Meal Prep!
I have to get something off my chest. Here goes: we kind of suck at meal prep around here. I want so badly to just have the routine of spending a couple hours every Sunday getting lots of good stuff ready for the week for ease and convenience and all the stress-free-ness of it. Most of the time, however, I end up just kind of cooking the "batch" stuff when I get around to it at the beginning, sometimes middle, and sometimes even end of the week.
Most of the things I wish we had prepared for the week are snacky-type-things (e.g. hummus, granola, energy bites). We are BIG snackers around here (you like all these words I'm making up?), and in order to prevent unhealthy eating I like to keep the house stocked with healthy goodies for my husband and I as well as our sometimes seemingly ravenous children.
Homemade Peanut Butter Granola is so easy, takes minimal time or effort, and is the perfect snack, breakfast, or dessert throughout the week! HERE is the recipe I use. (I usually double it!)
The big crunchy clusters will give you the warm and fuzzies!
It's also nice to have certain things prepped ahead of time for meals too. For instance, I DREAD chopping cauliflower. I dread it almost as much as I LOVE the damn vegetable. So getting veggies chopped, grains and legumes cooked up, and fruits washed and prepped would save a lot of time during the week. I know all of this so why don't I just do it?! Because life, guys. Life is just busy and sometimes relaxing on a Sunday sounds so much better then being productive.
My Lentil Walnut Ground Beef is the perfect alternative to the fat-laden original. It is extremely versatile (Mexican and Italian are my favorite cuisines to add this too!) This batch lasted us about 3 days with leftovers.
If you've followed me on social media then you've seen me post about these burgers from Angela over at her blog, Oh She Glows. I LOVE them. They hold together well, are versatile, and are really easy to whip up. I decided to prep these because my kids love them and on the random day we don't have leftovers or my husband brings them to work, I like to have something easy to warm up that is satisfying and delicious-these hit the spot every time!
HOWEVER I kind of spontaneously decided to prep some things this weekend and it didn't take a lot of time or energy on my part. I put on my Disney playlist on iTunes for my boys to jam out to and I got down to business.
Here's what I prepped:
- Lentil Walnut Ground Beef for taco salads
- Spinach and Basil Pesto for random lunches for the week (my littlest one LOVES this stuff and it's such a sneaky way to get him to eat his greens, get the recipe HERE),
- Cooked green lentils (leftovers from my ground "beef" that will get thrown in salads, eaten for lunch, etc.
- Veggie burgers
- Peanut butter granola.
Now I put all of these things together before we did our weekly grocery haul so while I normally would have whipped up some hummus and chopped some more fruits and veggies, we just didn't have much else to prep. After I got everything cooked I realized it really only took about an hour and a half. I was able to prepare some things while others were cooking and I still managed to entertain my wild boys! I'm hoping to make this more of a routine now that I've taken the meal prep plunge!
Do you meal prep? If so what kinds of things are you preparing for the week ahead? I'd love to here! Leave a comment below!
