et gloria in saecula… saeculorum!”

There was a burst of force, knocking the library book from Patton’s hands and knocking him to the ground. The intense light began to fade, and Patton sat up, rubbing his head with a whimper. “Ow…” His eyes slowly began to adjust, taking in his dim kitchen, the candles still faintly glowing. Had it not worked? But as his eyes finally cleared up, he could see a tall figure standing in the circle, right behind the tupperware bowl.

The figure was a tall, beautiful man, dressed in all black except for the simple yellow dress shirt beneath his cloak and the matching yellow band around his bowler hat. A pair of curled black horns sat on either side of his head just below the hat, framing his pale face. One cheek was marred in golden scales that shimmered in the candlelight. The man glanced about the kitchen with an unreadable poker face, any expressions hidden, but the sense of power and confidence utterly overwhelming.

“You,” the man said, looking down at Patton with a cold appraising stare. “Are you the mortal who summoned me to this place?” he asked, a faint hiss in his tone.

Patton quickly got to his feet, wiping his hands off on his hands. “Ah, sorry, didn’t mean to fall over! Yep, I’m Patton!” he said, trying to hide his mix of awe and terror. He hurried over to the cooling rack and got down the cake, slicing it into even portions. He set a hefty slice on a plate and grabbed a fork, putting them in the demon’s hands. “Eat as much as you like! It’s too much cake for two people anyway,” he encouraged, grabbing a slice for himself too.”

The demon opened his mouth to speak, but then the electric kettle began to beep, so Patton rushed over there. He poured the kettle into the two mugs he’d set out, looking over his shoulder at the demon. “Do you want sugar and cream in your coffee?” he asked, pouring a generous helping of sugar in his own mug.

The demon narrowed his eyes. “Why did you summon me here?” he said, taking a step towards Patton. “You do know what I am, don’t you?”

“Of course!” Patton said, setting down his mug. “But it seems rude to get right into that sort of thing. I thought we could have introductions and small talk over coffee! But if coffee isn’t your cup of tea—“

“No, give it here. No sugar,” the demon said quickly. Patton handed over the mug, then started blowing on his own coffee to cool it down. The demon didn’t wait, emptying the steaming hot mug in a few quick gulps. “Let’s get to business, mortal. I’m rather pressed for time.”

Patton grinned. “Pressed for time? Well don’t be bitter, it’d be better latte than never!”

The demon raised an eyebrow, a sly smile crossing his features. “Spill the beans. If you want my help, you must first ask for it.”

Patton set his mug down, hurrying over to pick up his library book. A few of the edges were burnt and crispy, but the cover and pages were in tact. Still, that would probably be a fine. He quickly opened the book back up to the page on demonic contracts. “Okay! So, it says when making a contract with a demon, you have to start by exchanging names! We can use them to call on each other so neither of us can just run out on the deal. I already told you I’m Patton. What can I call you?” he asked brightly.

The demon paused for a moment, then smirked. “You may call me Deceit,” he said.

“Is that your name?” Patton said curiously. “I thought demons had big fancy biblical names and stuff. Are you really called Deceit?”

“It is my professional title. It will allow you to call upon me, while still affording me a level of… privacy,” the demon said, folding his arms. “Does that suffice?”

Patton shrugged. “I mean, if it still works the same way, I can call you that! Or Dee, oh, that’d be cute! Can I call you Dee?” he asked brightly.

Deceit tilted his head to the side, as if considering Patton carefully. “You know, most people willing to summon servants of hell aren’t so cheerful and warm.” Amusement shone in his eyes. “So what sort of nasty secrets are you hiding?”

Patton frowned, not sure if he should be hurt of not by the question. “I don’t have evil secrets. I like to be honest with people! Besides, you didn’t answer my question,” he argued.

Deceit narrowed his eyes, his bemusement turning irritated. “No. I am not a little animal to be given a silly nickname. I will not be called ‘Dee.’”

“Awww,” Patton said, a bit disappointed. Well, maybe he could come up with a nickname Deceit would like? “Okay, well, the book says after names are traded, I should ask you to make an offer! So uh… make an offer please!”

The demon’s self-satisfied smirk returned, and he bent over so he and Patton could be eye-to-eye. “I can give you anything you desire. I can make you the most beautiful, most famous man in the world. You could be disgustingly wealthy, unspeakably powerful. I can give the reigns to any government of any nation, I can give you the power to fell armies, and I can give you enough gold to buy your own castle. Anything you wish, I can speak into existence. I can make you… a god.”

