Most weekends I spend a couple hours in the kitchen. I either work on new recipes, prepare food/meals for the week or Donny & I have someone over for dinner. Either way, I get a lot of cooking time in. However, this weekend was definitely not that way. We are hardly home at all! Those few hours we were home we actually decided to take naps….
Both Donny & I had a busy weekend, but it was full of fun things going on. Our company BBQ was on Friday night, then we both played in a big two-day golf tournament Saturday & Sunday. I knew I would be tired after being outside in the hot sun golfing, so I planned on making meal prepping super simple. Knowing there was a full weekend ahead, I actually went grocery shopping on Friday during my lunch hour instead. I knew I wouldn’t want to go once the tournament was done, which ended up being a good decision.
Grocery Shopping:
Donny cooked the meat for our company BBQ, which included smoked chicken and pulled pork. We purposefully purchased extra chicken for ourselves so that he could smoke it all at once to use for the week. We bought chicken thighs at Walmart and I stuck to the basics for everything else. Here is what I bought at Safeway.
- Broccoli, broccoli slaw, coleslaw mix without the dressing, sugar snap peas, mini bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, kale, carrots, green onion, a red bell pepper and an orange bell pepper
- lemons, avocado, and bananas (forgot to put in the picture)
- 2% Greek yogurt, 1% cottage cheese and eggs
Meal Prep:
I mentioned this earlier, but I knew I wouldn’t want to spend very much time prepping food after spending two full days playing in a golf tournament. I kept things really simple. The chicken was already cooked, skin removed and off the bone by the time I started putting meals together Sunday afternoon, so that helped.
Before buying groceries, I decided I wanted to make my Asian Chopped Salad to eat this week. I started by making that first and mixed romaine, coleslaw mix, broccoli slaw, chopped sugar snap peas, red bell pepper and green onions in my meal containers. I chopped some of the smoked chicken up and portioned it out into Ziploc baggies. If I can avoid it I don’t like eating the same meal every day, but it was super easy to keep it that way this week. It helps to eat salads made with raw vegetables if you are short on prep time. I’m guessing it took me 15 minutes to prepare all five meals, because all the ingredients were the same. Again, you lose variety, but save a lot of time.
Donny also offered to grill for me, even though it was really hot out! I didn’t have too much that needed cooked, so it didn’t take him very long.
He grilled Brussels sprouts, bell peppers, carrots and a broccoli/cauliflower mix. I also had him grill cod for me that I wrapped in foil packets. Easy peasy!
While he was grilling I sautéed a bunch of kale to eat with eggs this week. I used about half the gigantic bag that I bought at Safeway and sautéed it over medium heat with a little extra virgin olive oil.
To be honest, I almost forgot about my mid-morning meal! I thought I was done with meal prep, but realized I only had two meals per day. I quickly mixed together cottage cheese with a tiny bit of protein powder, then topped that mixture with sliced banana and cashew butter. Simple and delicious!
That was it. I knew I didn’t want to spend much time prepping food and, when all said and done, it took about an hour. Most of the time I prefer to spend more time in the kitchen during meal prep. I really do enjoy it, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way.
Did you prepare any meals this week? Did you try anything new?
