Hi guys! Do any of you try to meal prep? We all know that meal prep is the answer to making sure that we stay on track with our eating and also on track with our budget. But, I’m just going to say it, not many of us want to devote hours to our weekend shopping, cooking and cleaning up the explosion that happens to the kitchen after meal prep. I’m going to start a series where I show you what’s on my menu for the week and how I go about prepping for it.
Here’s a secret about meal prep: It can be whatever you want it to be!
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Some people want all their meals prepped and ready to just reheat throughout the week. Some people want the building blocks assembled but are ok with doing some cooking at dinnertime.
My style is building blocks. I know that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays dinner needs to come together quickly because those are days I work. I want easy but fun dinners on the weekend, that feel exciting but are not too hard. I’m not planning to eat out much this week, save for a weekend lunch or beer out, and Sunday dinner will be a grab and go item from Costco.
Another thing to note- because of my shopping cycle, I will be doing a big shopping trip on Sunday so therefore am working hard at using up a lot of things in my fridge/freezer.
The Menu
Breakfasts
- Hard boiled eggs that need to be used up
- Freezer smoothie kits I made a while ago that need to be used up.
- Happy Inside cereal and milk
Lunches
- Monday- leftovers and recipe testing
- Tuesday- leftover cheeseburgers/ beans and rice
- Wednesday- leftover cheeseburgers/ beans and rice
- Thursday- enchilada leftovers
- Friday- leftover pasta
- Saturday- veggie tikka and rice, and any other leftovers
- Sunday- out
Dinners
- Monday- burgers with homemade buns (recipe coming soon), leftover coleslaw
- Tuesday- white bean
verde chicken enchiladas with black beans and cilantro lime rice - Wednesday- Artichoke sausage pasta (recipe coming soon!) with kale
caesar salad - Thursday- Cauliflower chickpea tikka (Love and Lemons preorder cookbook recipe)
- Friday- Black bean nachos
- Saturday- Pizza night
- Sunday- Something easy from Costco (probably the taco kit)
The Meal Prep Plan
- Make burger bun dough, put directly in the fridge.
- Pre-soak the black beans in the Instant Pot (you do this by pressure cooking them for 4 minutes before you add more seasonings and flavor, the recipe linked shows how to go about it.
- Meanwhile dice up 2 jalapenos, set aside in a bowl. Mince 3 garlic cloves and set aside also in a separate bowl.
- When beans are finished pre-soaking release the pressure of the Instant Pot and drain beans, continue making the bean recipe as instructed but substituting jalapeno for the poblano pepper.
- While the beans are coming to pressure for the second time start on the white chicken enchilada filling.
- Make the white chicken enchilada sauce.
- Assemble the enchiladas, put in a baking tray (9×13) wrap with foil on top and put in the fridge.
- Beans should be done now, release the pressure and drain liquid beans. Put in an airtight container in the fridge.
- Roast a head of cauliflower (broken into florets) at 400 degrees with a generous drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes.
- You now have the Instant Pot free to make white rice in it. Make a pot of Instant Pot white rice.
- With a heavy bottomed pan start cooking sausage for the artichoke sausage pasta. Remove sausage from pan when well browned.
- Make the rest of the artichoke sausage pasta sauce, add sausage back to pot and simmer for about 10 minutes.
- Put Cauliflower in sealable container and place in the fridge.
- Put artichoke pasta sauce in a large airtight container and put in the fridge.
- When white rice is finished scoop some into two containers and add black beans to bowl and toppings.
- Put the remainder white rice in a sealable container, put in the fridge.
- Divide burger bun dough into 8 balls and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Put a clean towel over them and allow to rest for 1.5 hours in a warm part of the kitchen.
- Mix together caesar salad dressing.
- After the buns have rested and risen, brush with egg wash, sprinkle sesame seeds on them and bake in oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.
What I Have Made
So far I have completely made my black beans, a pot of white rice, chicken enchiladas, the sauce to my chicken artichoke pasta, roasted cauliflower, caesar salad dressing, and my burger buns.
What I Still Will Need To Do
Monday: I will need to make my burger patty which I plan to do as part of my recipe testing and picture shoot, that’s why I didn’t include it in meal prep.
Tuesday: Place enchiladas in the oven at 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes covered and uncovered until the cheese bubbles. Heat up white rice and add cilantro, oil, lime and salt to taste. Reheat amount of black beans I plan to use.
Wednesday: Boil noodles plan to use with pasta, assemble kale salad.
Thursday: Use roasted cauliflower to make the rest of the tikka dish. Make a pot of instant pot white rice. Heat up some naan bread.
Friday– Make nachos using black beans, a bag of tortilla chips that need to be used up, nacho sauce from Trader Joes, and all the topping I have on hand.
Saturday: Make pizza!
This week I did a somewhat extensive meal prep because I had the time to do it. I wasn’t able to time it because I was also doing recipe testing and prepping and pictures during my prep session. Even though it has a lot of steps there were a lot of hands-off times that I could start working on the other steps. I will let you know how my prep paid