This week I made a pretty big trip to the grocery store. I only went to one, Safeway, but made it count! Donny is doing a weight loss challenge and wanted me to stock up on lots of fruits and vegetables! I am not sure if this is enough or too much or where we will stand at the end of the week, however I’ll see what we have left on the weekend and make adjustments. Donny has never complained about having to eat healthy foods for breakfast and dinner, but I love that he is eating more fruits, veggies and whole grains during the day! Maybe my healthy eating is rubbing off on him….. what do you think?!?
Preparing different foods or entire meals doesn’t have to be difficult or take a ton of time. I cook and package up the majority of my meals for the week on Sundays, but you wouldn’t have to go that route. Even just preparing a few different foods to keep in the fridge helps on a busy weeknight. Make a batch of quinoa or brown rice. Grill or bake some chicken breasts. Roast a batch of various veggies. Simple things like that make it easy to throw together a healthy meal in a matter of minutes. I like to cook a bunch of vegetables ahead of time in order to add them to my eggs in the morning or throw them in a bowl with some chicken for a 5-minute dinner. What are your favorite foods to prepare for a week of healthy eating?
I also want to point out that it has taken me a very long time to get to this level of meal preparation. In the beginning I would make 1-2 extra chicken breasts with dinner so that I could have leftovers the next day. When Donny & I got married we started making meals for 4-6 people in order to have a few more lunches for the rest of the week. Then I started preparing extra vegetables on the weekend. Later I started packing all my yogurt parfaits on the weekend. Eventually I got to the point I was making all the food, but not portioning it out ahead of time. I wanted to save time at night and in the morning so I portioning out each meal on Sunday and I’ve never gone back! I love it.
Feel free to ask me anything! If you have any questions about what or where I buy, how I cook something or want to talk about other meal prep ideas then message me on Facebook, email me at eatliftplayrepeat@gmail.com or message below. I am not kidding when I say I LOVE talking about food. Some people are more advanced in the kitchen while others are new to cooking, so if I skip over a detail that you’re unsure about then feel free to ask!
Grocery Shopping:
- boneless , skinless chicken thighs, pork chops, cod
- 18-pack eggs
- 2% Greek yogurt, 1% cottage cheese, unsweetened almond milk
- broccoli, Brussels sprouts, yellow squash, grape tomatoes, kale, romaine hearts, bell peppers (red, yellow and orange)
- strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, bananas, lemons, avocado, apples
- Parmesan cheese
- sweet potatoes
- brown rice cakes
- Adam’s creamy peanut butter (only ingredient: peanuts)
Meal prep:
We had a very lazy Sunday this week. Normally I am quite productive, but for some reason I felt like being very lazy. You need that every once in a while, right?!
I still managed to cook plenty of food, but it took me a while because I’d make something here then relax and make another thing and relax. Mid-afternoon we did all the grilling so that required more effort!
I bought a Taste of Home Summer Slow Cooker magazine the other day and came across a beef roast recipe that looked pretty dang good! I knew Donny had mentioned that we had a bunch of beef roasts to use, so I decided to try this recipe out. A few changes were made, due to lack of ingredients and wanting to keep it clean eating friendly. The recipe was also intended to be made into sandwiches, but we’ll use it for random meals throughout the week. I mixed beef broth, balsamic vinegar, coconut sugar and minced garlic together and poured it over the roast sitting in the slow cooker, flipped that puppy to high and let it do it’s thing all morning. By “do it’s thing” I mean make our house smell amazing!
Meal prep started with my mid-morning snack. I decided to make a giant frittata to take each day. I made it very similar to the Kale & Red Pepper Frittata that I have on the blog, but I didn’t use any oil and changed the ingredients a little. First, I sautéed 5 links Trader Joe’s Italian Chicken Sausage (I love these because they don’t have casings, so they crumble easily) with 1 jar Trader Joe’s Fire Roasted Red Peppers and 2 cups raw spinach. Then I added the eggs, which consisted of 5 whole eggs and 10 egg whites mixed with salt & pepper. Lastly, I put 5 giant “dollops” of cottage cheese on the top to test out how that would work. I LOVE frittatas. I cut the frittata into 5 equal portions, put them in individual containers and sprinkled a little Cholula on top.
Saturday afternoon I was going through out cupboard and, for some reason or another, decided to purge all the food we aren’t eating. I had kept a lot of it around thinking I’d eat it, but 6 months later I still haven’t even thought about it so I decided to get rid of it all. Thirty minutes later, I had a clean cupboard and ended up getting rid of quite a bit. While doing so, I also found quite a few items that I wanted to keep and use. Lentils was one of those items! I cooked 1 cup of lentils in water according to the package directions (boiling them). Easy peasy.
Since I wanted lentils to go with quinoa, I actually had to make quinoa! I made extra so we could eat it throughout the week, but it also freezes well. I made a TON of quinoa and then froze two cups worth in a Ziploc freezer bag to use later.
In the past I’ve used white quinoa when cooking, but Donny brought home some red quinoa. I’ve used tri-colored before which contains the red, but haven’t used only red quinoa. It is slightly higher in protein than white and gives the meals a nice color.
I sautéed some kale again. In a large sauté pan over medium heat I heated up 1 Tbsp or so of extra virgin olive oil and sautéed the kale about 5 minutes. I had quite a bit so I put a lid on the pan in order to partially steam the kale. It makes it cook just a little more quickly because it steams the top leaves and sautés the bottom. Don’t forget to stir the kale every few minutes.
Donny grilled pretty much everything else. He grilled boneless, skinless chicken thighs, thin pork chops and cod in foil packets (forgot a picture of the pork).
He also grilled Brussels sprouts, bell peppers, broccoli, zucchini & yellow squash and some carrots. Delicious!
This pictures shows regular grilled carrots. I forgot to take a picture, but the carrots I had Donny grill this week were baby carrots. Exact same idea, just different size!
I am very excited about meals this week. I’ll probably make a lot of overnight oats and yogurt bowls for breakfast, since I am having eggs mid-morning. Quick & easy dinner bowls are most definitely in my future with all these extra cooked veggies too… yum!
Again, I made a ton of extra food this week. Some of it will go into Donny’s lunches and snacks, but other are for our breakfasts and quick dinners.
Did you prepare any food this weekend for the week?
