Hi Friends!
Yesterday I taught you how to prep food on the weekend. Today I’m going to show you how exactly it makes life easier during the week. So, here’s what I prepped two weekends ago:
My weekend prep included:
- Baked fish
- Greek Black Bean Burgers
- Hard boiled Eggs
- Quinoa Breakfast Bars
- Curried Sweet Potato Soup
- Trailmix
- Black Beans
- Quinoa
- Guacamole
- Carrots
And here’s what we ate last week:
Breakfasts
I eat cereal every morning for breakfast during the week. 2 bowls of Kashi Heart 2 Heart cinnamon with skim milk. I also have a mug of green tea. Hubby grabs a quinoa breakfast bar from the fridge to take to work, as well as a piece of fruit sometimes, and his mug of coffeee.
Monday
Lunch: I packed one of the Greek black bean burgers, some of the sliced carrots with hummus and a pear. Hubby came home for lunch and made a fish taco with the cooked fish, black beans and guac and also had a couple hard boiled eggs and some blackberries.
Dinner: I made fish nachos with blue corn tortilla chips. I used the cooked fish and black beans, so I just had to chop up some red peppers and onions, then load up the nachos and top with cheese. While they were in the oven, I cooked some green beans in the microwave and pulled out the carrots and hummus.
Tuesday
Lunch: I packed some of the curried sweet potato soup with some quinoa and black beans added in, a pear, some leftover green beans and chips with guac. Hubby ate a one of the black bean burgers and made a big salad with some of the fish and veggies on top.
Dinner: I made sweet potato and black bean quesadillas using the black beans and a sweet potato that I diced up and microwaved for 2 minutes. Just spread the beans and potatoes in a whole wheat tortilla, add some chopped peppers and onions (leftover from the nacho prep) and cheese and pop it on the George Foreman grill. I also ate some leftover stirfry veggies and lentils with a little piece of leftover salmon and hubby had a bowl of soup with his dilla.
Wednesday
Lunch: I packed some of the fish with quinoa, black beans and salsa, plus a pear, a handful of the carrots with some hummus and one of the hb eggs. Hubby ate a Chobani, two hb eggs, and a peanut butter sandwich with a couple of clementines.
Dinner: On Tuesday night, I pulled out the crockpot and made a lentil veggie soup. I threw in some roughly chopped carrots, green beans, onion, sweet potato and red pepper with a bag of dried lentils, a container of vegetable broth, lots of curry powder, paprika and cayenne pepper and some extra water. I cooked it on low for 8 hours overnight, added a bit more water in the morning and then put it in the fridge all day to let the flavors meld. For dinner on Wednesday, all I had to do was reheat and serve with a pear and some chips.
Thursday
Lunch: My preceptor took me out to lunch to celebrate the end of my rotation. She choose a Mexican restaurant. I ordered the veggie quesadilla and added black beans, plus I asked for 1/2 the amount of cheese. Instead of the rice and beans for the side, I ordered grilled veggies. I ate half the dilla and packed up the rest. Hubby made himself a rollup with the rest of the fish, some hummus, some guacamole, cheese and quinoa and a chobani and an egg.
Dinner: We made egg sandwiches. Instead of using regular bread, we used some frozen naan from Trader Joe’s. The sandwiches had an egg, some Muenster cheese, avocado and tomato and were grilled to perfection on the panini. SO GOOD. We also had some leftover lentil veggie soup and some carrots and hummus.
Friday
Lunch: On Thursday night I wasn’t really in the mood to pack lunch so I threw a pear, some carrots and hummus and a pb&j in my lunchbox and called it a day. Then, I ended up having a snow day…so I ate my pb&j for a snack and made myself from eggs for lunch. I also ate my pear, carrots and hummus and a little bit of the sweet potato soup.
Dinner: We made some salmon that we had in the freezer. I served it over a bed of farro (which cooks in 15 min) with some sauteed black beans, peppers and onions and added a little balsamic vinegar for flavor.
Saturday
Lunch: We went to crossfit at 11 so we had a to refuel when we got home! We had eggs, leftover farro/black bean mixture with avocado and some greek yogurt bites from the freezer.
Dinner: We actually thought about going out to dinner for the first time in a month. In the end, we settled for picking up a veggie pizza on our way home from a baby shower and eating it at home with some carrots and hummus and hb eggs.
Snacks
We had the trailmix pre-made so we could just grab a serving each day for a snack and we also had the hard boiled eggs that we could easily grab out of the fridge for snacks and meals. Other snacks we ate during the week included lots of veggies with hummus, chips and salsa, cereal, greek yogurt etc.
So there you go. At the end of the week, everything was gone except some trailmix and a little guac!
Hopefully this post shows you that prepping food on the weekend makes healthy meals much easier during the week.
Enjoy!
–Lindsay–
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Nicely done! I do the same thing with meal rep and every week I end up with a nearly empty fridge. Well, my fridge at home is emplty now… but my htoel mini fridge is stocked. LOL!
Now I’m craving quesadillas, which I have not yet figured out how to travel with. Thanks. 😛
It’s amazing to see the results of hard work up front converted into low stress and low maintenance during the week. Keep up the great posts and the helpful tips!
Jessi
http://www.jumpingje.wordpress.com
glad you’re finding them helpful!