“No thanks! I don’t need that stuff,” Patton said, offering Deceit a friendly smile. “Okay, so, it says that the most common payments for demons are your soul, or the soul of your firstborn kid! I don’t think it’d be fair to sell somebody else’s soul, and I’m gay anyway, so the firstborn thing is off the table. So, my soul then?”

Deceit cocked his head to the side, eyeing Patton with fascination. “Awfully cavalier with giving up your soul. For most deals, that’s a bit of a… hard sell.”

Patton waved his hand dismissively. “If that’s the price you want, then I can work with it. It’d be worth it.” He tucked the book under his arm, grabbing his mug and slice of cake. “Do you want to continue this in my living room? It’s small, but we can sit on the couch instead of standing around?”

“Oh I would absolutely love too,” Deceit said. “Let me just follow you over there.”

“Okay!” Patton said brightly. He turned and walking into the living room, setting his mug and cake on the coffee table. He waited for a second, but Deceit didn’t follow. Patton frowned, poking his head back into the kitchen. “Hey, didn’t you say you were coming?”

Deceit, still standing within the circle of dirt, seemed unimpressed. “I was speaking sarcastically,” he said, motioning to the floor. “I can’t leave this circle until the deal is completed. Did your little book not mention that crucial detail?”

Patton’s cheeks burned pink. “Well, it probably did, but I just kinda skimmed the important bits! To be honest I didn’t expect to get this far anyway. I don’t really know anyone with demon summoning experience!”

Deceit glanced at the plate of cake in his hand, then at cartoon stickers on the fridge, then back at Patton himself. “Really?” he drawled “I never would have guessed, you do seem like such an expert on the matter.”

Patton pouted, crossing his arms. “Well you’ve probably never summoned a demon either mister pointy horns! Unless, uh, maybe that’s how demon’s talk to each other? Maybe. That’s not the point!” He paused, unsure of what exactly the point was. Maybe he really should have planned out this discussion a bit more than just summoning a demon and giving him cake and coffee.

“Now, I do love spending all day in urban nowhere, but I have a dentist’s appointment at five,” Deceit drawled, using his fork to cut his cake slice into bite-sized pieces. “You don’t want beauty, power, fame and wealth. Generally those are the ones mortals come to my sort for,” he said. “Is it immortality? It’s immortality isn’t it. We don’t do that anymore, Hell-wide policy. When their souls get collected their body still doesn’t die and honestly? It’s icky.”

“It’s not immortality!” Patton insisted. “Actually it’s… a people problem.”

Deceit nodded sagely, stabbing his fork into a bite of cake. “Ahhh, I see what you’re getting at. You want me to kill someone. Or make them fall in love with you. Or both, the night’s still young.”

“No!” Patton shouted, flustered at even the thought of getting someone killed. “That’d be awful, I’d never do that. I don’t want you hurting people or anything. I just… I want friends.”

Deceit’s eyebrows drew together, deep in thought. “Political friends?” he asked.

Patton shook his head. “No! Not like, big important political friends, or magic friends or anything. I already said I don’t care about power. I just want people who like me! People I can watch movies with and hang out with.”

Deceit began pacing the edge of the rather small summoning circle. “I could brainwash this entire city into wanting to be your closest friend,” he said.

Patton crossed his arms. “No brainwashing! I want real friends, the real way!”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Deceit said, rubbing his eyes. “Just go talk to other humans. Why in all the Hells would you summon a demon to help you make friends? What about my job description made you think I’d be any help?”

Patton puffed out his cheeks. “Well, you are kinda suave and cool! I dunno if it’s a demon thing or just you, but you could teach me that! Or just help me stay calm, so I don’t get nervous!”

“You are literally giving a demon your soul,” Deceit snapped. “At the end of the deal, your soul belongs to me. You’re going to be trapped in the underworld for eternity. And you’re agreeing to that so you can ‘hang out’ with some people?”

A moment of silent passed. Patton cleared his throat. “Okay well maybe it’s not the best way but I already tried a bunch of other stuff and this was the last thing I came up with.”

