Week 4 July Meal Prep

Meal prep begins the moment you decide it does. I decided meal prep began at 12:30 and by 2pm I was done. Yes, a sink full of dishes , but all of this food was cooked and I can spend my mental energy during the week to other projects.

I share this because I think that time is a barrier to meal prep because it takes so long. Maybe 90 minutes is a long time to spend cooking right away but imagine the time you save each night just pulling out something to eat and heating it up. Why do you think convenience foods sell so well?

Instead of trying to prepare this many items at once, start with maybe 2 sides of vegetables, 1 protein or 1 whole grain. Start with something familiar, easy, and delicious that will get the habit started.

Here is what is easy to me: categorizing the foods by prep method.

What I mean is, am I going to cook, roast, or keep it raw.

Anything I roast will be chopped, oiled, seasoned & put on a baking sheet in an oven.

Anything I cook will be chopped, put into a pan on the stove, and seasoned.

Anything I keep raw will be chopped, seasoned and put into a bowl.

Sounds simple, that's because I make it that way. I think too much about everything else. But cooking? That's my meditation. I'm just in the kitchen, usually have a podcast, Grey's Anatomy (at the moment), or music playing and I'm making nourishing foods for the week ahead.

First, I preheated the oven and began chopping my sweet potatoes, carrots, asparagus, and red bell peppers. All the veggies I was going to roast.

As I chopped and the cutting board got crowded, I transferred the chopped veggies onto the baking pans. When the pans got full, they went into the oven and I could begin chopping the next items.

Stuff I was cooking on the stove: peppers, onions, zucchini, and tempeh. In my largest pan I added olive oil and turned on the heat so it got warm but not hot. I sliced onions, added them to the pan; peppers and added them to the pans; zucchini and added those to a pan.

The onions would add flavor but I wanted more. So I thought: where? Where do I want to go, what flavors are common? Thailand came to mind. So did other countries in Asia I want to visit someday.

So I grabbed soy sauce (low sodium), rice vinegar, ginger, sesame oil and sesame seeds. I didn't measure I just added.

The veggies softened while they cooked and i stirred occasionally. But I was simultaneously slicing up the tempeh. The timer went off for my oven roasted veggies. I removed the roasted sweet potatoes from the pan, and left the other medley on their pan (as seen in the pic).

I went back to the veggies cooking on the stove and had those removed form the pan into a bowl. I added the tempeh to the pan and let that cook around to pick up the left over flavors and bits from the veggies before.

My next task was to cook the salmon and tilapia. This was as simple as adding it to the free baking sheet I had, adding some thyme to the tilapia and Everything but the Bagel Sesame seasoning to the salmon.

I placed them into the oven, which was still warm from the potatoes and veggies I cooked earlier. So I set the timer for 12 minutes and moved on to the final items I was prepping which were the foods i was leaving raw.

A really important step here is to clear everything from my space. I put anything, cutting boards, knives, whatever I was using into the sink and started with a new knife and cutting board to avoid cross contamination. Safety first.

So I cut the cucumbers, tomatoes, and added them into a bowl with a little olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt. Done. Easy. I moved on to the watermelon and sliced that beauty into wedges.

So, this is it. This is Week 4 July Meal Prep. I'll be also prepping overnight oats with fresh Palisade peaches, making post workout smoothies with frozen mango and coconut shreds for a tropical feel.

If you want to meal prep but not sure where to get started, I would love to help! Reach out to me if you are interested in meal plans or in personal nutrition consulting. And if you are meal prepping, Happy Meal Prep!

#mealprep