I was able to successfully meal prep my entire lunch week on Sunday, which doesn’t always happen. More often I piece them together from day to day with leftovers or toss salads together at the last minute. I notice a definite difference in my week when I can accomplish my prep over the weekend. I get to bed earlier, I get to work earlier, and my mornings are less stressful. It can be tricky because you need to know what will and will not stay fresh until Friday, and even trickier if you want a variety throughout the week. There’s a lot of meal prep plans out there that require eating the same thing for lunch Mon-Fri, and that’s really not my style.
I saved even more time by prepping breakfast as well, which just consisted of a dozen hard boiled eggs. Very simple. Very cheap. While I love scrambled eggs loaded with onions, peppers, and ham, I don’t always have time to make them in the morning and they don’t stay terribly long in the refrigerator. I like hard boiled eggs just fine with a little salt and pepper. I took the entire carton with me and peeled them and sliced them each morning. I find that eggs peel a little easier if you put a tablespoon or two of white vinegar in the water when you boil them.
But let’s take a look back at the lunch menu.
This mix consisted of cucumber, chickpeas, tomato, red onion, peppers, basil, and 2% shredded cheddar cheese with a little bit of Wishbone Olive Oil Garden Herb Vinaigrette salad dressing. The Triscuits are Avocado, Cilantro, and Lime flavor and I spread them with Friendly Farms spreadable cheese from Aldi. It was good, but lacking enough protein to keep me full through the afternoon. I nearly had to staple my fingers to the desk to avoid reaching into my wallet for money for the snack machine.
Here we have the same cracker and cheese choice, but with a lot more filling protein. I made BBQ chicken kabobs for an earlier dinner and used the leftover in lunch. I made cauliflower rice cooked in chicken broth for the base. You can do this by taking frozen cauliflower rice and steaming it in a frying pan with chicken broth or by making the steam-in-the-bag kind and mixing in powdered bouillon afterwards. The cauli rice was used for the base and I added the BBQ chicken, corn, red onion, cheddar cheese, and tomato on top. It was even great cold and took a long time to finish eating.
The chicken lunchmeat side on this one, in retrospect, was a poor idea. It tasted terrible alone and wound up in the trash. The rest was great! More cauliflower rice with peppers, tomato, corn, chickpeas, and red onion. I also put in a little leftover pesto pasta.
Tacos! Yes! In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned how when I make chicken breasts I cut them down to equal size and often use the leftovers to cook and shred for taco chicken meat. That’s exactly where this came from, and I added two small tortillas to build tacos with another compartment carrying the tomatoes and lettuce. I put some cilantro in with 2% shredded cheddar cheese. I only packed 2 tortillas but did have enough leftover ingredients that I could have made 3 small tacos. The size I used were “street taco” size, which seems a little smaller than your traditional soft taco shell. I added taco sauce from the stash of taco sauce packets I keep in my drawer. Every time I go to Taco Bell I “accidentally” get too many. Considering how many times I’ve gone through the drive thru for two tacos and received twenty packs of sauce, I don’t think it’s a big deal.
This taco bowl was amazing. I used the shredded taco chicken and added corn, tomato, peppers, and refried beans on the side. I didn’t even notice that I forgot cheese — and I’m a cheese addict. I saved a little mix of tomatoes, peppers, and chickpeas on the bigger side for a snack in the afternoon.
Speaking of snacks, I did make a big bowl of fruit to dig into in the afternoon. I try to keep my afternoon snacks to fruit salad, bananas, and yogurt or if I’m not in the mood for something sweet I’ll stock hummus and carrots in the fridge. That’s not to say I don’t make the occasional trip to the snack machine, but I try to keep myself well stocked with alternatives to avoid it.
It did take some time to prep everything but it was broken out over chunks in the day, so I couldn’t even give a fair estimation of time. I was glad that I had a good variety. One cool tip I did learn some years ago is that if you want to just get small amounts of things, try checking out the salad bar at the grocery store. It’s an easy stop to get a mix of things to use for sides in lunchboxes!
The app was extremely easy to use. Everything is broken down into manageable departments and sub-departments. You can see the number of items and the total cost on the top right hand corner. There’s also a search function to find specific items you may be looking for. Just about everything in grocery is available and some other departments like office, party supplies, health & beauty and toys. It was very easy for meal planning. I just wrote a small list of what meals I wanted to cook for the week and added the ingredients right to my app. If they’re out of an item you requested, the will swap it out for a similar (and likely upgraded) items for free. When you checkout you can select which items you’re willing to substitute, which it defaults to all items. If you don’t like the substituted item, you can reject the item when you go to pick it up and they will take it off your order.
I took a trip out to Sam’s Club this week to pick up a rotisserie chicken and a carton of strawberries. I scoped out produce to see if Cotton Candy grapes were still in stock. Previously, the sweet green globes were only available in the late summer from Grapery, but at least one other company has started producing them as well.
Bariatric Berks 