Deceit rolled his eyes, removing the silken glove from his right hand. “Fine. I don’t know why I’m trying to talk you out of it anyway. This is all the better for me. I help you find friends, and once you’ve had, say, five months being rather close, I claim your soul. Are you happy with that?”

Patton shrugged, offering his own freckly hand. “Sure! So long as they like me and I like them!” he said.

Unlike Patton, Deceit did, for a moment, hesitate. But then they joined hands and the pact was sealed. Patton winced, his palm burning beneath Deceit’s touch. When he pulled away, there was a faint white burn on his hand, a sigil in the shape of a two-headed snake.

“Now, I trust you did read the entirety of that book, including what happens after the pact is formed?” Deceit said, though his tone shared none of the certainty of his words.

Patton’s face burned with embarrassment. “Uh. You hang around and help me?” he said unhelpfully.

Deceit sighed, pulling the glove back over his hand. “More or less. If I am further that thirty feet away from you, I will be sent back to the underworld until you call on me again. You call on me by pressing my sigil and saying my name,” he said, motioning to the burn on Patton’s hand. “Whilst in public I can take a less… conspicuous form, in order to aid you without drawing unwanted attention. I cannot directly harm you or any other human while under this pact… though there’s nothing keeping me from more clever means of causing trouble.”

“Please don’t,” Patton said awkwardly.

Deceit flickered his long snake-like tongue at Patton, pouting. “Oh boo, don’t be a buzzkill. You’re the one who summoned a demon.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong about that.

But Patton wasn’t entirely clueless. He knew that trading his life for a few friends was a heavy price. He knew it was probably stupid, he knew Thomas would be so upset if he found out. He knew.

He had his reasons.

Patton was about to ask a few more questions about their new arrangements when a small buzz went off on his phone. He glanced at it, and his heart stuttered.

“Oh shoot! I didn’t realize it was Saturday!” he said, scrambling to throw plastic wrap over the cake and shove the demon-summoning book under his arm. “I’m so sorry!”

Deceit raised an eyebrow, watching Patton rush around the kitchen. “What exactly has you so worked up?”

“I forgot this book’s overdue at the library!” Patton said, grabbing his shoes and awkwardly trying to wiggle them on with his hands full. “I keep turning stuff in late, I don’t want the librarians to be mad at me!” “Is it really that time-sensitive?” Deceit said. “You can’t wait an hour?”

Patton shook his head. “If I wait I’ll forget, I always do! I’m so sorry, you can come with me! We can start on the whole friends thing!” Once both shoes were on, he sprinted to the apartment door. He glanced back, but Deceit wasn’t following. Was his sneaky form completely invisible?

“Come back here and let me out of the goddamn summoning circle, you unprofessional amateur!”

Oops.

Patton sprinted back to the kitchen, blowing out a few candles and kicking some of the salt circle aside. “Okay come on, there’s no time to lose!” he said, and immediately took off to the door again.

“It’s an overdue book, truly, the highest priority,” Deceit said, putting a hand over the door before Patton could unlock it. “Don’t go out yet. If I am going to accompany you, we can’t just walk out with me looking like… this,” he said, gesturing to his own face. “Hold out your hand.”

Patton paused, then held out his free hand, palm facing up. He shot Deceit a quizzical look, not entirely sure how this helped.

The demon’s bones began to shift beneath his skin, his eyes flashing and his form changed. It was oddly mesmerizing, but Patton decided it was also kind of gross to watch. And then—

Plop! A yellow corn snake appeared where Deceit had been, and dropped into Patton’s open hand.

Patton squealed in delight, his library rush briefly forgotten. “Oh my goodness! You’re so cute!” he cooed, gently stroking the tiny snake’s head with his finger. “Look at your little snake snoot!”

He could hear Deceit’s voice, though it sounded faint and muffled, like it was coming from inside his own skull. “Do continue patronizing me, certainly being non-venomous means I would never bite,” the demon grumbled. The little corn snake form of Deceit slowly slithered up his arm, settling in a pocket in the cardigan around his shoulders. “In here, I will be unseen. No one will know you are not alone.”

Not alone. The thought gave Patton a moment of pause, his usual smile gone for a brief moment. He shook his head, and faked a smile—fake it ’til you feel it. “C’mon Dee, let’s go make some friends.”

