Blog Posts | Weekly Meal Planning Using Ontario Pears & Potatoes
Weekly Meal Planning Using Ontario Pears & Potatoes
Meal planning and batch cooking is a great way to reduce weeknight stress. By dedicating a couple hours on the weekend to planning out your meals for the week, and preparing some ingredients it gets the hardest part of cooking out of the way, and meals throughout the week can be much easier.
Ontario pears and potatoes are both nutritious ingredients to add to your weekly meal routine. Pears are a source of fibre (be sure to eat the skin!), as well as other vitamins and minerals. Beyond just being eaten out of hand, they can be used in pies, bars, tarts, crumbles, and salads. Try grilling, poaching, or juicing them too.
Potatoes are often overlooked for the nutrition they provide. They are a good source of vitamin C, folic acid, potassium, fibre, and vitamin B6. They’re also a delicious complex carbohydrate, helpful for providing you energy while also being satiating – they fuel your body and keep you feeling full. Possibly one of the most versatile vegetables, there’s almost nothing a potato can’t do – mash, roast, bake, add to a salad, or turn into a fry, chip or hashbrown.
When planning your meals, ideally try to include a source of carbohydrates, healthy fats, protein, and vegetables or fruits in order to dish up balanced meals. Potatoes make the perfect carbohydrate option for meals, try pairing them with a protein such as eggs, beans, chicken or fish, and a non-starchy vegetable like lettuce, bell peppers, or cucumber for a balanced meal. Pears are a flavourful, underrated fruit to include more often. Their sweetness balances well with savoury foods, so try enjoying them with pork, prosciutto, or blend into a soup.
Here are some delicious breakfast recipes to meal prepping for this week:
Here are some great make-ahead soup & salad recipes to try:
And if you need tasty dinner ideas, check out these recipes:
Don’t feel like you have to prepare complete meals ahead of time. You can simply make a variety of ingredients, and mix and match those to create different dishes. This will prevent you from getting bored eating the exact same thing on repeat for days. This may look like – roasting, mashing or baking some potatoes, slicing up a pear for a snack or adding to a salad, or simply washing and chopping your fruit and vegetables so they’re ready to use when you need them.
Pears and potatoes are ideal ingredients to use throughout the week. In the fall, it’s likely you will have potatoes on hand already, and Ontario pears are available early fall and into the winter, making these two produce items perfect to use in your weekly meal prep. Look for these Ontario produce items at your local grocery store or farmer’s market this fall, and try a few of these recipes.