Sunday Funday: Meal Prep Sunday

Meal Prep Sunday is my day to prepare for the week ahead and it can be lots of fun to feel like I'm cooking for a crowd instead of for two.  I love variety in meals and tastes so this is one way to cook a lot because I'm cooking not just for one night but for lunches and the weekday dinners.  Here's what I did last week so you have the menu for when you do #mealprepsunday today!

1.  Broccoli Pesto Pasta - Inspired by this recipe on BBC Good Food.  I omitted pine nuts (since they are too expensive) and added a few tablespoons of pesto with 1/2 lemon squeezed, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil.  

2.  Easy Oven Roasted Baby Red Potatoes  - I love the boiling of the baby potatoes first which shortens the oven roasting time.  Unfortunately my garlic had mold growing on it so I omitted the garlic.  I cut up some baby carrots and threw those in to roast with the baby red potatoes with half a bag of frozen green beans.  

3.  Easy Honey Garlic Chicken - I was inspired by this recipe but my chicken thighs didn't look like the recipe because I didn't follow the recipe.  I seared the chicken in the pan, added 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 2 tablespoons honey and ketchup and cooked that with the chicken before baking it with the oven roasted potatoes.

4.  Breakfast Burrito - Scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage with chopped onion, shredded red potato (from easy oven potatoes), wrap it all in a tortilla and voila it's a breakfast burrito.  

What did I learn from Meal Prep Sunday?

Variety is the key to the meal and makes dinner delicious.  This was enough for dinner for two in addition to 4 lunches, and 4 breakfasts.  I also did two small containers of sliced cucumbers with dip as a healthy snack and to make that four different servings of vegetables.  My goal will be to increase my servings of vegetables and fruit for #mealprepsunday.  

Sunday Funday - Meal Prep Sunday

National Blog Posting Month

NaBloPoMo Day 27 - Drone Racing and Meal Prep Sunday

I love the idea of meal prep sunday that my husband discovered for me on Reddit which links back to this blog ideally called My Meal Prep Sunday.   On Reddit you can see people posting containers of their healthy lunches that they have made for the week.  Inspiration from me!

So what really happened on my Meal Prep Sunday.  Firstly I slept in and since it has been rainy and dark I really did not want to get out of bed.  Once I did I went out to the Western League Drone Racing event at Cloverdale Agriplex to check out what multirotor drone racing looks like and to visit our friends.  

Needless to say we didn't even think about meal planning or grocery shopping until later in the afternoon.  I use Plan to Eat to do my meal planning and from there my grocery list.  We ended up going to Walmart to buy groceries since we needed to go there for cheap glue for flying wings.  I wanted to share this because my Meal Prep Sunday was not a full day and instead a few hours.  So what did it look like?

1.  Rotissiere Chicken leftovers with Steamed cauliflower, carrots, and frozen green beans.  I prefer fresh veggies but sometimes it is nice to throw in frozen ones to make it more colourful.  This was a nice combination.

2.  Brocolli Apple Salad - http://paleoleap.com/broccoli-apple-salad-walnuts/ - This salad was such a success last week that I made it again!  I put it in smaller containers as it is a good midday snack.

3.  Slow Cooker Beef Stew - http://www.clubhouse.ca/en-ca/products/meal-helpers/slow-cookers/slow-cookers-beef-stew  I chopped carrots, potatoes, and onions so tomorrow morning I can put everything in the slow cooker on low and go off to work.  That will give me dinner and hopefully few more lunches.  

What did I learn?  I need a full day of Meal Prep Sunday to have more meals.  I like using smaller containers so I feel I have variety and using the slower cooker during weekday evenings will help save time as well.  I want to do more baking as well so we'll see if I'm successful next week on #sundayfunday #mealprepsunday

Sunday Funday: Meal Prep Sunday

National Blog Posting Month

Blogging everyday in November

#NaBloPoMo Day 13 - Meal Prep Sunday

I love being in the kitchen but often I am too tired or find myself too hungry to enjoy cooking.  Sundays are different.  Some people call them Meal Preparation Sundays #mealprepsundays.  This is the one day when you meal plan, prepare and cook your meals or lunches for the week.  I love the idea and Sundays are lazy days for me so I was super happy that it was raining and I had time to try a Meal Prep Sunday.  

First I use my meal planner called Plan to Eat to plan the meals that I want to cook.  I have recipes from the web that I want to try and like to see how the meals will work for the upcoming days.  Plan to Eat has grocery lists for grocery shopping but since I am only cooking for two, I don't use that function very often.  I did in the beginning when I first started using Plan to Eat.  Feel free to visit my referral link to check it out:  https://www.plantoeat.com/ref/couponchef  Or you can keep it simple and write down the meals on a piece of paper.  There is nothing wrong with that!

