Meal Prep
Meal prep isn’t a hobby you say? I say if it is an activity that you can become obsessed with, then yes it qualifies. And there are plenty of people out there obsessed with meal planning. I wouldn’t put myself in that category … yet, but I certainly understand the appeal.
My hubby and I have talked about meal prep to one degree or another for a while now. We’re trying to eat healthier and having dinners prepped and ready to go would sure help with stopping the impulse of picking something up on the way home because we’re starving.
I currently prep his work week’s lunches on Sunday. He eats the same thing every day (baked chicken breast, steamed broccoli, quinoa, mandarin and mixed nuts) so I can easily prep it while doing other things. An hour of mostly hands-off time and he has healthy lunches for a week.
Now, if I can just figure out how to do that for our dinners. I am definitely not into large batch cooking where you eat the same thing every day for a week. I like food and I like variety. I don’t know how my husband does it for his lunches. I need at least 2 or 3 options for the week.
What’s for Dinner?
The closest I’ve gotten to dinner prepping was creating weekly menus that we sort of followed. On a good week, we ate the meals out of order, but they would at least be meals that were planned. On a bad week, we’d be too hungry and go off script (“Omelets anyone?”) or grab something on the way home.
Sadly, I’ve gotten pretty lax with the menu planning lately which has led to a lot of, “Eek! What can I make in under 30 minutes with the random ingredients that I happen to have on hand?”. In my attempt to get back to it, I ran across some videos from goodful on Buzzfeed for lunch meal prep. They showed 3 chicken and 2 salmon recipes that allowed you to cook multiple recipes at the same time with minimal effort. This seemed doable.
Snack Time
With dinners covered I started looking for healthy snack options I could prep ahead. A brief trip down the Pinterest hole and I found an option I couldn’t wait to try. Melissa, over at Bless This Mess makes these brilliant snacks in jars. I don’t think all the flavors combos will work for us, but the idea of having a two-part snack in an easy to see and grab container is just what we need.
To put these together, you need pint-sized, wide mouth mason jars and the containers from those plastic fruit cups. You put your fruit or sliced veggies in the jar then set the fruit cup container on top. In the top container, you can put cheese, nuts, hummus, peanut butter, etc. The cup sits perfectly on the rim and still allows the jar to shut tightly.
I didn’t see any jars at the grocery store, but I had to go to Target as well, so I figured I could grab some there. I was a little surprised that the only wide mouth jars they had were blue tinted ones. Not ideal, I was a little concerned it would affect how appetizing the food inside looked, but I was more interested in getting started than spending more time shopping.
My kids are hit and miss on the little fruit cups, but I figured a $3 investment was worth the risk. True to form they decided they didn’t like them so I dumped the contents into a bowl so I could have the containers. I’m thinking I might be able to use the fruit in a smoothie or something. True to the post, the containers were the perfect fit for the jars.
The Reality
On our Costco run to pick up chicken and veggies, I naturally picked up a rotisserie chicken as well. It was originally going to be for dinner that night, but the food court pizza proved too tempting. Well, I needed chicken for the meal anyways. I’d have to tweak the plan slightly since I couldn’t season the chicken while cooking, but not a big deal.
As usual, things did not go exactly according to plan. However, the meals were still edible and ready when we needed them. It’s going to take a little practice and experimenting to get a good system and set of recipes to rotate through, but I think we’ll get there.
