Grocery Shopping & Meal Prep posts are a way for me to share with you the clean eating food items I purchase at the grocery store and then how I use to foods during meal prep. This week I spent about two hours in the kitchen, but managed to make a ton of extra meatballs to stick in the freezer. It would have been shorter, but they took some time to bake. Otherwise, this week was SUPER easy!
I had a really busy weekend and knew I wouldn’t have my normal schedule of grocery shopping Saturday and meal prepping Sunday mid-day or mid-afternoon. I ended up grocery shopping after work on Friday (it was a MAD HOUSE, so I do not recommend that unless necessary haha). Then I meal prepped pretty early on Sunday. I’m talkin’ cooked from 6:30am-8:30am…it wasn’t too bad actually! I needed to be gone by noon so I started right when I woke up.
Grocery Shopping:
Again, I went to the grocery store Friday night, because I was playing in a golf tournament Saturday morning. I knew I wouldn’t want to go after the tournament (a nap was way more likely) and then I was going to a wedding reception that night. I didn’t want to have to try to slip it in there somewhere, so I just went right after work on Friday. Here is what I bought:
- 2 packages 90% ground beef – it was about 3.3lbs (on sale – that’s why I bought extra)
- 2% Greek yogurt and 1% cottage cheese
- 2 dozen eggs
- Romaine hearts, broccoli slaw, Brussels sprouts, green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, and sugar snap peas
- blueberries and bananas
- two sweet potatoes and also 1lb baby organic sweet potatoes
I had some stuff still left from last week including almond milk, avocados and cod. This trip seemed fairly small, but Donny is also out of town so I don’t prep much food.
Meal Prep:
I was going to the Rockies game so I didn’t have a ton of extra time to meal prep. I decided to go with a few really simple things so it wouldn’t take much time. I also didn’t do as much variety, because Donny is out of town and I didn’t want TOO much food left. I hate wasting food!
I started with making zoodles! I used my hand-held spiralizer to make these zoodles. I actually spiralized both zucchini and yellow squash. I cooked the spiralized squash over medium heat in a saute pan, stirring occasionally. It doesn’t take long to cook. I think I sautéed it 5-6 minutes. I added a little salt to the squash as well.
I had a few extra squash that I didn’t spiralize, so I cut them in half lengthwise and cooked them in the grill pan. I added about 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil to the grill pan and cooked these over medium heat.
While that cooked, I trimmed the green beans. Once the zucchini was done I added another teaspoon of olive oil to the pan and cooked the green beans.
I wanted to take salad this week so I made one for each day. I used chopped romaine, broccoli slaw, chopped sugar snap peas and diced bell pepper. I’ll probably add more to the salad each day, depending on what I’m feeling. I have feta, bleu cheese, pepitas, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, etc on hand to mix and match some additional toppings.
I cooked the baby sweet potatoes in the oven along with the cod. I made foil packets for the cod and seasoned the filets with Mrs. Dash Salt-Free Seasonings Garlic & Herb plus a little salt. I covered half a cookie sheet with foil and placed the potatoes on that side. Then placed both foil packets on the other half. I put that in the oven at 375° for 15 minutes. I took the cod out and put the potatoes back in for another 15 minutes.
While the potatoes and cod were baking I made meatballs. I combined an egg, whole wheat breadcrumbs and the ground beef in a bowl. I made 50+ meatballs and cooked all of them. I used a broiler pan and sprayed it with non-stick cooking spray. I put it in the oven with the potatoes (after I’d removed the cod) and cooked them for 15 minutes at 375°.
I had so many meatballs that it actually required two batches. I removed the potatoes and first batch of meatballs and cooked the remaining. I clearly didn’t NEED 50 meatballs this week, so after they cooled I froze a lot of them in a Ziploc freezer bags. I’ll have those handy for last minute dinners or for meal prep later! Booyah, I love having extra meat cooked.
That was all the cooking I did. I had to make a mid-morning meal for the week and I decided chia pudding was in order! I mixed almond milk, protein powder, a little Greek yogurt and chia in some small glass containers. Each day I’ll add different toppings, depending on what sounds good. I have blueberries, banana, different nuts and nut butters, coconut, etc to choose from.
Notice I didn’t cook any chicken or pork.
Whhhaaaaattttt?!?!
I realized some of the chicken that I had in the freezer was needing to be used. It has been in there for a couple months now and I decided I should use it. I also wanted to free up the freezer space!
What happens sometimes is that we have leftover meat in our fridge that I’m afraid we won’t get to before it goes bad (I’ll decide Wednesday or Thursday what we will eat). Instead, I’ll portion it out and freeze it already cooked. If I get home late after work or don’t have any protein prepared, then I can pull one of the baggies out of the freezer and have lean protein in minutes!
It works really well actually. I didn’t want to defrost all four bags of chicken on Sunday, because I may or may not get to it until Friday. It probably would not be good by then! Instead I put a sticky note on each meal prep container that needed chicken. When I am putting all the info in My Fitness Pal(generally the night before) I’ll see the note and grab a baggie from the freezer. It will then defrost in the fridge overnight and the next day. Throw it in the microwave and you’ll be good to go!
Well that was everything I prepped for this week. Check out tomorrow’s post to see my Day in the Life: Mel’s Meals post to see what I added to these meals to have a day full of clean eating!
What did you meal prep this weekend?