So I wanted to get started with some baking.  I hadn't baked in a LONG time.  I decided to make Mini Pumpkin muffins using the following recipe:  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-mini-muffins because I had a can of pumpkin puree in the pantry.  After I put the first batch of muffins in the oven and was putting away the leftover pumpkin puree I licked the spoon of with the last scraps of the pumpkin purree in the can and YUCK!  It tasted awful!  Then I looked at the top of the can of pumpkin puree and saw the expiry date.  It read October 2015.  What a letdown to my first baking experience back in the kitchen!  Lesson learned, if you have pantry items that you want to use, check the expiry dates.  I learned the hard way.  

So I didn't let that stop me from Sunday Funday Meal Prep Sunday.  (Just stopped the baking).  Take a look at what recipes I prepared for my first Meal Prep Sunday.

1.  Easiest Eggplant - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/70142/easiest-eggplant/

I had a lonely eggplant in the fridge that needed cooking up so this is what I made.  I figured we could eat this as a snack or to accompany a main dish.

2.  Brocolli Apple Salad - http://paleoleap.com/broccoli-apple-salad-walnuts/

This will be a great starter to any meal or to bring as my brown bag lunch.

3.  Korean Glass Noodle Chap Chae - http://steamykitchen.com/180-korean-glass-noodles-jap-chae.html

We actually ate this all up for Sunday lunch.  Next time I would need to double it up if I wanted more for lunches.  Great vegetarian recipe!

3.  One Pot Chicken and Mushroom Tettrazini - http://www.jocooks.com/main-courses/poultry-main-courses/one-pot-chicken-and-mushroom-tetrazzini/

This was my Sunday favorite One Pot Chicken and Mushroom Tettrazini!  It was the first time that I made a one pot dish and guess what?  It worked!  We ate this for dinner and there was some leftover this time for our lunch tomorrow.  

What did I learn from my first Meal Prep Sunday? 

I learned to check the expiry date of canned foods, and also that I might not have actually done meal prep sunday since I do not have a week's worth of lunches in the fridge.  I have one lunch, eggplant snacks, and three small containers of salad.  I also have ingredients all ready for tomorrow's Chicken Stirfry dinner.  All in all, even though there's room for improvement for #MealPrepSunday, it was a successful #SundayFunday because I had fun in the kitchen!

Cooking: Well Fed Studio Meal Assembly Classes

Dear Vancity Girlfriends,

I love cooking and having homemade meals that are healthy and easy to make.  I've watched cooking shows such as Jamie Oliver's 15 minutes meals and Gordan Ramsey's Best Restaurants to see how to go from home made comfort food to gourmet restaurant meals.  

However even every foodie loving chef has to take a break once in a while so when my girlfriend suggested that we attend North Vancouver's Well Fed Studio and meal assembly class, it didn't take me long to say "Yes!".  So Vancity Girlfriends went to our first meal assembly class on October 15th.  

Well Fed Meal Assembly class is where we "assemble" or "put together" eight dinners that will feed 4-6 people each.  There is a menu that you pre-order from before you attend the class and you can double order the dishes that you like.  There are snacks and drinks (even white wine) served during the two hours of the class.  I had never heard of this idea before but the class sold out so we were lucky that we signed up early.

The cost of the meal assembly class for your eight meals is $238 per person.  The hardest part for me was making space in my apartment sized freezer for the meals.  

When I arrived at the class, they already had our first tray of ingredients all ready for us and our own individual recipe books with our names on them.  Everyone did the recipes that they each choose in the order of their recipe book.  All the ingredients were wrapped in different bags for the different meals that you chose.  Even though initially I thought that meal assembly would be easier than cooking, it was still a LOT of work.  We were busy assembling the meals during the entire two hours.  Everyone else seemed to know what to do and had been there before.  Since it was our first time we had some catching up to do but Carolyn was on a roll and got to work right away as I was sipping on my wine ;)  

The recipe book provided instructions on how to assemble the meal.  Put the ingredients in different ziploc bags, add the spices, pack it all together in ziploc bags or containers and then slap cooking instructions on it.  Most of the ingredients would be in the bags but the staple ingredients and fresh herbs were in the middle of the table for everyone to use and share. 

With the stuffed chicken breasts, we had to put the stuffing and tie the breasts before we put them in containers to freeze at home.  I really liked the fact that most of the recipes that I choose were intended to be put in large ziploc bags because that saved a lot of freezer space for me.  I also liked that since we were assembling the food, I could choose which meals I wanted to separate into smaller portion sizes.  It was work but the good news is that I didn't have to do any chopping, or dish washing.  All of the shopping and preparation was done for me and I didn't need to buy a bunch of different spices that I might only use once or twice.  A few of the recipes such as Chicken Tikka Masala and Beef Tangine had over 10 spices in the recipes.  

Overall we both liked the meal assembly class and it was a great idea to try it out.  Now we just need to actually thaw and cook the recipes at home to see what they taste like!  

Well Fed Meal Assembly Class Website