It has been a while since I went on a grocery shopping haul! We’ve been so busy with work and the holidays that I haven’t gone on a big shopping spree in a while! It was time. Lately I’ve lacked in meal prep ideas based on minimal time on the weekends. This week I felt like keeping it simple even though I had the time.
I’m up a few pounds from our trip to New York City and the holidays, so I wanted to keep things simple with meat and vegetables! I love trying new ideas for meal prep, but it is difficult to hit my macros when I create recipes. In order to get myself back on track I stuck to the basics!
If you are following along with the 12 Week Meal Prep Series, then check out how I cooked chicken this week. I used my slow cooker to make things SUPER easy.
We went grocery shopping while we were in Denver over the weekend. I bought almost everything at Sprouts, but I did buy the peanut butter at Whole Foods.
Grocery Shopping:
- boneless, skinless chicken breasts (not pictured #foodblogfail)
- eggs
- 4 – 7oz containers 2% Greek yogurt
- Brussels sprouts, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, spaghetti squash, zucchini, red onion, green onion, bell peppers (yellow, red and orange), carrots and baby bok choy
- lemons, limes, blueberries and avocado
- Pacific Foods Soups – one Organic Cashew Carrot Ginger Soup and one Organic Curried Red Lentil Soup
- Uncle Sam Original Wheat Berry Flakes and Purely Elizabeth Blueberry Hemp granola
- Creamy peanut butter
- LaCroix Grapefruit sparkling water
Meal Prep Ideas:
Donny & I food prepped on Sunday, even though it was a 3-day weekend for both of us. We had a lot of things to get done around the house on Monday, so we cooked all the food on Sunday.
I decided to cook the chicken using my slow cooker this week. If you are following the 12 Week Meal Prep Series then you know that Week 1 involves cooking chicken! I had roughly 4lbs chicken to cook, so I put that in my slow cooker with a liner in it (super easy clean up that way).
Then I added 1/2 cup chicken broth, put the lid on and cooked it on HIGH for 5 hours. It would have been done quicker, but I was actually over at my sister’s house until 6:00pm. I turned it off after I got home.
Donny shredded the meat using metal tongs then added 1 1/2tsp salt. The chicken pretty much fell apart with minimal effort! We let that sit in the broth for about 20 minutes while we prepared other foods. The cooked meat soaked up some of the juices in the bottom to make it even more moist. This is a really easy way to cook chicken and you don’t even have to be home as it cooks!
Besides chicken, the only other foods we cooked were vegetables! Donny grilled green beans, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, carrots and broccoli. I added about 1-2tsp extra-virgin olive oil on each group of vegetables and sprinkled 1/2-3/4tsp of salt on each group as well.
I am trying to clean out the freezer a little bit, so I used some of the cooked beef I had in there. I used a hodge-podge of burgers, meatballs and meatloaf cups made during previous meal prep sessions.
My mid-morning snack will be Greek yogurt with blueberries and some toppings. I usually buy a 35oz container of Greek yogurt, but it was more expensive at Sprouts. Instead I picked up individual containers. When I pack my food for the day I’ll add toppings like pepitas, almonds, coconut, flaked cereal or puffed cereal, etc.
Well that was everything for this week’s meal prep ideas. If you haven’t signed up for emails yet, then do so! I’ll be emailing extra tips, ideas and recipes for the 12 Week Meal Prep Series so that you can meal prep like a professional!
