Cleaning is an indoor-outdoor and inside-outside body chore. Well, maybe when it comes to your body, chore isn’t the right word, clean inside and out is necessary for good health.

I was busy outside cleaning leaves and getting my vegetable garden ready for winter today so eating wasn’t on my mind much; not until I was finished with yard work and preparing dinner. Suddenly, I needed food and I wasn’t at all in the mood to cook. Take-out crossed my mind more than once but that thought didn’t win. While I repeatedly said aloud that I don’t want to cook, I cooked anyway.

I had a small bottle of General Tso’s sauce from Trader Joe’s, organic chicken breast, onion, red & green bell peppers, broccoli and my own home grown garlic. I made a stir fry. I simmered rice while I chopped and sliced and served the stir fry alongside it.

While I wasn’t in the mood to cook, I did it anyway and in the end I was glad I did. I knew it would be healthier for me and I saved money. If you don’t have time to cut up veggies, try purchasing them already cut for you; while some of the nutrients can be lost when veggies and fruits are cut too far in advance, it’s still a better choice than takeout. You can find stir-fry veggies in the produce section. You can also buy your favorite veggies and spend a little time one day early in the week cutting and bagging different vegetables that you will use during the week-this will make meal time a breeze.

While I did pretty good food wise this week, I feel the need, the want to clean up my diet a little more. I have this guilty habit of snacking on things that I don’t need-things like cheese, chips/dip, bread…while I don’t have a lot of these things at one time, I don’t actually need it. It’s time to reboot my system. It’s time to plan a time for my bi-annual 3-day cleanse.

Here’s my version of a fast,easy stir fry which totally beats take-out, especially mid-week!