Grocery shopping was non-existent this week, but meal prep was not! Donny & I were on vacation Friday through Monday, plus we are remodeling our kitchen so we have NO kitchen. Both of those factors led me to skip grocery shopping.
Rather than skipping both shopping AND meal prep, I made a simple lunch for the week and packed two convenient snacks. I’d prefer to have fresh meals to eat all week, but sometimes life happens and I don’t get that luxury.
Don’t forget to check out Week 6 of the 12 Week Meal Prep Series. It is all about vegetable-based sides to keep healthy meals from feeling boring. Sign up for emails to receive even more tips, recipes and meal prep ideas to help you meal prep like a pro!
Grocery Shopping:
I literally did not go grocery shopping. We left for a short vacation Friday and got back Monday. We don’t have a kitchen so I knew I wouldn’t be able to cook ahead of time and I didn’t have a ton of room for extra food. Instead of going grocery shopping I used the food we already had in the refrigerator and freezer. Random meals? Sort of. Still clean eating? Yes.
I did pick up four Epic Chicken Sriracha bars at the airport. They are fairly pricey, but they have 15g protein, no added sugar and these chicken ones are only 100 calories. Not bad!
Meal Prep Ideas:
When it comes to meal prep, planning is key! I did very little to prepare my food this week. Since I had a very small amount of time to cook, I used some of the foods that I had in the freezer.
During past meal prep sessions I’d made lean hamburgers, cooked chicken breasts and made meatballs. All three of those will come in VERY handy this week!
Since Week 6 of the 12 Week Meal Prep Series focuses on vegetable-based sides I chose to make something SUPER easy. I heated one Minute Ready to Serve Brown Rice cup in the microwave (literally takes 60 seconds) and divided that among three meals containers.
I bought a steam bag of broccoli a week or so ago to use for easy dinners since we don’t have a kitchen at the moment. It came in very handy, since it only took 4 minutes to cook in the microwave! I divided the bag into three servings and it ended up being roughly 100g per container.
As the broccoli cooked, I added 1/4c frozen sweet corn and 1/4c cauliflower rice to each meal container. I’d bought the cauliflower rice last week and didn’t finish it, so I stuck it in the freezer.
Next, I put 4oz of frozen grilled chicken breast into each container. Before our kitchen was ripped out, I’d prepared several extra chicken breasts so that I could freeze the extras for last minute meals or for easy meals like this!
Last but not least, I spooned 2 Tbsp 505 Green Chie Sauce over the rice-veggie mix. I will have these chicken, rice & veggie bowls for lunch each day and they have roughly 330 calories.
I also pulled a few mini frittatas out of the freezer (made several weeks ago and frozen) to take for my mid-morning snack.
My last task was to portion out a few nuts. I ran out of pistachios after making three servings, so I used raw almonds for the fourth. The almonds and pistachios are for mid-afternoon to go along with the Epic bar.
Honestly that was everything for my meal prep ideas for this week. I didn’t go to the grocery store, but I had plenty of convenient foods on hand to create healthy, yet enjoyable meals for the week!
Don’t forget to check out Monday’s post regarding Week 6 of the 12 Week Meal Prep Series. It is all about vegetable-based sides similar to what I made during meal prep. Simple and delicious!
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