Even in high school I was the one with the insulated lunch bag. The only letter to the editor I ever wrote was extolling why I would pack a lunch over spending the $6 on a mid 2000s Subway meal specials. The only that has changed is as a grown-up I now use a Yeti DayTripper and good ice packs.
So you can only imagine when I started my wellness journey I went full on in with packing and prepping meals for days at a time. I was an assembly line with a food scale and storage containers. I would measure out roasted potatoes into half cup portions, pack my lunches with chicken, vegetables, and quinoa, even my snacks were portioned for the week ahead. The only variety would be switching out salad dressings if it was a green salad week.
That monotony is great but it’s very easy to slip back into old habits when the boredom kicks in. I still use the food scale and measuring cups, but it’s more about gaging portion sizes. I do more of what I call a toss in fridge and be ready to assemble the morning or the night before. The heaviest load of my weekly meal prep is waiting for things to cook. The current idea is to not stress it in the morning when I’m rushing out. It goes something like this:
- Take a look at the grocery ads to decide what my protein is for the week. I usually rotate between chicken and some sort of fish.
- Grocery shop for the perishables, I try to always have cucumbers, tomatoes, and some sort of greens on hand.
- When I buy a large onion it gets chopped in the food processor, then frozen in an ice cube tray. I grab out one or two cubes when I need them. If it’s for salsa or a salad dressing I just need to let them defrost for a bit.
- If it’s not a time of year when I have a healthy cilantro or basil plant I use the frozen cubes from Lidl in any of my dressings. I find buying a bunch of either that I never use it all that quickly.
- I buy a bunch of scallions every few weeks, the fatter ones can be regrown by sticking the white parts in water.
- Cook the protein for the week. I roast chicken or tilapia. Salmon and shrimp get made in the InstantPot. Bacon goes twisty style in the oven. I’m better off when I’m not frying up individual slices at breakfast.
- Mushrooms or sautéed spinach I cook it and store in fridge.
- If I’m doing quinoa or rice as a base they get made in the rice cooker, the trick to keeping them moist is a little butter and letting it sit on warm for a bit.
- If I bought some sort of berries or melon, I wash, and slice. If I don’t they’ll sit untouched in the fridge for a week and a half. I try to do the same thing with bell peppers.
- Make a couple of dry snack packs that can stay in my bag. Lately they’ve been freeze dried cheese, dried fruit, and some mixed nuts.
- I store everything in Pyrex, since I find the glass keeps things better than plastic. Anything greasy or moist gets a parchment paper lining.
Then either the night before or the morning of I assemble what I’m eating. I realize at this point to slice some chicken and throw together a salad takes me less than 5 minutes. I get the flavors I feel like that day, but still have something healthy to grab. Even whipping up a fresh salsa takes less than 5 minutes when the components are in the fridge prepped.
Unless I’ve made a quiche or a frittata, even my eggs are scrambled fresh now in the morning. Yes there’s still easy to grab and heat ups in the freezer, but it’s my version of hot pockets and Trader Joe’s frozen meatballs—not the crazy full meals I did at one point.