Busy Bee Meal Prep Sunday (20. January 2019)
It's Monday!
Let's get started with a quick overview of what yesterday's meal prep looked like!
An explanation first:
I have more time in the weekend (and more help) then during the week. This means Sunday it's meal prep day at my house. We usually start about 16:00 and are done by 18:00 - 18:30. This means two hours of cooking and we'll have food for the rest of the week. How easy and simple can it get!
I'm going to show you part of my haul of groceries (unfortunately the rest didn't fit this time but I promise to make it fit the next!):
As you can see there's a bit of minced meat (both chick and mixed pork/beef) and some fish (the brownish thing in the top middle). These are almost all the animal proteins we used. I also added plant protein in the form of red lentils (not shown on this picture) to one dish. The rest are all the vegetables (minus one hiding cauliflower that I couldn't find at the time). All that's missing here are the starches. I used potatoes and rice this week.
And here is the foods we made with it:
Again this isn't all we made (Yes. It's on the floor. I didn't have enough space on the table left for this picture.). The boxes are complete but the soup bowl in the top right corner represents a whole pot of soup (4 portions) that simply didn't fit on the picture. The lasagna (bottom right) is not truly a super-healthy food but since I made it myself it is 'healthy enough' to be included. It will also yield about 4 portions.
In order from top left to bottom right: The first two boxes (vertically) vegetables with potatoes and a piece of breaded meat (these can also be found on the other side of the 'middle portion'). The three red-ish boxes on top: bulgur-chicken stew with spinach. The soup in the bowl: ridiculously easy carrot and red lentil soup. In the middle below the three bulgur-chicken stews: six boxes with a load of vegetables and a piece of fish each. At the bottom left: leftover veggies that can be eaten with anything else leftover. At the bottom right: lasagna.
All of these things were incredibly easy to make (perhaps minus the lasagna... but even that isn't really difficult if you don't mess with bechamel sauce.)
Here are the recipes:
1. The stir-fry boxes: (these include the breaded meat boxes and the fish boxes)
I used broccoli, paprika, cauliflower, sweet potato, potato, and zucchini. All cut into bite-sized pieces. These vegetables were stir-fried one after the other with little or no oil for about 3-5 (10) minutes each batch. I started with sweet potatoes because they need a little bit longer - 10 minutes. After they were done they were distributed in reasonable amounts over 6 of the boxes. I then stir-fried the rest of the vegetables at about 3 minutes per vegetables. (TIP: you don't want to stir-fry them so long they lose all their nutrients. Also keep in mind you'll be re-heating them in the microwave which means they'll become soggy if you initially fry them too much.)
The potato was an exception. It went into the oven after being sliced thinly. Those are the disk-shaped yellow foods you can see in five of the boxes. I had to make three batches of those and they took about 10 minutes each. However, as you just put them into the oven and forget about them for 10 minutes, these can be done at any point during the meal prep and don't really take up a lot of 'watching over' time.
The last step to the stir-fry boxes is of course the protein component. In this case I wanted to try new spices so bought an already marinated fish (pangasius) and since my partner is partial to meat and especially schnitzel we decided on buying those breaded meats. All that had to be done is fry them briefly and put them in the boxes. That's 11 dishes done in about 30 minutes.
2. The carrot-red lentil soup (upper right corner)
This one was incredibly easy. All you have to do is cut carrots in half or thirds (depending on size) and put them in a pot with water and a cube of vegetable stock. This you let sit until the carrots are slightly softer than before. Then you add red lentils and let it cook by itself for another 10 - 15 minutes. TIP! I would recommend starting this (or any soup as simple) earliest. The first thing you do during meal prep should be to get your soup on the stove and let it cook. It doesn't require much supervision and it'll literally make itself while you're preparing the rest of the food (such as the stir-fry boxes).
After the lentils are cooked you can put in spices. I used cumin in this instance but whatever spice you think is tasty and goes well with carrots/lentils is all right. After the spices are stirred in you can set the pot aside on a cold plate/your garden table/anywhere else it can cool down quickly. The last step once it's cooled (again something it does by itself) is to blend it. Then the soup is done.
This will yield about 4-5 portions of food/snack in 5 minutes of preparation time and 40 minutes of unsupervised self-cooking time.
3. The bulgur-chicken stew with spinach
This was my first time making it but there's really nothing to it. I looked up a recipe (link coming soon) and then adapted it to make it quicker/easier. It's basically just roasting 1 chopped onion and 500g meat (It says lamb but I used chicken because of the ease of getting chicken mince vs lamb mince) in hot oil and then putting in 2/3 cup of bulgur, 2 cups of water, some salt and pepper, and a can of chopped tomatoes (or the equivalent in fresh tomatoes), and letting it sit. Once the bulgur is done it's basically ready. All you do as a last step is to stir in spinach (and white beans if you want to more closely follow the recipe) and you're done.
You'll have about 3-4 portions of this stew. (There's only three on the picture. We ate one portion while cooking it.)
