Meal Plan Monday (and How I Prepped It All)
Hi friends! Happy Monday!
Did you have a good weekend?
This was actually one of my most restful weekends in a while. I am notorious for falling asleep on the couch on Friday nights, and this past week was no exception. After a late dinner of English muffin pizzas and an episode of Justified, I was toast. Penelope blessed us by sleeping until almost 8:00 the next morning and then we were up and out for the day. Shaun spent the day running errands while Penelope and I hit the mall with my mom.
After a breezy – and not quite so warm – Saturday, Shaun and I arrived home in the evening. We continued our Justified binge with a bottle of two buck Chuck and copious amounts of popcorn.
By Sunday, it was still pretty chilly ‘round these parts, but we were itching to get outside for a while! We bundled up and took a big lap around our neighborhood. Penelope loves being outside and though it was cold, our neighborhood was bumpin’ with remnants of the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
I also took some time to prep our food for the week ahead. I started with a meal plan that I had made last week, which also informed my order from Fresh Direct. By planning ahead, I was able to avoid the grocery store and have all of our groceries delivered on Sunday morning.
I broke it down by dinners, lunches, breakfasts and snacks. Since we are on a healthy eating kick lately, I also wanted to make sure that our kitchen was fully stocked with lots of healthy food for the week.
Here’s the plan:
Dinners:
Steaks & sweet potatoes
Unstuffed cabbage
Chicken enchiladas
Lunches:
Mustard chicken salad
Cold cuts
Breakfasts:
Oatmeal
Snacks:
Yogurt
Carrot chips & hummus
Fruit
Applesauce
Here’s the prep:
Make the unstuffed cabbage and refrigerate for early weeknight dinners.
This made a lot, so it should last us for at least 2 nights, or until we get tired of it.
Slow cook 5 chicken breasts in reduced sodium broth.
This is my favorite method for cooking chicken. I literally set it in the morning and forget it until the afternoon. After six hours on low, the chicken just fell apart into shreds. I mixed half of the shredded chicken with Greek yogurt and Dijon mustard for 4 servings of chicken salad and saved the rest for the enchiladas for later this week.
Make the egg cups.
I love these and they are perfect for the whole family, Penelope included. I prepped these and refrigerated them for the week ahead. I send these with Penelope to daycare, so I cut up a few for her and placed them in small Oxo Tot containers for the next few days for her.
Pack up whatever else I could.
After everything was cooked and set, I tried to pack up individual cups of yogurt and applesauce for Penelope for the week. I also packed cups of hummus and carrot chips so that we could grab them and go.
It took a bit of effort and some time on Sunday, but I know that I will be so happy when I hardly have to cook a thing this week after work! It also makes the mornings so much easier to pack up what I could in advance and then just throw everything into our respective lunch bags.
Here’s what my lunch bag looked like today:
Not too shabby, right? And tonight, I am so excited to have unstuffed cabbage waiting for us.
After prepping, I still had time to relax a little before bedtime. And do Sunday things like watch Cars with Penelope...
and chase her around the apartment, now that she's so mobile:
Big girl. Sniffle.
How was your weekend?
Did you do any food prep or meal planning for the week ahead?
4 Comments | March 17, 2014 | Share Article | Email Article | in What I Ate Print Article | Permalink
Reader Comments (4)
Unstuffed cabbage is MY favorite! It is so perfect for these cold nights - very comforting! When I was doing the Whole30, I used to make those egg muffins. The kids loved them too!
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Your egg cups are similar to what I do to make the fixin's for breakfast sandwiches (though your cooking method is more efficient -- I made each on individually in the microwave). Anyway, if you cook up a batch of these, and then reheat them in the toaster oven on an English muffin (and add some turkey bacon, if you'd like), you've got another variation on a quick & easy breakfast.
I can't believe that she is getting so big and mobile! What a sweetheart :)
and good on you for the food prep, doesn't it make life so much easier? I always have to force myself to meal plan, but once it is done it makes the whole week much easier to deal with when chasing a toddler haha
it is awesome to see how happy and well you are all doing :D