A Dietitian's Weekly Meal Prep Tutorial

Every Saturday (or sometimes Sunday) mornings, I prepare a bunch of food for the following week. This way, I have healthy food ready to eat when I am tired or busy during the work week. I like to make the food in bulk so that it lasts us a couple of meals at least. This is such a lifesaver during the week when I do not feel like cooking.
What I make every week changes a lot depending on what I feel like. This is what I made this past week. If this type of post interests my readers, I will write more of them. I read a couple of blogs that do weekly meal prep and I find them so helpful.

Also, this is not all of the food that I eat or cook for the week. It is just some of the food that I make ahead of time to make life easier.

Here is the general types of foods I try to prepare each week:
-A breakfast for Troy for the week (usually some type of muffins or egg English muffins)
-At least one kind of vegetables
-Some type of whole grain
-Protein
-Something for me to take for lunches at work



This is what was on the menu this past week: 

-A breakfast for Troy for the week- Whole Wheat Peanut Butter and Chocolate Muffins

-At least one kind of vegetables- Roasted a tray of chopped beets, a tray of halved brussel sprouts and a tray of green beans. The brussel sprouts and butternut squash are from last week. It was pretty so I had to include a picture.

-Some type of whole grain- Sundried tomato quinoa (a packaged mix)

-Protein- Chickpeas made from dry and baked veggie burgers (Dr. Praegers- they were pretty good)


-I microwaved 2 sweet potatoes for me and made mashed potatoes for Troy.


How I complete my meal prep:
I start this whole process the first thing when I wake up on a weekend morning. The dogs usually wake me up around 7 or 7:30 AM and Troy sleeps until around 9 AM. This is a good time for me to get all my cooking done (or at least partially done).

The night before, I set out all of my shelf stable ingredients. In the morning, I pull out everything that I need from the fridge or freezer. This week, I had to soak the beans the night before so I did that.

I cook everything at the same time to save time and money (oven usage). I cooked all of the vegetables in the oven at once. When they were done, I cooked the muffins and veggie burgers. The potatoes were both cooked at the same time. Meanwhile, the beans and quinoa were cooking on the stove.

I like to try to identify which items will be done the fastest, which need the most attention while cooking, etc. This helps me to know which order to cook the food in.

After all of the food is done cooking, I let it cool on the counter while I eat breakfast with Troy. After breakfast, I wash all of the dishes by hand and put the food away. I like to get everything done right away because I know that after I sit down, I am not going to want to wash those dishes later!

All together, everything usually takes me 2-3 hours and provides a ton of delicious food to eat through the week.