What’s in My Refrigerator? (+ Light & Healthy Spring Dressing Recipe)

11.04.202115.02.2024 4 min read

My Healthy Must-Haves

We all know the feeling: you eat totally healthy all day long, nibble diligently on celery sticks, drink green smoothies and even manage to have a salad instead of a pasta dish at lunchtime when eating with your work colleagues. Only then, when you sit comfortably in front of the TV in the evening and digest your (also super healthy) dinner, does it overwhelm you. The desire for something sweet or a nibble to snack on. The refrigerator seems to call. Just a piece of chocolate, we say to ourselves, only to shove the second one into our mouths a few seconds later. By the time half of the bar is gone, it “doesn’t matter anyway” and all you’re left with is empty packaging and a guilty conscience.

Does this sound familiar to you? Well, then it’s time to clean out and reorganise the fridge. This can be both liberating and fun all at the same time. In this blog post I will show you what I put in my own refrigerator and how you can create healthy alternatives in the long run. One thing I want to rue upfront about: You don’t have to go without snacks!

Step 1: Clean out the fridge and reorganise

It is best to clear everything out of the fridge — take everything out from top to bottom. This will help you sort all your food at once. In other words: vegetables with vegetables, spreads with spreads, etc. This will give you an initial overview and give you a feeling for what you have done right and wrong so far.

When you restock your fridge in the next step, think about what you are going to place where. In general, the vegetable compartment is placed at the bottom of the fridge. This has a distinct disadvantage: you can’t actually see what’s in there. So when you go to open the fridge, the first things you are likely to see is fruit yoghurts and chocolate bars…right? My tip to you: get yourself some nice glass containers and Maison Jars and put some healthy snacks in them. How about healthy sugarless Bliss Balls, for example? Or a colourful fruit salad? Veggie sticks are also a great thing to prepare, and then you can snack on them with some hummus.

Step 2: Build a foundation of healthy food

It goes without saying, you shouldn’t just throw away all your old stuff. Use them up or give them away. And then, when your fridge is nearly empty, it’s time to stock it up with healthy food.

The following foods are staples in my fridge:

Vegetables
Lettuce
Herbs
Fruits
Cold-pressed juices
Dates
Bliss balls
Plant-based milk
Nut butter
Coconut milk
Strained tomatoes
Mustard
Chilli sauce
Tofu
Silken tofu

And of course there are also some staples in the freezer:

Frozen berries
Frozen bananas
Homemade stock (in ice cube form)
Smoothie cubes (I like to freeze green smoothie)
Frozen herbs
Wholemeal bread

Step 3: Creating alternatives instead of banning food

So now you’ll have a fridge filled with great food. To be completely happy with it, you’ll have to first create a few alternatives. The reasoning behind this is that if you’re a snacker, you won’t become a salad eater simply because your fridge has been transformed. That much is obvious. As mentioned above, you have to create your own snacks that taste good and satisfy you.

On my blog there are several healthy recipes for snacking with a clear conscience:

I have also prepared a replacement list for you here, making it easier for you to replace existing food with healthy alternatives:

Fruit yoghurt → Natural yoghurt with fresh fruit and some date syrup
Conventional chocolate → Dark chocolate with a high cocoa content
Chocolates → Bliss balls
Toast → Wholemeal bread
Ready made sauces → Homemade salad dressings
Cream → Coconut milk
Butter/margarine → Coconut oil
Nutella → Nut butter
Fruit juice → Cold-pressed juices
Soft drinks → Infused water (simply cool the water and enrich it with herbs/a few fresh fruit slices)

Step 4: Clever pre-cooking and planning

If you have a tendency to snack something quickly in the evening or to snack before the actual meal, it can help to pre-cook, otherwise known as meal prep. On a rainy Sunday you can be in the kitchen and pre-cook different menus. These can then be frozen or stored in glass containers in the fridge for the coming week. There are actually two possibilities:

Either you pre-cook whole menus (like curries or soups), or you just cook up basic ingredients (rice, quinoa, lentils, etc). For me the latter option works quite well, because I like variety. This way, I have different stacks on hand and then I just have to add something fresh. But if you’re not that creative in the kitchen, you’ll probably do much better with the first variation. You just have to try it out until you find what works better for you.

I hope these tips will help you to reorganise your fridge. After all, summer really isn’t far off. Have fun shopping, eating and enjoying!

All my love,
Anina

Get the ingredients

Colourful Spring Salad with Oil-Free Silken Tofu Mustard Dressing

For the salad you only need different seasonal lettuce and/or kale and baby spinach. I like to ad cut-up raw beetroot, a few date tomatoes and tofu. Adding edible flowers makes the whole thing look beautiful and summery. For the dressing you’ll need