Meal Prep

In an attempt to keep on track with my healthy eating, which I have to say hasn't been going so well lately, I spent three hours this morning preparing meals for the first half of the week.

While it is a pain in the butt to do, it certainly makes it a lot easier during the week for work lunches, snacks and night time meals - especially as I leave home by 5.30am most weekday mornings and twice a week don't get home until 7pm or later.

So today I have made two different chicken breast parcels - one with lemon and thyme, the other with dukah, sage and apricots - I add a tblsp of oil to each foil parcel and bake them in the oven for about an hour.


     The chicken breasts are large enough that I can get two meals out of each one. I'll just cook green beans, broccoli and maybe a small sweet potato to have with it, or a salad. I rather like a salad during winter to make as a change.  While these were cooking in the oven, I also roasted a dish of pumpkin, sweet potato, capsicum, garlic and onion to make soup.

I used the vegetable scraps plus some other older vegies from my fridge to make stock, which I added to these roasted vegetables and blitzed up in the food processor. I had too much stock, so I have frozen the rest of it in 250 ml lots which I will use for another batch of soup, or when cooking rice or mince. 

I also cut up carrots, leeks, celery, capsicum, mushroom, zucchini and broccoli which I bagged up ready to make stirfry with - I might add that to one of the chicken breasts one night.

I also made pumpkin hummus to have with carrot, celery and capsicum 'sticks' and snap-peas as snacks, which I have cut up and put in Tupperware containers, so I can simply pack some of each into my lunch chilly bag every night, ready for the next day. Hopefully this will help me control the sugar cravings. I roast the pumpkin first and then add it to a normal hummus recipe. It really is delicious, but doesn't keep as long as plain hummus does. The chickpeas make this a very nutritious snack, full of protein and fibre. 

Lastly I made my take on Napoli Sauce. I freeze this in cup lots and keep some in the fridge to use over the next couple of days. It's nice over chicken, lamb or pasta. I tend to add extra vegetables to mine, such as carrot, zucchini, leek, capsicum as well as fresh basil and chives from my garden. Once cooked I blend it up roughly, as I like to have a few pieces of vegetable still visible. I don't skin the tomatoes, I'm far to lazy for that, which is why I use a blender to process it. I buy cheap overripe tomatoes to make this and am looking forward to when my own tomatoes ripen so I can use them instead. 

4 comments Meal Prep, Stock and Soup