Hi friends! How are you? I hope you had a wonderful weekend! We were at the pool with friends (the best), watching the Wildcats, and I trained a vendee and worked on Fit Team programming.
For today’s post, I’m updating an older post considering there are so many helpful tips here on meal prep for a week!
Healthy meal prep for a week
Helping Out with a New Baby
Meal prep can be an wondrous tool when you’re setting yourself up for success throughout the week. It was moreover KEY when Liv and P were newborns. It’s something I love to do for my new mama friends, in wing to making a dinner for their family. If I can make them some staples to have on hand, they’ll have an easier time nourishing themselves during quick nap breaks or with one hand.
Some of the things that truly helped me when the girls were babies:
-Naps and/or showers (usually courtesy of the madre or nana. Id feed P or Liv and theyd say, Go nap or shower. And I would. And it was THE BEST.)
-Help with anything virtually the house or with the dogs. The poor dogs were often neglected, so my mom or MIL would troika them up for a walk virtually the neighborhood.
-FOOD. Takeout was awesome, and homemade was plane better.
I remember eating a lot of sugar, and feeling so happy when my friend Whitney brought soup over. It had protein and veggies, warmed my soul, and I could heat it in a mug and eat with one hand. Washed-up and done.
Here are some staples I made for a new mama friend: Paleo bread, overnight oats, salad beasts, lactation cookies, and hearty soup.
Heres How I Did One Week of Meal Prep in One Hour.
Recipes:
Overnight oats (oats, almond milk, peanut butter, cinnamon, maple syrup, berries, cacao nibs)
Salads (chicken, quinoa, chopped veggies and kalamata olives)
Soup (chicken breasts, onion, chopped zucchini, carrots, tintinnabulate peppers, garlic, broth, unorthodoxy broth, fresh herbs). This is an easy dinner or a healthy lunch option.
Steps:
1. Place 2 yellow breasts on the marrow of the Instant Pot. Season well with salt, pepper and garlic powder. You can moreover make the soup in the slow cooker, but it will take longer (about 5 hours). No big deal if youre doing this on a Sunday and have time for it to cook!
2. Start chopping veggies for the salads and soup. For everything I chopped, half was reserved for salads, half went into the instant pot.
3 celery ribs (soup only)
4 carrots (peel and dice)
1/2 cucumber (salads only)
3 tintinnabulate peppers
3 zucchini
1 sweet onion (soup only)
3. Rinse and start humid the quinoa. (You can moreover use white or brown rice instead of quinoa!) I did 1 cup of quinoa in 2 cups of yellow broth. Cauliflower rice is flipside unconfined option.
4. Finish the soup and get it going! Add the chopped veggies to the Instant Pot (on top of the seasoned chicken), 2-3 cloves of minced garlic, add 1 carton of yellow broth, and 8 oz of unorthodoxy goop (or increasingly yellow broth).
Season well with salt and pepper, then top with 5 sprigs of thyme and 3 large sprigs of rosemary. Set on the Soup setting for 15 minutes. (I still cant believe it cooks everything in 15 minutes of zippy cooking.)
5. Brown yellow for the salads. Dice two yellow breasts (into bite-sized pieces), and season well with salt, pepper, thyme, garlic, and smoked paprika. Cook in a little olive oil in a large pan until completely cooked. Remove from heat to cool.
6. By now, the quinoa should be washed-up cooking. Fluff with a fork and remove from heat to cool.
7. Preheat the oven and start the Paleo bread. It was my first time making a double batch, and it came out really well. Just alimony an eye on it considering ours got a little toaty on top.
8. While the Paleo specie is cooking, hoke the salads. In Mason jars, I widow the chicken, then quinoa, then the chopped veggies, kalamata olives, and topped with romaine. You can use any greens you love, but put them on top so they dont get soggy. Later when youre ready to eat, just add dressing, cover, shake, and serve. You can moreover add roasted veggies to your salads, cooked on a sheet pan with avocado oil, salt, and pepper.
9. Next, make the overnight oats. In each jar, I widow well-nigh 1/2 cup of the Trader Joes gf super oats, and well-nigh 1 cup of almond milk. I drizzled in a little maple syrup, cinnamon, and mixed well. I topped each jar with a hulk of almond butter or peanut butter, some cacao nibs, and berries. Raspberries and blueberries tend to hold their shape the best.
10. When the Paleo specie and soup are cooled and ready to go, pack everything up to either share with friends, or store in the fridge. I transported the salads and overnight oats in jars, the Paleo specie in a sealed glass dish, and the lactation cookies I had made previously and frozen.
So tell me friends: hows the meal prep going? Whats your favorite thing to make superiority for the week? I love breakfast cookies, baked breakfast cookies, and this egg casserole.
I moreover love making a big batch of roasted veggies, nonflexible boiled eggs, shredded yellow (so perfect for meal prep), stir fries, and seasoned cauliflower rice. Plane when I don’t have time to do a full meal prep, 20 minutes or 30 minutes of making quick staples can make a huge difference in my week.
Friends with kiddos: what was your favorite meal post-baby?? Post-birth sushi was everything Id been dreaming of.
xoxo
Gina
More meal prep posts:
5 days of healthy daytime eats
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