February Week 2: Meal Plan and Prep System

 Hey friends!

 

I am a day late, HOWEVER. I have news.

 

My 4 month old ACTUALLY kind of sort of slept last night. Up at 12:00, 3:00, and 4:30, then I woke him up to get ready for the day. It previously was 10:30, 12:00, 2:00, 4:00 and 6:00.

 

So. Winning.

 

All this to say, that I actually got some sleep this weekend, meaning I was able to catch up with me “get your shit together” adult time, and got our meal plan done and prepped. Also laundry and vacuuming happened. More winning.

 

 

Meal Plan and Prep Week Two

 

There are a couple phases to this plan.

 

Phase One: Saturday- What the hell are we going to eat? (10 minutes)

For this phase, I start by talking to Travis about things either one of us really wants this week, and if nothing pops up, we choose off of our typical meal list (a running list from Google Keep) or look at my Pinterest board of recipes. We typically don’t assign a meal to a day. I like the flexibility of going with whatever I feel like, both taste and cooking intensity.

 

This is what we are eating, btw.

 

1.     Lime Chicken Bowls with Thai Peanut Sauce and Potstickers

2.     Beef Tenderloin Fillets with apple kale salad and mashed sweet potatoes

3.     Chicken Taco Bowls

4.     Stuff Spaghetti Squash Lasagna Bowls with roasted brussel sprouts and butternut squash, and Caesar salad

5.     Chicken noodle soup with butternut squash kale salad and half sandwiches

 

Phase Two: Saturday- Shopping! (over the day, about 20 minutes)

Here I make our Instacart shopping list for the week. I go through each recipe and put down the things we need for each meal, get other general groceries, all that jazz. Super easy, and I LOVE this part. Such a nerd.

 

Phase Three: Saturday- Taking Note of the Prep (20 minutes)

This is the first time I have done this phase. Phase one and two have been happening for a couple months.

 

Here I looked at each of the recipes, and think about what I can prep ahead of time. Then I went onto Google Keep and made a new list called “Meal Prep”. Here I make a checkbox item for each meal with what I need to prep as indented items below it, and if I am not familiar with the recipe, how much to prep of each item.

 

The cool thing about this is I only have to make this list once for each meal. This list will become our new typical meal list, so when we come back around and want to have the same meal again, I already have the prep outlined and ready to go, I just need to uncheck the meal under the checked items. So, I will only need to do this step once for each meal, meaning hopefully this whole process will get faster and faster. But honestly, it really didn’t take too long at all.

 

TLDR: Google Keep is my JAM.

 

Phase Four: Sunday-Prep(1.5 hours)
Groceries arrive, and if I feel like it, I don’t even put things away, I dive into prepping. However, this did not happen this week, as I have two kids and am a crazy person.

 

I opened up my Google Keep list, grabbed everything I needed, and got to chopping.

(Not Seen here is the INSANE amount of kale I washed!)

 

I also chopped all the veggies I need for my lunched all week.

 

I went down to the freezer in the basement and grabbed anything frozen down there and popped it in the fridge.

 

I keep all the prepped veggies in containers in the bottom drawer. I also used some of our silicone cupcake holders to separate some of the different veggies within a container, so each meal’s with of veggies is in the same container.

I put on Frozen 2 for Emily while I did this and Travis manned Theo, and I was done by the time the movie was over. Well pretty much, I would have been but I took a 20 minutes break to feed Theo.

 

So there you have it. All told, about 2.5 hours of work. And really, most of that time is just borrowed time from cooking in the week that I don’t have to do now. 

We’ll see how this week goes, but I feel pretty good about it. It feels awesome to go into the week with so much of the work done.

Hope you have lots of yummy food this week!!