Hey Good Looking, What are you cooking? Meal Plan & Prep chat

For breakfast during the week I have a saved recipe called Smoothie Base made of Greek yoghurt, protein powder, Fibre 1, walnut milk and hemp hearts. Add half a cup of whatever fruit. Blender. Chug.

Weekend breakfasts are egg muffins made of onion, garlic, meat, greens (the recipe calls for bacon and spinach, but bacon is gross and there are always tons of greens in my fridge, so I use whatever's starting to look a little wilty - my current batch has Swiss chard and chicken Italian sausage), cheese, eggs (of course) and a bit of flour. Eat with a toasted slice of home-made herb and garlic bread with a bit of Becel olive oil margarine.

Workday lunches are usually a big salad - a bed of the aforementioned greens with a bunch of vegetables (my last one had carrot, zucchini, pepper, mushroom, onion, tomato and avocado), some goat cheese, a serving of cooked chicken and a couple of tablespoons of dressing. Usually Renée's Greek or the President's Choice avocado one.

Lunches on days off are usually leftovers, or sometimes don't even happen.

And hubby usually makes dinner since his shift ends 4 hours before mine. More often poultry or fish than red meat, and large portions of (usually) roasted or sauteed veggies.

* Note: I am not trying to loose weight, and my macros are 25%P, 45%F, 30%C, so the way I eat definitely won't suit everyone 🙂

I like to spend a few hours on a weekend getting ready for the coming work week. I always try to roast/bake some veggies like potatoes, carrots, beets, eggplant, swedes, turnips, zucchinis and pumpkins. I can then throw together either reheated roast veggies or veggie salads through the week for lunches and dinners.
I like to do up a big soup (minestrone or borscht-type things/ pea and ham or Dhals) and keep some in the fridge to dole out for lunches and freeze the rest in containers for future weeks.
I quite often roast a chicken and make gravy which will do a roast meal but the leftovers can be used for salads or rheted later in the week. I might sometime throw a piece of meat like a pork roast into the slow cooker as well. This can be eaten as a meal and leftovers along with other leftover veg from roasting are good to make stews and curries with.
Cooking up some cereals like rice, barley and buckwheat and putting those in the fridge is also a big time saver for me as they can be reheated quickly or worked into salads. I mainly eat cooked buckwheat for breakfast each day so like to have that on hand.

Once every couple of weeks I make bread from 50-50 whole wheat flour and rye flour and I keep that in the fridge and have smallish portions (70g) along with soup at lunchtime on a lot of work days. I just toast it up in the sandwich press in the work staff room and it comes up a treat.

This week (on Sunday) I roasted two whole chickens. We ate that with gravy, mashed potato, broccoli/carrots, and homemade sourdough for two nights, and then used the rest of the meat for quesadillas for two more nights. Family of 5. And I also have salmon teriyaki on the menu this week as well.

I meal plan every week and haven’t fully finished next week yet but this is the gist of what it will be

8am - protein shake and coffee
10am - 2 hard boiled eggs and pineapple
12pm - jello cup
2pm - salmon and asparagus
4pm - veggie straws or other 100ish calorie snack
6pm - Dinner which is undecided this week 😂
8pm - rice cake with peanut butter and chocolate chips
10pm - tea or chicken broth

I struggle with binge eating so it works best for me if i don’t let myself get hungry, which is why i eat every two hours.

Any suggestions for dinners? 🥺😅

Here's my plan for using up roast chicken in a household of 2.

Day 1. Roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast root vegetables. Concentrate on eating the bony bits like wings, backbone, drumsticks as breasts and thighs are easier to deal with as leftovers. Save any bones in a ziplock in the freezer for making stock.

Day 2. Easy, vaguely mexican chicken salad. Chop an avocado and some cold leftover chicken. Mix with a jar of commercial salsa. Add a handful of chopped coriander. Have it in a tortilla or wrap. You can make microwave tostadas if you want something crunchy.
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/6544-microwave-tostadas

Day 3. Avgolemono soup. My method is easier than the recipe below. Boil chicken stock (made with a bouillon cube is fine) with a handful of rice. I always have some caramelized onion on hand because I make in large batches in which I freeze in silicon ice cube trays or muffin tins. I will toss in some frozen caramelized onion and some chopped leftover chicken. Squeeze in lemon juice to taste. in 20 minutes, when the rice is cooked, beat an egg or two in a bowl, ladle in a cup of hot broth and beat until the egg is loosened. Remove soup from the heat and slowly add the tempered eggs back into the soup, stirring continuously. If the soup is not thick enough for your liking, return to very low heat and keep stirring until thickened. Serve with a greek salad.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/avgolemono_soup/

Day 4. Chicken caesar. You can use store bought dressing but if making from scratch it is easiest to use a jug where an immersion blender fits with not too much excess room. I use a large measuring cup. Drop in an egg, a clove of garlic, a few anchovy fillets and pour over half a cup of oil. Place the immersion blender flat at the bottom over the egg and bend until you notice mayo coming out of the sides as oil is slowly drawn into the egg. Once you have some mayo formed at the bottom of the container, carefully start lifting the immersion blender up and down to draw small quantities of oil into the mayo. Flavour with lemon and dash of olive oil and blend again. If it is too thick, loosen with more lemon or water and blend some more. To make croutons cube a slice of bread and melt 2 teaspoons of butter in the microwave in a bowl large enough to hold the bread. Once melted, toss in the bread to coat and then toast in the air fryer or oven for 5-8 minutes at 160C until crisp. Assemble salad, chicken, croutons and dressing.

Day 5. Coronation chicken. This is a chicken salad type filling to have on sandwiches. Finely chop chicken, mix with mayo and yoghurt, raisins, curry powder. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Day infinity. When the bone bag in the freezer is full, toss the contents into a large pot with an onion that has been halved. Skin and all is fine. Simmer gently for 5 hours then boil furiously to reduce volume (so it takes less room in the freezer), strain and freeze to use for soups, risottos, gravies.

My meal prep this week is:
Breakfast: French Toast Casserole
Lunch: Hamburger helper with turkey
Dinner: Chicken Teriyaki bowls