By Jennifer Whitmire, MS, MEd, MH, CHES, NEP

The other evening, I opened my refrigerator looking for something to eat and had to laugh. Most people would probably think there wasn’t anything to eat in there.

There was a container of roasted Brussels sprouts, half a cucumber, some washed greens, a bowl of shredded cabbage, a handful of cherry tomatoes, fresh herbs, sprouts, a few leftover roasted vegetables, and a few bowls of bean dips. Tucked into the back was an avocado that really needed to be eaten.

To me, it’s dinner.

It made me realize that I think about food differently today than I did twenty years ago.

Years ago, I would have opened the refrigerator looking for a meal. If there wasn’t a complete meal waiting for me, I probably would have closed the door and started wondering what I should cook. If I was tired, I might have suggested going out to eat instead.

Today, I don’t think that way. For one, there aren’t any restaurants nearby that cook food that’s good enough for me, and it’s a 30 minute drive.

When I open the refrigerator now, I see lots options.

I Stopped Looking for Recipes

People ask me where I find my recipes, and I used to collect cookbooks and spend hours on the weekend choosing which ones I wanted to make.

Now, I might look at a recipe to get an idea, but I hardly follow one as written.

I love creating recipes and teaching cooking classes. Recipes are wonderful teachers. They introduce us to new ingredients, show us techniques, and help us explore new flavor combinations. Many of the recipes I used regularly began as someone else’s recipe that gradually became my own. Somewhere along the way; however, I stopped depending on recipes.

That change eventually became the inspiration for another article, Why Some of My Best Meals Never Start With a Recipe, where I share how moving away from recipes to ingredients completely changed the way I cook.

Instead of wondering, “What am I making for dinner?” I look at what’s on hand:

• What vegetables need to be used up while they are still fresh?
• What herbs and spices do I have?
• Do I already have beans cooked?
• Would roasted vegetables taste good with fresh greens today?
• Is there something crunchy?
• Something creamy?
• Something colorful?

These questions help me create a meal that is nutritious and completely different from the one I made yesterday. (I LOVE variety and do not like to eat the same meal over and over.

Nutrition Science Is Moving in the Same Direction

One of the reasons I love learning about nutrition is that research usually shows what traditional cultures have eaten still works today.

For many years, nutrition education focused on individual nutrients. We learned about vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein, and omega-3 fats. Then, the trend moved toward antioxidant-rich foods, superfoods, and specific phytochemicals.

Today, one of the most interesting areas of nutrition research is dietary diversity.

Maybe we don’t need to know if kale is healthier than spinach or blueberries are healthier than blackberries, researchers are asking what happens when people regularly eat a wide variety of plant foods.

Different vegetables, fruits, herbs, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains provide different fibers, vitamins, minerals, and thousands of naturally occurring phytochemicals. These nutrients don’t work alone. They interact with one another, with our metabolism, and with the trillions of microorganisms living in our digestive tract.

The more I read, the more convinced I am that variety and diversity is key.

Fortunately, variety doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, I wrote more about this in The Healthiest Foods Are the Ones You’ll Actually Eat, where I explain why nutrition science has moved away from searching for one “perfect” food and toward creating healthy dietary patterns.

My Refrigerator Does Most of the Work

People are always asking me how I eat so many vegetables. They assume I spend hours meal prepping on the weekend or have every meal planned before Monday morning.

The truth is much less exciting. I don’t usually prepare meals ahead. I prepare the ingredients, if it will make it faster later in the week.

During the week when cooking dinner, if I’m cooking beans, I’ll make extra, because I know I can use them in salads, soups, as a side, or in a dip later in the week. If the oven is already on, I may roast an extra pan of vegetables while I’m making dinner. None of those things are part of an elaborate meal-prep plan, but they make healthy eating easier over the next few days.

For lunch, I already have several healthy options waiting for me. Instead of standing in front of the refrigerator wondering what to make, I grab leftovers from last night, a salad that’s already made or a container of washed greens, and then some peppers and carrots to add color if needed.

I have found that this move has changed the way I eat more than almost any recipe I have ever created. When healthy ingredients are washed, prepared, and easy to reach, they become the foods I choose most often.

This Week’s Rainbow Salad

The salad I made this week looked something like this.

Not because I followed a recipe, but because that’s what happened to be waiting in my refrigerator.

Start with Greens

Choose one or several.

• Mixed greens
• Romaine
• Spinach
• Arugula
• Kale

Add Color

This week I used:

• Shredded purple cabbage
• Cucumbers
• Cherry tomatoes
• Bell peppers
• Radishes
• Sprouts

Add Protein

My choice was chickpeas, but any bean works beautifully.

Add Healthy Fats

This week I used avocado and pumpkin seeds.

Finish with Flavor

Fresh basil from the garden.

A handful of parsley.

My favorite homemade dressing.

That’s it.

Next week it will probably look completely different, and that’s exactly the point.

The Lesson

Looking back, I think one of the most important skills I have developed in the kitchen wasn’t learning and memorizing another recipe, but learning to see ingredients in a different way.

When deciding what to cook, think, “What colorful foods can I put together today?” That question has changed the way I cook, the way I create my grocery list, and the way I eat.

I used to meal prep for hours on Sundays, but now my refrigerator looks so different. It is no longer full of ready to eat meals, but it is filled with possibilities.

Those possibilities almost always turn into something delicious.