This post is a mix of things, but it is all things food prep related. We have some lunches, some dinners, some sauces, and some stashes of veggie scraps for later use.
This morning I was able to prepare 4 days of salads for lunch, along with 4 days of juicing while the kids were getting dressed and ready for school. I'm gonna say it took about 35 minutes. I only did 4 days due to it being Wednesday already. I can start over on Sunday with something new.
Meal prep really saves me in more than one way. When I don't do it, I always wish that I had. I typically prep lunches like salads, quinoa and sauteed veggies, or a spicy veggie soup. The obvious reason is that it saves time. You don't have to make those particular meals that day, it is already done for you. You either pull it out of the fridge and enjoy, or heat and eat! The other benefit for me is that it makes it easier to eat better. If I already have a healthy meal or juice ready to enjoy, I'm not going to pull out a frozen burrito and eat it while I wade around in the waters of food guilt. Plus, you feel organized, which for me brings a little spark into my day.
Let's start with this week's lunch. It all started when I was preparing make ahead freezer meals yesterday.
I spent a few hours cooking a few meals to freeze. Keep in mind, I am a veggie loving fool, but the rest of my family won't eat them! My oldest son will eat most veggies, but when I make wonderfully healthy and delicious meals, they are usually just for me. So dinners are usually pretty plain. Any recipe I share you can easily add veggies too, if you're lucky enough to live with veggie lovers. I made 2 nights of Ground Turkey Chili, 2 nights of Indian Butter Chicken, and a night of Enchilada Casserole with homemade Enchilada Sauce. When the time comes, all I will have to do it pull it out in the morning to defrost and heat later. I can make cornbread waffles for the chili and make rice to accompany the butter chicken. The Enchilada Casserole is great with beans which are easy in the crock pot. Here's a little peek at how the freezer stash is coming along.
This is 3 nights worth of butter chicken (which I will share in another post). You simply thaw on the counter and dump the bag into your crockpot. Serve over rice and add some naan bread and you have a delicious Indian cuisine. This time I added large pieces of sweet potato to the bag, it should be a healthy, taste of sweet added to the recipe.
I have 2 bags of chili where I used half ground turkey and half organice grass fed beef. I have a bag of white chicken chili and a bag of enchilada casserole.
Here I have some things I regularly freeze so that I can either salvage them before they go bad or I've made extra of something.
I like to grate zucchini and freeze it. Remember I told you that my family won't eat veggies? Grated zucchini is perfect for hiding in meals. I use a peeler first to get rid of the dark green color, I swear to you that they will see it and it will blow my cover. I grate it like cheese and freeze it flat in a baggie. These baby bella mushrooms I got at Costco are delicious but I could not use them all in time when it's mostly just me eating them. So I cut up what I had left and tossed them in the freezer. These can be hidden well too if you dice them up small enough, they can blend in with meat and sauce. Then we have the hummus, also bought at Costco, too much for just me, so I took half of the container and froze it for later. The enchilada sauce I had made with a dinner one night and had doubled the batch. Now I have sauce ready to rock if I want to make enchiladas. Little by little the freezer will fill up.
In the midst of the cooking the freezer meals, I decided to put on a pot of lentils. I figured I could add some of them to the chili I was making and save the rest for other meals during the week (like lunch).
Lentils are easy, they just simmer. I added some chili powder and cumin, salt and pepper and the tiniest bit of ground ginger. They are a healthy and versatile addition to any meal. If you don't use all of them in the week, you can always freeze those too!
On to lunch!
I cut up some romaine, topped it with left over ground turkey (yes, we use a lot of that) that I had seasoned with lemon, garlic, and pepper, and topped it with green onions and the lentils. I stuck a wedge of lemon in the container so that I can squeeze it on the salad when it's time to eat. I kept the lentils on top of the ground turkey to avoid the greens from getting soggy. There you have it, 4 days of healthy lunches and it took about 10 minutes or less to throw together due to cooking the lentils a day before and utilitzing the left over turkey from last night's taco dinner.
Juicing!
I love juicing and I can feel the difference when I fall off the wagon. It can get expensive when you start buying all the extra produce for juicing on top of the produce you already buy for eating. Just keep it simple. People often ask me to share juicing recipes. I'm not sure I have ever followed a juice recipe. I've always enjoyed just throwing together a few veggies and a fruit or two. I always add lemon, and I love to throw in some ginger root and turmeric root when I have it. I don't typically mix root veggies besides those too. For example, If I juice beets, I don't use carrots. It's one or the other, but this is not a rule, this is my taste buds. If you haven't tried juicing I would highly reccomend it. Contrary to what some poeple think, it is nothing like making a smoothie. For me it feels like drinking liquid vitamins. It's almost an instant high, but a healthy one.
So this morning I cut up these bad boys.
Beets, celery, green apple, and lemon. Don't toss your beet stems and leaves! You can juice those too! I kept the leaves separate, because my baggies were getting full, but I cut up the stems and they are included in the prep bag. When it's time to juice, I can throw in a leave or two along with some spinach or kale to green it up. Be careful with the beets, they will stain anything they come in contact with, including your hands, so rinse everything right away. Celery will add a little spice to your juice, so the apple is nice to put some sweetness back in. Don't be scared, cut some shit up and juice it! You will probably like it. I suggest using an apple or orange along with whatever veggies you juice to add a little sweet sauce.
I have one more tip to share. Whenever I am cutting veggies, I always save the scrap pieces. The ends of zucchini, tops of bell peppers, ends of green onion, lemon peel, the butt of a romaine heart, etc. I keep them all in a gallon freezer baggie. I just add scraps to the freezer as I cut them. Once the bag is full, it is this wonderful bag of veggie pieces wating for you to make broth out of it. Perfect and custom veggie broth, or add it to a pot of chicken broth you might be making.
It may take you months to fill up the bag, but they are frozen so they will patiently wait for you.
Meal prep doesn't have to entail a month's worth of meals and hundreds of dollars in supplies. I would love to take a stab at prepping a whole month's worth of meals and when I do I will definately share it here. A week's worth makes a huge difference though. With dinners I like to cook a double batch of whatever I'm making when I can so that I can freeze one. Or when you find something on sale you grab it and throw together a recipe to freeze. There are lots of ways to squeeze freezer meals into your week little by litte and end up with a nice stock pile of ready to go meals.
Thanks for reading about this week's meal prep!
I'll be over here staying caffeinated and freckled!
