{"id":81543,"date":"2014-09-22T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=81543"},"modified":"2014-09-21T16:21:55","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T21:21:55","slug":"job-searching-self-love-the-food-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=81543","title":{"rendered":"Job searching self-love \u2013 the food edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Holly Boyer<\/a>, Senior Editor, INALJ Utah<\/a>, Vermont<\/a>, Virginia<\/a>, West Virginia<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Job searching self-love \u2013 the food edition<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"holly<\/a>So, you\u2019re searching for a job or going through some kind of stressful period in your life or maybe you\u2019re\u00a0just busy. Eating right and regularly is so important for staying healthy and energized and ready for next\u00a0interview. I\u2019ve struggled with making sure that my family and I have an actual dinner on the table and\u00a0that we\u2019re not resorting to fast food too often. With some surprising new food allergy diagnoses this\u00a0year, I\u2019ve had to figure out pretty quickly how to fit cooking\/putting together every meal I eat, since\u00a0dining out has become not worth the risk of feeling sick for a week. I wanted to share some of what I\u2019ve\u00a0been doing to make my life a bit easier.<\/p>\n

1. Plan out your dinners for the week.<\/strong> I only plan dinners, because my lunches are usually left\u00a0overs or salads. Every Sunday morning I sit down with a cookbook or two and my tablet opened\u00a0to allrecipes.com<\/a>. I have my go to dinners, like tacos, that automatically get added to the list. I\u00a0have some other tried and true recipes that I pick from, and I recommend that you build a meal\u00a0repertoire as you go along, but I always choose something that I either haven\u2019t cooked before\u00a0or haven\u2019t cooked in a while. This gives some variety to our meal plan which allows me to put\u00a0certain things on the menu every week (spaghetti, anyone?) without it becoming boring. I plan\u00a0it down to the day \u2013 depending on what we have going on that day, I put the less complicated\u00a0meals on soccer practice nights, and the more complicated meals on the one blessed day we\u00a0don\u2019t have any after school activities. I always leave 2 days free in my week for when leftovers\u00a0or sandwiches or the occasional order in meals, which gives me a break from cooking every day\u00a0and honestly, I\u2019m not always hungry for dinner, so why cook?<\/p>\n

2. Cook too much food.<\/strong> On Sundays I roast 2 whole chickens<\/a> (usually with some potatoes in the\u00a0pan, yummy.) We eat one of them, and I pick apart the other and save the chicken for future\u00a0meals, that I\u2019ve already planned out in step 1. I make chicken stock<\/a> from the bones and use\u00a0that in whatever chicken meal I\u2019m cooking that week. Some weeks it\u2019s chicken and rice soup<\/a> or\u00a0paella<\/a> or lentils, or, well, you get the picture. I also cook way too much rice \u2013 at least 3 cups at a\u00a0time. Now, I have a family of 5, so that\u2019s about 2.5 times as much as we eat at a meal. But this is\u00a0what we eat with our leftover chicken or whatever on a \u201cfree\u201d night. This also goes for chicken\u00a0breast (we eat a lot of chicken) \u2013 if I\u2019m cooking 3 I might as well cook 6. Someone will make a\u00a0chicken quesadilla for an afternoon snack, or a wrap for lunch.<\/p>\n

3. Love your crockpot.<\/strong> If you don\u2019t have one, get one. Seriously, you have no idea all the great\u00a0meals you can make in that thing. You can cook apple cinnamon oatmeal in that bad boy\u00a0overnight and your whole house will smell like heaven. They come in all kinds of sizes, so\u00a0singletons can get their slow cooking on just as much as those of us with the giant 7 quart\u00a0monsters. And there are few things better than coming home after a crazy day at work to an\u00a0already done dinner. It just takes a bit of prep work in the morning, so give yourself 30 extra\u00a0minutes in the morning if you haven\u2019t already prepared your ingredients the night before (I\u2019m\u00a0never that proactive.) One of my favorite crockpot recipes is curry chicken. It\u2019s so easy and\u00a0while it\u2019s not completely authentic (I don\u2019t cook the curry powder\/paste in oil like I should) it\u00a0still tastes yummy. I just throw some raw chicken (boneless, skinless thighs are my favorite, but\u00a0breast work well too), a can of coconut milk, 1 quartered onion, and more curry powder than I\u00a0probably should. Some people add a can of tomatoes. I let that cook on low for about 7 hours\u00a0and when I come home, eat it with the rice I cooked earlier in the week (see how that works?) Chili is also a great crock pot meal, as are the traditional slow cooker favorites: stew and pot\u00a0roast. Seriously, get a crock pot and check out this book<\/a> from your local library and go for it\u00a0(especially the chili.)<\/p>\n

4. Don\u2019t eat too much.<\/strong> I know, I\u2019ve just told you too make a ton of food, so what in the world am I\u00a0talking about? Maybe this is one just for me, but with all this delicious, home-cooked food lying\u00a0around, I just want to eat it all right now. Even when I\u2019m not particularly hungry. So I\u2019ve given\u00a0myself permission to not eat if I\u2019m not hungry and try to stop eating before I stuff myself. Eating\u00a0my leftovers for lunch has helped with this because I know that I\u2019ll get to eat that delicious food\u00a0again tomorrow!<\/p>\n

Obviously there\u2019s a whole lot more to eating right, and I feel free to substitute\/reduce ingredients to\u00a0cut fat or sugar and add vegetables whenever possible. But this will get you started on managing yet\u00a0another task in your already overloaded life. Believe me, it makes a difference.<\/p>\n

Please share your favorite recipes or meal hacks in the comments. I love learning new things to make\u00a0and new ways to make my life easier!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Holly Boyer, Senior Editor, INALJ Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia\u00a0 Job searching self-love \u2013 the food edition So, you\u2019re searching for a job or going through some kind of stressful period in your life or maybe you\u2019re\u00a0just busy. Eating right and regularly is so important for staying healthy and energized and ready for next\u00a0interview.…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":63826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,4536,5883,3651,3606,3663,3595,5047,5961,111],"class_list":["post-81543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-food","tag-holly-boyer","tag-inalj-utah","tag-inalj-vermont","tag-inalj-virginia","tag-inalj-west-virginia","tag-job-search-stress","tag-job-search-tips","tag-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/holly-boyer.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-ldd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}