I have been trying to mix things up a little bit with my meal prep. Some for your sake, but some for my own sake! It takes a little bit more time, but the meals I end up with aren’t quite as boring each day. Plus, I love being in the kitchen!
Don’t get me wrong, I can eat meat and veggies all day long, but I have been experimenting with a few things. I love going through Pinterest so I might as well actually USE some of the recipes that I am pinning, right? If you see any recipes that you think I should make then feel free to send them over! Honstly, I enjoy making new recipes and trying new flavor combinations, so it is fun for me.
I made a large grocery haul, not because we were out of food but because Safeway had some great sales on meat! I decided to stock up while the prices were low, which led to a large grocery bill. The good thing is that my grocery bills the next couple weeks with be quite small!
So here is what came about with my grocery shopping trip.
Grocery Shopping:
Again, I spent more money this last week on groceries, but I did stock up on a bunch of meat that was on sale! I bought a huge pork loin and also close to 4 lbs of 93% ground beef.
- lacinato kale, zucchini, green beans, acorn squash, broccoli, fennel, one yellow and one orange bell pepper, red onion, yellow onion and green beans, sweet potatoes and a garlic bulb
- gala apples, lemons, bananas and one orange
- 93% ground beef, frozen cod fillets, pork loin, canned tiny shrimp (to put on a frozen pizza) and eggs
- 2% Greek yogurt
- Ezekiel bread
- stone ground Dijon mustard and yellow mustard
- black olives and two cans garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
- 2 California Pizza Kitchen pizzas – one Margherita and another White pizza
- Crystal Light – one lemonade and another fruit punch
One pizza was for the Broncos game on Sunday and the other just to keep on hand for a lazy Friday night. I also stocked up on Crystal Light. It is not clean eating, but low calorie. Lately we’ve been liking to mix Crystal Light with a LaCroix or other brand of sparkling water. It makes it nice and bubbly, yet very few calories! That was my “cocktail” of choice on Sunday.
Meal Prep:
I made two different recipes this weekend for meals this week. Both are inspired by recipes in this month’s issue of Clean Eating magazine.
The first recipe was Braised Spiced Chickpeas with Swiss Chard & Sweet Potatoes. The original recipe is a soup, but I turned it into a vegetable sauté. I did adjusted the recipe a little, but used the same main ingredients. I sautéed onion, garlic and sweet potatoes in a little olive oil. Then added chickpeas and spices (cinnamon, cumin and coriander). At the very end I added lacinato kale (the store was out of normal kale and swiss chard) and let that cook until wilted. It turned out pretty good! Definitely a different group of flavors that I’m not used to.
Loaded Beef Gyro Bowl with Tzatziki Sauce was the other recipe I made. I didn’t make the Tzatziki sauce, but kept everything else fairly similar. The ground beef was cooked with onion, Italian seasoning and cumin then at the end spinach was added and cooked that until wilted. One serving of that went into a container along with diced cucumber, halved cherry tomato and sliced bell peppers.
After making both those dishes, I blanched some broccoli. Blanched broccoli might be my new favorite way of eating the vegetable! For one, the green color of the vegetable only gets more vibrant after blanching, plus it makes it tender, yet still slightly crisp. I’ll have a tutorial for how to blanch broccoli soon.
Donny grilled just a few things for me including pork loin, chicken, cod, zucchini and green beans.
After preparing all the veggies for grilling, I made hamburgers with all the extra ground beef I bought. We will be out of town this weekend, so I wanted to have some stuff in the freezer already prepared. I found this recipe for The Best Burger Recipe from the Civilized Caveman on Pinterest and decided to give it a try. I cooked them on a flat top griddle.
Last but not least, I prepared my mid-morning snack (aka Breakfast #2). Yogurt bowls was what I decided on and topped them with strawberries, banana, kiwi, cashew butter and cinnamon. So easy and SO good!
Well that is everything that I made for meal prep this week! If you have any questions about what I bought when grocery shopping or more questions about how I prepared the food, then please let me know! Comment below, send me a Facebook message or email me at eatliftplayrepeat@gmail.com. I would love to tell you more about meal prep or also learn about the tricks you use to prepare foods for the week. Please feel free to share!
Did you prepare any foods over the weekend? What did you prepare?
