January 29, 2025 Meal planning 101: Cook

You’ve planned your meals and bought your ingredients. Now, it’s time to get cooking. To get you started, we've shared some tasty dishes below that offer complete balanded-plate meals. The one thing they all have in common? They’re versatile.

Recipes that provide the added bonus of leftovers can go a long way when you’re planning meals.

With most of these dishes, you can enjoy them as is and also use them in other meals. Plus, they’re all easy to make, nutritious, and offer a variety of flavours. Enjoy!

Recipes

Chicken fajita bowl with cilantro lime rice
Garden veggie buddha bowl with lentils and tahini sauce
Spicy fish tacos with pear mango salsa
Deconstructed skillet lasagna
 

To build a healthy balanced plate, choose recipes that provide a variety of foods each day. Be sure to include lots of vegetables. Try to make half your plate non-starchy vegetables, such as leafy greens, cauliflower, cucumber, snow peas, cabbage and mushrooms, which are very high in nutrients (including fibre), and are low in calories. Fibre helps us manage our blood sugars.

Add lean proteins to a quarter of your plate. Lean proteins, such as fish, chicken, lean cuts of beef and pork, eggs, or legumes (for example, lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans), all provide protein that helps manage the blood sugar response after meals.

Round out the remaining quarter of your plate with whole grains and starches, including rice, potatoes, pasta, cereal, bread, and grains such as oats, quinoa and barley.  

If you’d like a little more direction in the kitchen, check out our four great recipe demonstration videos from our In the Kitchen with Diabetes Canada virtual series. Each video showcases two healthy, delicious recipes and a “how-to” make the recipes at home. You’ll find the recipe links in the comments section.  

Did you know?

Diabetes Canada offers a range of healthy meal plans, including vegetarian, gluten-free, low-carb, cultural, and more, in our Nutrition & Fitness section where you’ll also find more delicious recipes.

This updated article originally appeared in Diabetes Dialogue.