Food Prep For the Rest of Us

You can’t go very far in the blogging world without stumbling upon some amazing food prep. While I do a fair amount of food prep every week – my efforts are no where near as glamorous as many food bloggers. But, I think my food prep is pretty realistic #wycwyc (what you can, when you can)

I honestly spend about an hour or less every week – this is pretty much just food prep for one person. Me. I bring my lunch to work every day. The rest of the family is subject for their own post…

I’m all about setting reasonable expectations – I had a phase where I made some amazing lunches, and I do occasionally make a batch of quinoa on the weekend which is a great lunch base, but that doesn’t happen that often. I try to be more simple when I have to be out the door with 2 kids at 7:30AM on school mornings.

Here’s the thing – I work 4 days a week. I can tolerate eating essentially the same thing for 4 days in a row. So, that does make things pretty easy.

Lately, I’ve been making a batch of chicken salad for a week’s worth of sandwiches. Chicken salad recipe = can of chicken salad, a few dollops of greek yogurt, a chopped green apple and some celery salt. One big can of chicken is four servings, it’s perfect.

Other weeks, I make a sliced hard boiled egg sandwich (along with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese and some spicy mustard, and some avocado if I’m lucky)

I always bring 3 servings of fruits and veggies – usually one fruit and two veggies – I cut up big batches of fruit and veggies on Sunday nights (or sometimes Monday morning if I run out of time).

I love these containers – they stack nicely in my fridge (carrots, cucumber, jicama and pineapple)

A typical day of lunch and work snacks (hmm, a rather generous portion of trail mix, I should work on that)
And yes, I sometimes eat the heel of my bread, especially this brand, it’s yummy

I also make sure that I have 4 days worth of a more filling afternoon snack – sometimes it’s Kind Bars, sometimes it’s pistachios, Chobani Flips, or even single serving nut butters.

When I write it out, it sounds like a lot – but it’s really super simple and totally basic. And, there are many weekend nights where I really dread planning out my lunches for the week. But, I know how much better I feel when lunch is planned out – I save tons of $ by not eating out and I know I eat better when I plan. So, I suck it up and get chopping and packing.

Food prep for the #wycwyc crowd – nothing fancy, but it’s real food.

Now, if I could only get better at planning dinners, then I’d be golden. We have been making an effort to plan dinners a little better lately and I’ve been involving the kids as well. Thankfully, Dancing Girl’s new team doesn’t have late night practices and I’m finding us all home for dinner together more often. Which is great. So, we’ve been trying to menu plan as a family on Sundays in time for me to do the shopping. Roadblock to this plan is creativity. My lunch planning is easy because I don’t mind repetition. But that’s a whole new post.

Do you meal prep on the weekends? Do you get tired of the same lunches for a week? Have any tips to add?

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