Meal Prep Ideas and the First Week of June!

Meal prep Sundays, Mondays, who cares what day of the week you do it! As long as at some point you get to it! Meal prep doesn't have to be this grand event like it might seem. Think of all the #mealprep madness as your foodspiration! An external motivator to start developing this healthy habit.

Maybe it helps if you just start making 1 meal. Making breakfast the night before is a great way to break into the meal prepping habit and catch a few extra z's in the morning because breakfast is ready to go!

What if I don't eat breakfast? If that's what you are thinking, then here's a short PSA for breakfast!

Breakfast is the meal that breaks the fast you have gone through over night. It is our first opportunity to give our bodies the essential nutrients they need to run optimally.

You see, food isn't just stuff you eat to look a certain way or weigh a certain number. Ohhhh no! Food is a vehicle (a wonderful, pleasurable) vehicle to give our billions of teeny tiny cells all the power they need to express genes, make proteins, carry out wastes. Our cells are constantly making things and breaking things. In fact, metabolism is the sum of our bodies making things (anabolism) and breaking things (catabolism). I can get reeeeeal scientific here, but I won't! I just want you to know why breakfast, or whatever you call your first meal of the day, is important!

So what am I having for breakfast this week?! Well, I decided I wanted to include more whole eggs in my diets so I can get all the heme-iron form the yolk. Heme iron is the more absorbable kind of iron! It's different than the non-heme iron, which is in plants.

Breakfast: Tomato Basil Spinach Egg Cups, Sweet Potato & Bell Pepper Hash, Blackberries

Tomato Basil Spinach Egg Cups | Makes 12 Cups

Step 1- Preheat oven to 375F

Ingredients:

4 eggs, 4 whites

1 cup of spinach, chopped

1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, chopped in quarters

3 basil leaves, chiffonade

dash of salt, dash of pepper.

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and pour contents into a muffin tin sprayed with cooking spray or lined with liners.

Place in the preheated 375F oven for 20 minutes. Remove form the oven, let cool and then remove.

Sweet Potato & Bell Pepper Hash

Ingredients:

1 medium to large sweet potato, chopped into small cubes

1 tbsp. olive oil

2 cups frozen bell peppers

Directions:

Pour olive oil on large skillet and bring heat to low-medium. Add the chopped sweet potatoes. Cook under medium heat until potatoes soften. About 10 minutes.

When soft, add frozen bell pepper mixture. They will steam up because they are frozen so be careful of that. Place a cover on the pan to speed up the cooking if desired. Sprinkle on Trader Joe's Everything Bagel Seasoning.

Turn off the heat and serve or store!

MID AM Snack: Quick and simple! An ounce of nuts and a small banana. Not much to explain here. Unless you want nutrition information on nuts and bananas. But they're both whole foods, they're both plant foods and are 100% part of a healthy eating pattern.

LUNCH!

Really Excited about this lunch. Now I won't have this exact meal for lunch everyday, but I will have the salad with the super simple dressing I made, the Almond Butter Curry Cauliflower, and the 3-Ingredient Baked Chicken.

Super Simple Salad Dressing

In an empty glass jar pour in

1/4 cup olive oil

1/3 cup white vinegar

1 tbsp mustard

3 basil leaves

few dashes of salt and pepper

Shake it all up, with the lid on obviously and out comes a creamy dressing. It's so simple!

Almond Butter Curry Cauliflower

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower or bag of cauliflower pieces

1 packet of Justin's Almond Butter

2 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp. curry powder

Directions:

Place cauliflower in a bowl. Mix all ingredients except cauliflower in another bowl. Then pour almond butter mix onto the cauliflower. Make sure it gets coated nice and evenly.

Lay cauliflower on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake in an oven at 400F for 20 minutes.

3 Ingredient Baked chicken

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken breast

1 can fire roasted tomatoes

2 tbsp Garam Masala

Place chicken breast in a big plastic, sealable bag. Pound the chicken breast with a mallet so they flatten. Open the bag and add the garam masala. Close the bag and hake it to evenly coat the chicken with the seasoning.

In a 9x9 baking dish pour in the can of diced tomatoes. Lay the chicken breast flat n the tomatoes and place in a 375 degree oven for 35 minutes. Check to ensure the temperature of the chicken is 165F.

Mid PM Snack: Tasty Vegetarian Buzzfeed Recipe for Quinoa Pizza Burgers and a half an avocado.

Servings: 4

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa, cooked

1 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed

¼ cup tomato paste

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Salt

Black pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400˚F

In a large bowl add the quinoa, beans, tomato, paste, and seasonings. Using a potato masher, mash the ingredients until thoroughly mixed together.

Take a quarter of quinoa-bean mixture and shape it into a patty using your hands. Repeat with the remaining mixture to create four patties.

Place the patties on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Top with mozzarella, and bake for 12-15 minutes.

Dinner time features my ultimate favorite SWEET POTATOES & some "sustainable salmon" (aka trout) that I topped with this super easy, and totally random Bruschetta mix. Then I threw in some romaine hearts into the oven with olive oil and everything bagel seasoning from Trader' Joes!

Bruschetta Salmon

Ingredients:

Salmon fillet (4 oz raw per person ) 3 olives, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

6-8 tomatoes, finely chopped

2 basil leave, finely chopped

Mix all ingredients except salmon in a small bowl and set aside. When oven is preheated to 375, place fish in the oven with the Bruschetta mix on top. The fish is done when it reaches 145F internal temperature or when your 8-10 minute timer goes off.

(Please excuse the scratched up bowl) but lastly we have a smoothie bowl I made with Vega Sport Protein Vanilla and some whole milk yogurt. I just blended it together, added some hemp seeds, cinnamon and frozen berries on top!

That's all, folks! Let me know what you meal prep in the comments :D!

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