Are you a meal prepper? If not, maybe you should be! It’s easier than you think.
When I am meal prepping on Saturdays or Sundays the first thing I do is make a list of what I want for dinners that week. I make it a goal to cook at least 3 dinners throughout the week. The days when I do not cook I reserve for left overs, or maybe carry-out. I also look at the weather for the week and my schedule. This helps with planning what meals I want to cook on certain days.
First I decide what I want for dinners and then what I want for lunches and snacks. During the week, I have protein smoothies pretty much everyday. On the weekends you will find me making a more variety of breakfast foods.
When brainstorming what I want I go to my top 3 favorite websites for meal prepping to see if they have any meals that sound good on their weekly meal plans. My go-to food blogs are
- Skinny Taste
- What’s Gaby Cookin’
- Gimme Some Oven or Damn Delicious
If nothing that they have on their meal plan sounds enticing, I go to my cookbooks or my favorite meals that I have made in the past.
The next step is grocery shopping. First, I go through each recipe to determine if there are any ingredients that I do not have on hand.
Then its off to the grocery.
When I get home I unpack right away. Obviously putting away refrigerated items and then pantry items.
Then, I decide if there is anything I can do to make cooking for the week easier.
Lunches are made and separated into 5 glass container.
For dinners, I try to go ahead and chop veggies and rinse fruit. Depending on the meal, it might help to go ahead and brown turkey or ground beef. One of my other go-to’s is to cook 2-3 chicken breasts in the crockpot for 3-4 hours and then shred it. Cooked chicken breast is so versatile and super helpful for throw together meals.
I store all of my precooked food in glass containers. That way they won’t stain if there is tomato based product (which let’s be honest…I eat A LOT of tomatoes!).
The last step is to enjoy your easy meals throughout the week!
Here are some ideas on how to make your life easier throughout the week by meal prepping:
- cut veggies
- quickly chop veggies or garlic in your mini food processor (if you don’t have one, you need one!)
- cook chicken in crock pot for 3-4 hours and then shred
- rinse fruits/cut up (depending on the fruit)
- brown ground beef or turkey
- make any marinades you will be using
- make homemade salad dressing
- if using kale, pull leaves off of stems and massage in Extra Virgin Olive Oil
🍋 The Main Squeeze 