4. The lasagna
It's easy if you've made bolognese sauce before. That's all it really is. Bolognese sauce between pasta leaves. How do? Heat onion in hot olive oil. Put in meat (I used half beef half pork). Let meat brown, then put in tomato sauce (again a can - or if you want to spend the time chopping about 15 tomatoes that's fine too). Stir. If it's very liquid let some of the water evaporate. Season to taste with spices like pepper, salt, red pepper flakes, red chili pepper, whatever else you like.
While the water evaporates from this you can prepare a dish (like the glass dish in my picture). These days most lasagna leaves don't need to be pre-cooked so you can just put a first layer of them in the dish. Then you spoon on the meat-sauce you made until it covers the leaves and is about two-three fingers thick.
I then added cut champignons (mushrooms are healthy!) and mozzarella cheese (mozzarella has much fewer calories than regular cheese). Then another layer of lasagna leaves, sauce, champignons, and cheese. At the top you can see both the champignons and the cheese.
After you're done with the layers, it goes into the oven at about 180-220°C. I'm not that exact about it. All it has to be is hot enough to cook the lasagna leaves and cheese reasonably quickly. You'll see when it's done anyway (when the cheese is melted and turning into a crunchy crust).
The lasagna also yields about 4-5 portions (although when my partner gets to it more like 3).
The whole process took two hours with two people working on it. This means 2 people + 2 hours = 25 dishes. If you're alone you can probably cut the amount of dishes as well as recipes in half. Instead of four dishes you can make two (stir-fry vegetables with protein foods because they are nutrient rich and easy and perhaps the bulgur-chicken stew for the same reasons).
The bottom line really is this:
A lot of vegetables and some proteins. A bit less of the starches (carbohydrates). A soup such as the carrot-red lentil soup if you want to have a ready snack that's ridiculously easy to make as well.
Doesn't that sound all right? And it's all nutritious as heck as well! If you stick to diets such as these and don't overdo it in the sweets department you'll notice a change both in your skin and your hair after a few days. Your skin will become much more pure and your hair loss will slow down somewhat (Caution! Hair loss has a lot of other reasons not related to food as well. You can't really expect never to lose a hair even on a great diet... but you can slow it down considerably!)
Do you have any questions? Please post them below. I'll answer all of them ASAP.
There's more things I'd like to share with you this week. The most relevant of those to food preparation is a crash course on why the 4 Principles of Health are so important to follow. Keep checking in on the blog or follow me on Twitter! I only post updates when there's a new post!
WriteBot.
Let's get started with a quick overview of what yesterday's meal prep looked like!
An explanation first:
I have more time in the weekend (and more help) then during the week. This means Sunday it's meal prep day at my house. We usually start about 16:00 and are done by 18:00 - 18:30. This means two hours of cooking and we'll have food for the rest of the week. How easy and simple can it get!
I'm going to show you part of my haul of groceries (unfortunately the rest didn't fit this time but I promise to make it fit the next!):
As you can see there's a bit of minced meat (both chick and mixed pork/beef) and some fish (the brownish thing in the top middle). These are almost all the animal proteins we used. I also added plant protein in the form of red lentils (not shown on this picture) to one dish. The rest are all the vegetables (minus one hiding cauliflower that I couldn't find at the time). All that's missing here are the starches. I used potatoes and rice this week.
And here is the foods we made with it:
Again this isn't all we made (Yes. It's on the floor. I didn't have enough space on the table left for this picture.). The boxes are complete but the soup bowl in the top right corner represents a whole pot of soup (4 portions) that simply didn't fit on the picture. The lasagna (bottom right) is not truly a super-healthy food but since I made it myself it is 'healthy enough' to be included. It will also yield about 4 portions.
In order from top left to bottom right: The first two boxes (vertically) vegetables with potatoes and a piece of breaded meat (these can also be found on the other side of the 'middle portion'). The three red-ish boxes on top: bulgur-chicken stew with spinach. The soup in the bowl: ridiculously easy carrot and red lentil soup. In the middle below the three bulgur-chicken stews: six boxes with a load of vegetables and a piece of fish each. At the bottom left: leftover veggies that can be eaten with anything else leftover. At the bottom right: lasagna.
All of these things were incredibly easy to make (perhaps minus the lasagna... but even that isn't really difficult if you don't mess with bechamel sauce.)
Here are the recipes:
1. The stir-fry boxes: (these include the breaded meat boxes and the fish boxes)
I used broccoli, paprika, cauliflower, sweet potato, potato, and zucchini. All cut into bite-sized pieces. These vegetables were stir-fried one after the other with little or no oil for about 3-5 (10) minutes each batch. I started with sweet potatoes because they need a little bit longer - 10 minutes. After they were done they were distributed in reasonable amounts over 6 of the boxes. I then stir-fried the rest of the vegetables at about 3 minutes per vegetables. (TIP: you don't want to stir-fry them so long they lose all their nutrients. Also keep in mind you'll be re-heating them in the microwave which means they'll become soggy if you initially fry them too much.)
