Difficulty: It’s for dinner and I don’t plan on eating anything but fruits and vegetables. As in, the fruits and vegetables are the dinner and not the side or anything like that.
Difficulty 2: It’s my work out day, cardio mostly, so they need to keep me energized. (bananas are my usual after workout snack)
I basically need fruits and vegetables that take little preparing (I only have access to a microwave) and that can give me the important vitamins and minerals and whatever else a good dinner should have. I’ve been brought up on the regular stuff, like apples, oranges, carrots, lettuce, etc., but I would like to try more exotic fruits.
Last night, as a “relish”, I chopped up a mango, tomatoes, & cilantro. I tossed in a little lemon juice, lime juice, salt, pepper, cumin, and chili powder.
It’s sort of a salsa. I ate it with a fork as a side dish.
No need for a stove at all. You want your mango ripe, though. This is better in the summer when the tomatoes are better. You could toss some frozen corn in there that you heated in teh microwave.
If you want to make a dish out of it, you’ll want beans and rice at some point. That’s not enough sustenance for me if I’m working out.
I very often make a dinner out of nuking a potato (and sometimes a sweet potato, too) and then a container of chopped carrots & broccoli or whatever vegies I have around. I grate some cheese on the potato and eat some whole-grain bread with it all and it’s delicious and filling. Don’t even need herbs and such - if you nuke the vegies just right they turn out sweet and tasty just by themselves. You don’t even need butter or salt on them.
A favorite of mine: Tomato, cucumber, avacado, mushroom salad. The ingredients travel well in a cooler and it can be prepared with a pocket knife. It’s filling enough to eat as a meal. The cucumbers give it some bulk and the avacados add a little fat to make me feel fuller.
Sometimes, I add bacon bits and if I want more protein or something different, I’ll add a can of tuna.
Some restaurants are offering salads with tortilla chips strips to give it a little more texture. This helps fool me into considering it more like a meal. I haven’t tried this at home, yet.
Add some chopped pepper (doesn’t matter what color) and a little olive oil + balsamic vinegar, too. No cooking needed. I do this once in awhile as well.