My Favorite Meal Prep Routine
Friday Favorites: January 22, 2021
I’ve learned a lot of tricks to help manage my anxiety over the years. From square breathing to tidying the kitchen and running the dishwasher before bedtime, one of the biggest tricks I’ve mastered is a Sunday meal-prep session. Taking a few hours to prepare meals and grab ‘n go snacks has made our lives so much easier, especially during these last few weeks of not having daycare. I’ve also been through many cycles of trying to lose weight or maintain my weight and meal-prepping has made all the difference.
Below is my favorite meal-prep routine, including a shopping list and recipe cards for you to save/print. So, put on some music or your favorite show and let’s prep!
This is the first of many shared meal-prep routines and recipes so I’ve created a color-coded system for future recipe organization (I told you I was Type-A): breakfast, lunch and dinner, dessert, drinks, and snacks. This routine includes preparing egg bake, my favorite go-to soup, a lighter alfredo sauce, and a variety of grab ‘n go snacks.
Egg Bake
This is a super easy and versatile dish to prepare with whatever you have in your kitchen. The recipe card shows a typical recipe I make frequently, but I’ve changed it up with Latin or Italian ingredients, for example.
Spicy Any-Veggie Soup
I eat this almost every day for lunch. I love to add avocado or a Morningstar Spicy Black Bean Burger to change it up, but it’s so flavorful on its own, even my toddler loves it and calls it “mama’s soup”! This is my version of the Cozy At-Home Spicy Any-Veggie Soup from http://www.ohsheglows.com.
Cottage Cheese Alfredo Sauce
I used to make a similar sauce when I was on Weight Watchers years ago and I’ve recently come back to it while using Noom. Prepare this alfredo sauce and mix it with whole wheat pasta, sautéed onions, bacon bits, grated Parmesan, and voila! you’ve made a simple pasta Carbonara! It’s also delicious on roasted broccoli.
My Routine
1. Start the Spicy Any-Veggie Soup
2. While that’s cooking, prep and put the Egg Bake in the oven.
3. Blend ingredients for Cottage Cheese Alfredo Sauce then heat in a skillet.
4. Portion out your soup or place in a large sealable container.
5. Cut and store the Egg Bake once baked and cooled.
6. Portion snacks of apple slices, berries, and grapes (if you can find Carnival Grapes I promise your taste buds with thank you)
7. I can often find snack size bags of beef jerky and pickles at the store, which is super handy! If not, I buy bulk and portion them into containers (I love these Stasher reusable storage bags).
Tip: Plan the amounts on your shopping list based on the portions you plan to make for the size of your family.
Snacks / Grab ‘n Go
Kale chips (recipe below), Sweet peppers with cream cheese (recipe below), Hard-boiled eggs, Grapes, Apples, Pickles, Beef jerky, Berries
I didn’t include a dessert in this meal plan because my current go-to are these Atkins Sweet & Salty Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Crunch Bites. I have never done the Atkins Diet but I randomly purchased these a few weeks ago while looking for something sweet and crunchy. Let’s just say there are now two bags in our cupboard and we buy them weekly.
Tip: I also like to stock our kitchen with lean pork tenderloin, chicken breast, salad kits (the Dole Chopped Kits are delicious and time-saving), steamable sweet potatoes, and fresh broccoli or other veggies for roasting.
Pork tenderloin with a Dole Southwest Chipotle Chopped Salad kit