The potato was an exception. It went into the oven after being sliced thinly. Those are the disk-shaped yellow foods you can see in five of the boxes. I had to make three batches of those and they took about 10 minutes each. However, as you just put them into the oven and forget about them for 10 minutes, these can be done at any point during the meal prep and don't really take up a lot of 'watching over' time.
The last step to the stir-fry boxes is of course the protein component. In this case I wanted to try new spices so bought an already marinated fish (pangasius) and since my partner is partial to meat and especially schnitzel we decided on buying those breaded meats. All that had to be done is fry them briefly and put them in the boxes. That's 11 dishes done in about 30 minutes.
2. The carrot-red lentil soup (upper right corner)
This one was incredibly easy. All you have to do is cut carrots in half or thirds (depending on size) and put them in a pot with water and a cube of vegetable stock. This you let sit until the carrots are slightly softer than before. Then you add red lentils and let it cook by itself for another 10 - 15 minutes. TIP! I would recommend starting this (or any soup as simple) earliest. The first thing you do during meal prep should be to get your soup on the stove and let it cook. It doesn't require much supervision and it'll literally make itself while you're preparing the rest of the food (such as the stir-fry boxes).
After the lentils are cooked you can put in spices. I used cumin in this instance but whatever spice you think is tasty and goes well with carrots/lentils is all right. After the spices are stirred in you can set the pot aside on a cold plate/your garden table/anywhere else it can cool down quickly. The last step once it's cooled (again something it does by itself) is to blend it. Then the soup is done.
This will yield about 4-5 portions of food/snack in 5 minutes of preparation time and 40 minutes of unsupervised self-cooking time.
3. The bulgur-chicken stew with spinach
This was my first time making it but there's really nothing to it. I looked up a recipe (link coming soon) and then adapted it to make it quicker/easier. It's basically just roasting 1 chopped onion and 500g meat (It says lamb but I used chicken because of the ease of getting chicken mince vs lamb mince) in hot oil and then putting in 2/3 cup of bulgur, 2 cups of water, some salt and pepper, and a can of chopped tomatoes (or the equivalent in fresh tomatoes), and letting it sit. Once the bulgur is done it's basically ready. All you do as a last step is to stir in spinach (and white beans if you want to more closely follow the recipe) and you're done.
You'll have about 3-4 portions of this stew. (There's only three on the picture. We ate one portion while cooking it.)
4. The lasagna
It's easy if you've made bolognese sauce before. That's all it really is. Bolognese sauce between pasta leaves. How do? Heat onion in hot olive oil. Put in meat (I used half beef half pork). Let meat brown, then put in tomato sauce (again a can - or if you want to spend the time chopping about 15 tomatoes that's fine too). Stir. If it's very liquid let some of the water evaporate. Season to taste with spices like pepper, salt, red pepper flakes, red chili pepper, whatever else you like.
While the water evaporates from this you can prepare a dish (like the glass dish in my picture). These days most lasagna leaves don't need to be pre-cooked so you can just put a first layer of them in the dish. Then you spoon on the meat-sauce you made until it covers the leaves and is about two-three fingers thick.
I then added cut champignons (mushrooms are healthy!) and mozzarella cheese (mozzarella has much fewer calories than regular cheese). Then another layer of lasagna leaves, sauce, champignons, and cheese. At the top you can see both the champignons and the cheese.
After you're done with the layers, it goes into the oven at about 180-220°C. I'm not that exact about it. All it has to be is hot enough to cook the lasagna leaves and cheese reasonably quickly. You'll see when it's done anyway (when the cheese is melted and turning into a crunchy crust).
The lasagna also yields about 4-5 portions (although when my partner gets to it more like 3).
The whole process took two hours with two people working on it. This means 2 people + 2 hours = 25 dishes. If you're alone you can probably cut the amount of dishes as well as recipes in half. Instead of four dishes you can make two (stir-fry vegetables with protein foods because they are nutrient rich and easy and perhaps the bulgur-chicken stew for the same reasons).
The bottom line really is this:
A lot of vegetables and some proteins. A bit less of the starches (carbohydrates). A soup such as the carrot-red lentil soup if you want to have a ready snack that's ridiculously easy to make as well.
Doesn't that sound all right? And it's all nutritious as heck as well! If you stick to diets such as these and don't overdo it in the sweets department you'll notice a change both in your skin and your hair after a few days. Your skin will become much more pure and your hair loss will slow down somewhat (Caution! Hair loss has a lot of other reasons not related to food as well. You can't really expect never to lose a hair even on a great diet... but you can slow it down considerably!)
Do you have any questions? Please post them below. I'll answer all of them ASAP.
There's more things I'd like to share with you this week. The most relevant of those to food preparation is a crash course on why the 4 Principles of Health are so important to follow. Keep checking in on the blog or follow me on Twitter! I only post updates when there's a new post!
WriteBot.
This is great, thank you! Only other piece of info I could ask for is the amount of chicken, and pork you purchased
ReplyDelete