March 25, 2015
Tips for Weekly Meal Prep
This is a sponsored post for SheSpeaks/Bounty. All opinions are my own.
A couple of years ago, I shared some tips on meal prep.
This is easily the most important part of getting prepared for the week ahead
for me. Now, with a baby, it is even more important than ever to be on-the-ball
with things.
After a long day of
work, Troy and
I are often too tired to cook from scratch so having some foods on hand that
have already been cooked or prepped is amazing. Every Saturday or Sunday
morning, I prepare a bunch of food for the following week. I like to make the
food in bulk so that it lasts us a couple of meals at least. This is such a
lifesaver during the week when I do not feel like cooking.
What I make every week changes a lot depending on what I
feel like and what we have on hand. This is not all of the food that I eat or
cook for the week. It is just some of the food that I make ahead of time to
make life easier. Some weeks, I make a lot of food for the week ahead and
sometimes, we just wing it.
Here is the general types of foods I try to prepare each week:
-A
breakfast for Troy
for the week (usually either sautéed potatoes with eggs, sausage or vegetables
or egg sandwiches)
-At least one kind of vegetables, usually much more
-Some type of whole grain and protein
-Something for me to take for lunches at work
This is what I prepped recently:
-Roasted basil green beans
-Roasted
garlic asparagus
-Baked
tofu
-Vegetable
stir-fry
-Sausage
and Zucchini Jambalaya
-Baby
food- steamed and pureed kale
-Prepped
oatmeal jars for breakfast
-Lunch
for Monday for myself
How I complete my meal prep:
Sometimes, I start this whole process the first thing when
I wake up on a weekend morning. This is a good time for me to get all my
cooking done (or at least partially done). Other times, it is not until late
morning or afternoon.
Usually on Thursday or Friday, I will write down the foods
that I want to make over the weekend for the following week. This depends what
we have on hand, are trying to use up and what sounds good.
(Lunch for Monday- plus veggie burger added to salad)
I cook everything at the same time to save time and money
(oven usage). I cooked all of the vegetables in the oven at once along with the
tofu. The jambalaya was made on the stove next to the vegetable stir-fry.
Adalyn is
eating solids now so each week, I make her 1-2 new foods and freeze most of it
in small portions.
I like to try to identify which items will be done the
fastest, which need the most attention while cooking, etc. This helps me to
know which order to cook the food in.
All together, everything usually takes me 1-2 hours and provides a ton of delicious food to eat through the week. After all of the food is done cooking, I let it cool on the
counter while I eat breakfast with Troy .
After breakfast, I wash all of the dishes by hand and put the food away. I like
to get everything done right away because I know that after I sit down, I am
not going to want to wash those dishes later!
Meal prep can get pretty messy and can create a lot of dishes at once and Bounty with Dawn is a big help! I was recently sent this to try and it is pretty neat! The Dawn is right in the Bounty paper towels and is water activated. Messes can get cleaned up quickly with this product. I loved using these to wash down my counters with especially. Bounty is a strong paper towel and with Dawn, it got my kitchen clean in no time.
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