I have an idea about how to get ready for the week, food-wise. The plan is to prepare a relatively large container of each of several types of foods. You’ll end up with about 5 different kinds of categories of food that you can mix and match through the week, throwing together soups, salads, platters, and whatever else you think of, like this:

1. Cook a pot of legumes, whether lentils or beans. This category also includes tofu, sprouts, and canned beans.
2. Prepare a large bowl of washed, shredded greens to eat raw or cooked. This can be lettuce, kale, swiss chard, collards, and so on. Place a dry towel (paper or cloth) at the bottom of the bowl, and cover with a second towel, this one quite damp.  This should keep everything fresh for 3-4 days. Re-wet the top towel as needed.
3. Make a pot of grains, whether brown rice, quinoa, millet, bulgur, whole-grain pasta, or a pan of polenta.
4. Cook a protein source such as tofu sauteed in olive oil and soy sauce, roasted chicken wings, barbecued drumsticks, hard boiled eggs, poached salmon, or the like. Canned fish (sardines, tuna, salmon) is also good.
5. Roast a vegetable. It can be squash, beets, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, green beans, cauliflower, or broccoli, and so on. Choose a different one each week.
6. Shake up a simple vinaigrette of olive oil and red wine vinegar with a touch of brown mustard and a few herbs, like oregano, thyme, and basil. Next week use lemon juice instead of vinegar, skip the mustard, and try a different herb mix.

Say this past week’s cooking yielded pots of white cannellini beans, red leaf lettuce, white quinoa, roasted broccoli, and drumsticks, while the coming week’s plan is for hard boiled eggs, swiss rainbow chard, brown rice, roasted cauliflower, and red lentils. Here are some ideas:

Week 1:

1. Dice a tomato, add to lettuce, toss with vinaigrette. Serve with warmed drumsticks and roasted broccoli.
2. Chop an onion, fry in olive oil. Add white beans and warm. Serve over grains.
3. Place a scoop of cannellini beans over greens, and drizzle with vinaigrette. Blueberries for dessert.
4. Toss greens with vinaigrette. Cover a platter with the greens and place in each corner scoops of the beans, broccoli, and quinoa.
5. White beans + quinoa stirred with a few drops of vinaigrette and sprinkled with grated cheddar cheese.
6. Strip the meat from drumsticks, saute with onion and garlic, and remove from fry pan. Fill pan with quinoa, stir to warm, and return meat to the pan. Serve with greens.

Week 2:

1. Fry 2 onions in a large skillet, add brown rice and stir to warm. Spoon lentils over top, add one-half cup water, and cover for 5 minutes to steam.
2. Fill a bowl with a few spoons each of the warmed chard, rice and lentils. Drizzle with vinaigrette. Slice hard boiled eggs into quarters and serve on the side. Watermelon slices afterward.
3. Slice hard boiled eggs thinly, and layer over greens. Sprinkle with parmigiana cheese.
4. Heat tomato sauce, and pour over a mixture of rice and lentils. Eat with cauliflower.
5. Heat a quart of store-bought chicken stock to boiling, and turn off the heat. Add a few cups of greens and a cup of brown rice, and allow to sit for 5 minutes to heat. Afterward, you can also pour in a raw scrambled egg, slowly stirring the steaming pot the whole time to make egg drop soup. Salt and pepper to taste.
6. Try a bowl of grains, heated with milk, drizzled with honey or maple syrup, and sprinkled with almonds, for breakfast.

There is still room for making extra things on the side, if you have time and the inclination. There’s room for fresh fruit, dark chocolate, cucumbers, peppers, pickles, sunflower seeds, peanut butter, and plenty of other add-ons. But the basics are in place. I don’t think it takes more time to eat well, but I do believe it takes a bit of planning.

Addendum: This plan is completely adjustable for individual diets.  Vegetarians can skip the eggs, fish, and meats in the protein section. Grain-sensitive, gluten-free, and Paleo eaters can adjust the grain group, or skip it entirely. Plant-based eaters can make a fat-free vinaigrette with tomato juice (my Grandpa Sandy loved to do this in his Good Seasons salad dressing cruet), and then proceed with vegan options.