How I Meal Plan

I find that meal planning is always helpful for me. It prepares me for the week. That leads to success because I'm not left scrambling at the last minute with 2 hungry kids asking me what is for dinner and grabbing the quickest thing I can think of. By taking a couple of hours to prep on the weekend, it leads to healthy, nutritious, and balanced meals for my family. This is the process that works best for me:

Throughout the week, I read blogs and scan websites looking for some healthy ideas. I write them down or print them off and clip them together with a blank sheet of paper. I draw a line down the sheet of paper and mark one side as "meals" and the other side as "groceries". By the end of the week, i know what meals for the next week will be and anything that can be prepped ahead will be. On Saturday, I try to do my grocery shopping. If we're busy, i simply do it on Sunday morning. On Sunday, I take a couple of hours (at the most) and prep. For example, this past Sunday, I placed several chicken breasts in the crockpot with organic, low-sodium chicken broth and cooked them for six hours. When they were done cooking, I shredded them and placed them in a storage container in the fridge. I had several meals worth of shredded chicken to make quick meals. By cooking them with no seasoning, I could later add whatever seasoning I wanted. I also cooked a big batch of quinoa and added a package of Trader Joe's steamed lentils to it. I portioned them out in gladware and placed them in the fridge. That was my (and my husband's) lunches for the week. I made a batch of turkey meatballs and added 2 to every gladware. On some of them, I added a bit of gluten-free BBQ sauce to flavor it a bit, and others I kept plain. I also made a batch of protein bars in case I had a craving for sweets-preparation is key!

This was my plan for this week:

Monday-Friday breakfasts were green smoothies. I add the ingredients together the night before, refrigerate and blend in the morning. Ingredients: almond milk, 1/2 banana, 1Tbsp chia seeds, 1 Tbsp Maca powder, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder (right now i'm using SunWarrior Vanilla Raw Vegan Protein), frozen berries (my favorite is Trader Joe's Cherry Berry Blend), and LOTS (about 2-3 huge handfuls) of organic baby spinach or kale (i promise you won't taste it!). I also set the coffee maker at night so all I have to do in the morning is pour it. :)

Monday-Friday lunches were all packed on Sunday: quinoa & lentils with turkey meatballs.

Monday-Friday snacks: every evening when I'm cleaning up from dinner, I rinse berries and place a bowl in the fridge to grab in the morning. This week I also cut up some cucumbers and bagged up snap peas.

Dinners:

Monday: Homemade "Chipotle" Burrito Bowls: brown rice, black beans, shredded chicken, corn salsa, grassfed cheese (what a difference grassfed makes!), shredded romaine, avocado

Tuesday: Salads: romaine, shredded chicken, cucumbers, cheese, black beans

Wednesday: Trader Joe's has a great frozen seafood blend- it has scallops, calamari & shrimp. I sautéed a bag of that with some EVOO and garlic and served it over gluten-free pasta-steamed broccoli on the side

Thursday: Shrimp "bowl"-grilled shrimp seasoned with garlic & sea salt, grilled corn (I cut it off the cob after grilling it), avocado

Friday: Leftovers!

This was a long post, but I hope it can be helpful to someone. It truly makes my life so much easier by simply setting aside a couple of hours a week to plan & prep.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad