Complete Guide to Eating Well During Kitchen Renovations
Although you can rely on restaurants and delivery to survive the kitchen renovations, it’s not a healthy option both for your body and your wallet.
Home cooking is always the best guarantee of healthy eating and you can do that even without a kitchen. Here’s the complete guide:
Pre-Renovation
There are two important tasks you should do just before your kitchen is dismantled. These two tasks will save you a lot of work and money in the long run while the renovations are ongoing.
First, cook big batches of freezer-friendly recipes and divide them into meal-sized portions to put in the freezer. Don’t eat them all at once in the first week of renovations though! You’ll just hate yourself afterward for eating the same thing over and over again. These frozen meals are meant for the long days where you don’t feel like cooking. That way, you can reheat them instead of being tempted by restaurants.
Second, take out all the paper products you’ve stashed away over the years from past BBQs and parties. Use these during the renovation so that you don’t have to wash as many dishes. When they finally run out, that’s when you can decide whether to start washing dishes in the bathroom sink or buying more paper products.
Option 1: Move your kitchen
Now let’s dive into what your home cooking options are while your kitchen is out of commission. This first option is the best-case scenario and involves the least improvised cooking. You’re essentially just shifting your kitchen somewhere else so you’ll more or less have the same set-up. It’s perfect if you have space to spare and you’re keeping your old appliances anyway. Even if you’re getting new appliances though, you can still do the same thing to tide you over until the new ones arrive.
Simply move your appliances to another room and set aside part of it as your temporary kitchen. You’ll also need a table to replace the original counter space you used to have as a food preparation surface.
Option 2: Combine the power of small appliances
If space is limited, Option 1 is just not possible. At the very least though, plug in the refrigerator so that you can freeze meals, save leftovers, and have fresh fruit & vegetables.
Then it’s small appliances to the rescue! Set up a table or two both as platforms for the appliances as well as food preparation surfaces. The tricky part is taking stock of what small appliances you have at home and whether they’re enough to serve all your cooking needs. In general, you’ll want at least one appliance from each of the following categories:
- Cooking
- BBQ grill (if it’s still warm outside)
- Electric panini press (for grilled sandwiches)
- Portable induction cooktop, hot plate, or propane camp stove
- Microwave oven
- Toaster/convection oven
- Slow cooker (use crockpot liners for easier cleaning)
- Rice cooker (can double as vegetable steamer while rice is cooking)
- Re-heating
- Portable induction cooktop, hot plate, or propane camp stove
- Microwave oven
- Toaster/convection oven
- Slow cooker (use crockpot liners for easier cleaning)
- Rice cooker (can re-heat leftovers after adding a little water to the bottom of the pot)
- Hot beverages
- Electric hot water dispenser (very useful for hot water on demand)
- Electric kettle
- French press
- Automatic coffee maker (if you don’t have a kettle and French press)
- Blender
Meal plan ideas
Having the right equipment set-up is incomplete without meal plans though. Meal plans help you stick to your goal of eating at home as much as possible. They’re especially handy when you’re low in energy and don’t want to have to think about what you’ll cook tonight. They also help you mix up your meals so you don’t eat the same thing every day.
So how do you start planning your meals? First off, remember that you still have those frozen meals you’d prepared before the renovations began. If you’re short on cooking ideas, you can start by planning to re-heat the frozen meals every other day. Then you just have to think about the menu for the days in between.
For healthy and easy-to-cook family meals, here are 26 different ones you can try. Here are some more healthy recipes based on the appliance you’re cooking with: BBQ grill, panini press, toaster oven, slow cooker, and rice cooker. Don’t forget about no-cook snacks like: salads, sandwiches, fresh fruit, vegetables with dip, overnight oatmeal, frozen fruit smoothie blended with juice or dairy/non-dairy milk, cereal with yogurt, etc.
The key to not getting discouraged by the whole ordeal is to avoid eating the same meal more than twice in a row. That would require a wide range of recipes to try, which you already have with the ideas above. This will also help distract you from being too hung up on the temporary loss of your kitchen. Before you know it, you’ll have a brand-new kitchen as well as a whole slew of new recipes you’ve discovered you enjoy.