I love weekends where I have time to prepare!! Makes the whole week feel much smoother.
Meal prep is huge! Plus it helps to have leftovers for lunches the next day!
Wow, thanks for this Lindsay. Being new to the working world (wahoo for graduating..finally) I am seriously trying to get of the mode of not being able to be at home to cook lunch (sometimes even dinner). But the health field is nice that a lot of the time it’s odd hours so you can. Anyways-I’ve been trying to prepare food on weekends to be more like this so it gives me a lot of great ideas!
awesome! glad it helped!
Prepping food over the weekend makes life SO much easier!! And there’s really no excuse throughout the week when you have so much healthy food already prepares! Well done!
ahhh I so need to get back to this….
Great posts! I love how you did two of them to show how you used your meal prep!
thank you! glad you liked them!
Everything looks delicious!! I tend to prep things day by day. So, I’ll prep a side and 1-2 main dishes on one day off, then another side and main on my next day off, and eat leftovers and things like eggs, tacos, or tortilla pizzas on the days in between. It seems to work well for us, so far.
love that system! whatever works for you!
SO how about I just hire you to come prep my house for the week. We pay in Emmie kisses and hugs. 😉
oh i’d accept that deal in a heartbeat!
you are the queen of prep! i love it. foods of color too. even better!
Everything looks great! Way to stay on top of keeping healthy food around! Definitely makes eating well easier!
thank you!! i try to always have healthy stuff on hand. makes decision-making easier 🙂
Thanks for sharing so many details!! Sunday food prep is absolutely essential in my house too…if I don’t do it, my whole week is out of whack!!
right?! it throws off my whole schedule without it!
You are amazing. Love this and thank you. I do need to get back into prepping food on the weekend. It makes life so much easier! Just have to convince my husband that leftovers for the kids is fine!
tell him i said so! we live on leftovers!
I need to get more organized. I grocery shop and plan meals for the week, but I need to do more prepping on Sundays. I think that would help to eliminate some of the craziness between running after work and getting home to make the family dinner.
it definitely helps during the week! anything i can do to reduce stress during the week is good in my book!
Great post, eats and colours!
love colourful food 🙂
nice tips! i do some weekend prep for lunches but enjoy cooking dinner during the week, so i don’t do quite as much as you do. very impressive 🙂
every little bit helps!
FOOD PREP is so key for a busy schedule. GREAT TIPS girlie!
QQ..how long does your food prep take?
under 2 hours. even if you just have an hour, you can get so much done!
Thank you for a GREAT post L! How better to prepare than learning from an RD!! Your dedication pays off!
thank you so much Jess!
I’m getting so many good ideas. And a craving for Mexican. Haha!
hah! we DO eat a lot of mexican 🙂
Great post with tips for everyone…from those that are just starting to meal plan to those that have been meal planning for years! Thank you for sharing how you meal plan for the week!
This post and yesterday’s are PERFECT! Exactly what I’ve been waiting on. Two questions. For the hard boiled egg, do you store with the shell on or off? I tweeted this to you too, so if you wrote back already no worried. And do you make the guac ahead of time or each night? How do you keep it from going brown?
Thanks!
yay! like i tweeted you, i leave the shells on until i’m ready to eat them. if you’re worried about the guac you could make a smaller amount, with just one avocado. i put the juice from a whole lemon or lime in there and mix well, and then store in a container that doesn’t have a lot of extra room for air. the very top layer still turns brown but just mix it into the rest, which stays green.
This post is fantastic! I love seeing how prep can go to real meals. I think it is awesome that your prep includes the weekend too. I often kind of leave Saturday and Sunday off my menu and that can get me into some trouble when trying to plan meals. You know that whole failure to plan is planning to fail thing. 😉
yeah i’ve been really focusing on weekends lately since we’ve been eating out a lot less!
I love weekends! Preparing meals seems so easy because of your post! Thanks!
This was just the kind of post I was looking for! I’ve been searching for better ways to create and use meal plans. I always have the “idea” to prep for the week, but then I end up going for the usual. I hope weʻll get to see more of these posts!! Thanks! 🙂
yay! glad you found it helpful!
Your prepare post was great but actually showing how you applied it was even better. My training is a lot longer and more intense on the weekends, so I am exhausted most of the time, but I need to put this on the weekend task list. Thank you.
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Hey Lindsey, love the idea to prep food ahead of time. I’m a mom of two so meals are always the most stressful times of the day. I’m going to start trying this out…Do you ever end up not wanting to eat what you prepped though? I sometimes get fickle, and am often a somewhat emotional (though still healthy) eater – I’m afraid this may end up becoming a problem with prepping in advance…
i’ve had that problem before. that’s why i try to prep more general items instead of full meals. if i just have cooked quinoa, black beans, chopped veggies, etc…there are lots of ways i can put those together depending on my mood throughout the week. i like that i have stuff on hand but i’m not tied into anything specific!
Such awesome meal planning! It makes it super easy to make healthy choices:)
Hi I have a question about food prep. I just got started this week, I purchase frozen veggies like string beans, broccoli, carrots and I wanted to know if you had any suggestions for keeping them from getting mushy. I steamed this time but should I just defrost them and place them in the containers? will they still cook when i reheat my meals at work?