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #sanders side #sanders side fic #moceit #moceit fic #patton sanders #deceit sanders #janus sanders

[yarnings]

Baby’s Here

The shadows in the cabin had changed again. Leaving my worktable, I stepped outside, and looked at where the sun was shining in the clearing. As it was midafternoon, I figured I was done for the day, and started to look more seriously at the markers I had placed during the day to show where the sunlight moved. Noticing Jamie come back towards the cabin, probably to grab a forgotten tool, I called out to him.

“Jamie, can you help me put up a laundry line? Right here, if you think we could manage that.” I gestured towards a space that had pretty much been in sun all day, but would require that two posts be used.

He raised his eyebrows at me. “I’d be helping you? Seems more like ye’re asking me to put it up for ye.”

I put my hands on my hips. “That’s right, helping. I’ve done the hard part. I decided that we needed one, figured out where to put it and even dug out some rope for you. All you need to do is put it up.” I handed Jamie the aforementioned coil of rope, and he untucked the ends and started measuring out its length. “How long did ye want the line, Sassenach?”

“About here to here,” I paced off about 15 yards. “I want it to hold at least 20 of the clouts.”

“I take it ye intend to put our linens on the line too?”

“No, Jamie, I intend to put 20 clouts on it. The linens will be fine with the bushes like always. Did you ever hear the story of your father’s trip to Broch Mordha the week after you were born?”

Jamie shook his head, not sure where I was going with this digression, but willing to follow where I led.

“Your mother sent him to see if he could find a bolt of diaper for the girls to hem into more clouts. Because she didn’t have enough for you. You were her third baby, I’m fairly sure she knew how many clouts she should need for an average baby. She wrote to Jocasta telling her about this. Did you notice the size of the pile of clouts that Jocasta gave Brianna? There’s a reason for that.

“Given how Brianna went through nappies, I’m quite sure it’s a heritable trait, so don’t expect the baby’s digestion to ease up anytime soon. I’m hoping to be able to do two days’ worth of clouts normally, but there will be days when 20 clouts is just what the baby used that day. And before you question those numbers, every single clout that comes off that baby’s arse is getting washed. Every time. And if there isn’t enough sun to sterilize them that way, they will be boiled.”

By now well used to my impassioned rants on hygiene and childrearing, Jamie reacted most strongly to the last part of that list, being well aware of what we had that we could use to boil clouts.

“Sassenach, do ye mean to use the big cooking pot fer that? After all the talks ye gae me about washing wi’ soap after using the privy?”

Fully understanding, and approving of, his reaction, I had my explanation all ready. “The clouts will already be washed before they go in. All we need to do is kill the germs. And the pot will sanitize itself just as effectively as the clouts. Look at it this way – the alternative is that the cabin will smell like sal volatile. ”

He nodded his head. “That’s it then.” My surprise at his ready acquiescence must have shown on my face, for he laughed and drew me in to kiss the top of my head. “Mo nighean donn, if ye say that it is the right way to do it, woe betide any man who tries to do it another way. I ken better than tae try and argue with ye when ye’re this determined, and have thought things out this much. Besides, all ye’re asking me for is a laundry line. If ye get my axe, I’ll chop down some saplings for poles, and it will be up in no time. Had ye been asking for the moon on a silver chain I might have more of a desire tae argue, but if ye want a laundry line, a laundry line ye shall have.”

Having long ago given up on trying to convince Jamie (or anyone else in this time) of the validity of germ theory, I considered this a sufficient victory. Fetching him the axe, I left him the rope, and went back to my worktable.

You just know that Claire would have insisted on washing all of Jem’s diapers. Even better, can you imagine Bree’s reaction when she discovered that Lizzie was just putting the diapers to dry and not washing them? But Jamie already knows that Claire is really weird, especially about washing stuff, so it would be fine.

As always, feel free to share feedback about this, especially if something confuses or worries you.

#Outlander #fan fiction #gotham's writing workshop #week 16 #help me #Drums of Autumn

[neilmillerne]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

[joshuabradleyn]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

[ruthellisneda]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

[almajonesnjna]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

[albertcaldwellne]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

[johnclapperne]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

[fitnetpro]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

  ###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People published first on http://fitnetpro.tumblr.com/

[lindafrancois]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

  ###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

[denisalvney]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

  ###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People published first on https://www.nerdfitness.com

[lindafrancois]

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these) 

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

  ###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/