Meal Prep for the Week!

Well, my friends... As requested, here is a little look in to my "meal prep" for this week.

I ALWAYS meal plan, shop accordingly, and prep the fresh vegetables that I bring home every week. For me, it's not only a way of keeping track of my food, but I find that grocery shopping according to a meal schedule is MUCH cheaper and easier.

I keep my list of meals in my phone, so it is easily accessible for me to track. I keep the list and just change the meals out from week to week. Before I go grocery shopping, I take a glance at what I have in my freezer, fridge, and cabinets, then I write out meals for the week. After I write them up, I go over the list and make a grocery list of things I will need to complete each meal (I find that I usually don't need a ton, which is where this is cheaper).
PS-- Sorry the list only goes to Thursday, my phone wouldn't let me screen shot the whole week, but I do plan for Friday! Usually it's our "pizza" day.

This past weekend, my fiance and I were talking about food for the week and he suggested that I "get our stuff for lunches" together to save me some time. That made me think that, yes, I DO meal prep, but could I do more and give myself even MORE time during the evenings. If you know me, you know that time is a bit scarce in my life these days (f/t school and work). Anything I can do to give myself more time is a plus in my book! :)

SO off I went to the grocery store and bought everything I would need to get my week together!

I came home and first worked on my lunches.

I made up 3 of my cottage cheese bowls. I explained how I make them in this post. I also made up the fixings for 2 english muffin pizzas (to give myself a little variety). I put together some snack bags that have a rice cake and almond butter packet to eat as my morning snack.

Next I put my breakfasts together. I have a protein shake every morning, so I made up enough protein packs for the week.

I have a variety of shakes that I make. For this week, I made a couple "Fake Dole Whip" shakes, a strawberry cake batter shake, and 2 espresso shakes.

"Fake Dole Whip" shake
1/2c. Frozen Pineapple
1/2 Frozen banana
1/3 c. frozen spinach (not for flavor, I am trying to add iron to my daily diet)
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1 c. coconut milk

Mix in blender until "shake" consistency.


Once I finished up everything for my week, I made up The Engineer's lunches (he's pretty easy and predictable.. sammie, fruit, and veggie...EVERY. DAY). And he LOVES it! Me? I need variety! 

I didn't need to do a TON of dinner prep because I actually had a lot already made, but I did some.

Tonight's dinner- Italian Beef sandwiches. This is a roast in my crock pot with a can of crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, italian seasoning, and a packet of onion soup. I prepped it yesterday and today it cooked all day on low (about 9-10 hours). We came home to a delicious smelling house and all we had to do was quickly use two forks to shred the beef, pull out the buns, and plate our food! Easy!

This is a bag of oven roasted, organic chicken breasts that I chopped up for our burritos this week.

The last thing I "prepped" was some butternut squash to use as a side dish this week. I had a hard time putting this baby in the fridge... Smelled SO good!

I will leave you all with a picture of my fridge after I prepped and finally put everything away. The funny thing is, I got home from work today and realized I literally had my whole evening to devote to school work. Nothing else to do! It was AWESOME! I full plan on continuing to prep like this every Sunday.

Have a great evening!  I will let you all know how the rest of the week went!