Introducing the "Grocery Store Spotlight Series", your guide to obtaining EASY HEALTHY meals from popular grocery stores that can be on the table in 10 minutes or LESS with NO REAL COOKING involved!
After a long day at work/school/the beach, etc, who wants to come home and cook? Sometimes you are just busy, and you need to bring home something you can pretty much just throw on the table that isn't the usual takeout. This grocery store guide is for those kinds of evenings where cooking is just not an option, but you want to keep it healthy!
First stop: TRADER JOE'S!
To the refrigerated section we go! Use prepared ingredients to your advantage!
As far as your proteins go, TJ's always has pre-grilled or roasted chicken near the produce section. They have all kinds of varieties, but today I'm going with their basic grilled chicken. (12oz package: $5.49)
Or for a meatless option, the produce section always has pre-cooked tofu. Their Sriracha baked ready-to-eat tofu is only $3.69!
From here, you have a few easy options.
1. The most obvious would be to just grab some bags of already chopped salad mix to combine the chicken and with and make a salad, or...
you can grab just a couple more ingredients to build your own tacos/fajitas.
No-Cook Meal #1: Chicken or Tofu Tacos
For these tacos, once you have the grilled chicken strips or tofu,
1. grab a shredded cabbage mix (as pictured below) or lettuce mix, or pre-chopped peppers & onions if you're going fajita style.
2. Lastly, head over to the bread section and grab the reduced carb mini tortillas, or tortillas of choice.
From there, you can either throw the tacos together cold, or just heat up the chicken/tofu. If doing fajitas, just sautee the peppers & onions with the chicken/tofu in one pan, season to your liking, and serve with the tortillas. E-A-S-Y!
Pictured Above: Reduced carb mini-tortillas ($2.99) with shredded red&green cabbage mix ($1.99) (bagged mix) and grilled chicken strips ($5.49)
Total spent: $10.47
Each taco: approx $1.40
No-Cook Meal #2: Chicken & Lentil bowl
Also in the produce section, you can always find pre-steamed lentils, which takes literally ALL of the work out of cooking lentils.
Ingredients:
-TJ's grilled chicken $5.49
- steamed lentils $3.29
- jar of roasted red peppers $1.99
- dressing of choice
Combine all ingredients in a bowl, that's it. You'll only need about 1/2 the jar of peppers. Heat if desired. Serves about 4-5.
Total spent: $10.77
Total per serving: $2.60
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