Lunch box prep ideas

The Domestic Geek has tons of meal prep on her YouTube channel. She just did this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mWHIHCg587s I am going to try a few just as soon as I can get to the store.

Also I have seen someone divide a sheet pan with foil and cook chicken 3 different ways so their meal prep had variety. I will try to remember where I saw it.

Other great meal preppers: Fit Couple Cooks, Fit Men Cook, Mind over Munch and FlavCity with Bobby Parrish.

Another way to pack meals. https://soupspiceeverythingnice.blogspot.com/p/masonables.html

I do tend to eat boring/same for my breakfast/lunch for a week, but I change it up each week. It helps when you make something really, really yummy.

This week it is roasted red pepper tomato gouda bisque and grilled chicken breast for lunch. Last week was a quinoa salad with paprika roasted chicken thighs. I make stuff in big batches on Sunday and package for easy lunchbox loading for hubby and me.

Breakfast I tend not to switch up too often, because I get on a kick with certain foods. For a while it was waffles, then pancakes, then cottage cheese/fruit with toast.

It's hard to pack something different each day unless you do leftovers from the night before, because that's a lot of ingredients!

Stuff keeps pretty long in the freezer...you can always prep a new batch of something before the old batch you are getting bored of is gone, and circulate those back in later when you are in the mood for it again.

For the most part, I do a pot of soup and eat that until near the end .. it does get boring by the last 2-ish servings, and I have to freeze these for a later date.

Alternatively, I do random frozen veggies and random baggie of previously cooked and portioned meat. Some things are relatively easy to do for a little bit of variety...you can throw a whole half pork loin or a club pack of chicken in the instapot - then when done cooking, do something like mix 1/3 into chicken salad, another third into pulled pork/chicken with BBQ sauce, another 1/3 in chunks with some other sauce or alone,.. I weigh into baggies I can grab and take to work to be mix-and-matched with nuked frozen veggies and/or miscellaneous other sides. (easier than doing 3 pans of some meat dish from scratch).

Breakfast has been greek yogurt + some portion of a food bar everyday for ages. There is a somewhat decent flavor variety out there of both. I did buy the large tubs of greek yogurt and make my own flavor for a while, but I did get bored of that. Upon realizing the price difference for the small flavored ones was pretty small (9 cents more per pint if memory serves), I started buying those pretty much exclusively. (and yes, people do sometimes look at you a little funny when you are stuffing >14 little yogurt tubs in a shoulder shopping bag). (I also recently re-discovered Aldi while shopping for a recent potluck... those mini greek yogurts are 69 cents there, and they have a store brand of the Fiber One protein and fiber-added food bars.. I used to avoid that store because it is the mecca of amazing gourmet junk food at really cheap prices..like seriously: you are met with a wall of amazing Belgian chocolate bars at ~$2 the instant you walk in the door).

wow that's a great idea....

A really easy lunch/dinner go to when I'm short on time and haven't prepped anything, is to steam a bag of veggies and add a can of chicken.