Meal Prep

Meal Preparation for a Week

Preparing a weeks worth of meals can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be! I for one chose SIMPLE! Here is how I made 8 meals, a pot of soup, sorted my snacks, and made my husband spaghetti sauce all in an hour!! No joke!

I decide what I am making for the week, make my list and shop. Just like everyone else. Nothing secret or exciting there. I have a great shopping list that can use to help organize posted as well! So use it! It helps I promise!!

Ok. I decided to make turkey taco salad bowls, chicken and roasted peppers, and chicken noodle soup.

First things first get the meat started and veges roasting. I have a toaster oven so I seasoned my chicken breast (total weight was a little over a pound for both) tossed it in a pan and baked it at 350 for roughly 40 minutes. I threw the ground turkey in a pan and ground beef in another pan (that is for my husband's sauce), once all that was in and cooking, I cut my peppers sprayed with EVOO with my MISTO (look into this thing if you don't have one!!) and popped them in my actual oven at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes. If you only have one oven cook everything at 375 and just adjust the cooking time.

OOOOOK so while the meat is cooking I began prepping the soup. I decided to make Chicken Noodle because I love it and it's cold out. I bought a rotisserie chicken (remember I love easy!!) and pulled the meat off and tossed it in the crock pot (don't forget the other meat is cooking on the stove and needs to be tended to while you do this) I purchased presliced carrots (why because it's soooo much easier and worth the extra 50 cents) so I dumped those in the crock pot, cut up celery and onion into chuncks and tossed it in too. I bought 2 boxes of vegetable broth (they are by the cans but are like 20 ounces or so) poured them both in added a bit of water and viola done! This took the same amount of time as it did for all the meat to cook. Just toss in a bay leaf or two or some boullion cubes if you want extra flavor. For those that follow Weight Watchers its all free except the chicken which is 1 WW point per ounce so you can weigh the meat as you take it off the chicken and divide it by how many servings you get out of the pot.

The ground turkey and ground beef were both finished at this point so I dumped a jar of Prego sauce on the ground beef and my husband's sauce was complete. I added the water and taco seasoning to my ground turkey as the packet of seasoning instructed. Then I let it all cool while I prepped the rest of the ingredients for the taco bowls.

I took out 4 smallish tupperware containers (I think they are 1-2 cups) 4 smaller containers (these are half cup - 1 cup) and 4 smaller containers (these are half or a quarter cup) I laid all these out so I can toss the ingredients in as I cut them.

First up... The lettuce cup it up and it goes in the biggest of the conatiners. Then on to the onion same thing cut it and on top of the lettuce it goes, Tomatoes are next and finally I measured out an eighth of a cup of reduced fat cheddar cheese. You can use any of the cold ingredients you like on your tacos to this container.

It is important to measure out any cheese so you know how many calories you (or Weight Watcher points you are comsuming) The reduced fat cheddar came out to 1 WW point!

Then I weighed out the ground turkey and put it into the medium sized containers I took out. It came out to 4 ounces per serving (one had 4.18 ounces haha so one conatiner has a little bonus!) Add any other hot ingredients like black beans to this bowl if you wanted to add them but don't forget to count points or calories for these.

Lastly in the smallest containers I measured 2 tablespoons of fat free sour cream (1 WW point) and half a tablespoon of chipotle salsa (you can add any salsa you like) this one I picked is 0 WW points. At this point I was abooout 40 minutes in so the chicken and vegetables were both finishing up. I pulled them out and let them cool while I finished up the taco bowls.

Almost finished with these. I put the lids on (obviously). As for what I want to use as a bowl.. One of the greatest taco inventions EVER!! Stand 'N Stuff Flour tortilla shells. They are 2 WW points each. You can quick heat them in the microwave when you are ready to eat them OR (pause for effect) bake them so they are delcious and crispy!! YEEEEEES!! But both of those things need to be done at the time you are ready to eat them. So when the happy time comes to eat your turkey taco bowls, heat the bowl how you desire, heat the meat and top with all your delicious ingredients! For those counting this comes out to

8 WW points total for everything. Not too shabby! Notice I have everything labeled with point values too :)

Now that the chicken and peppers are cooled off a bit and we are at the 45 minute mark here. All that needed to be done is seperate into servings. Grab some more tupperware containers and weigh out the chicken. Mine came out to 3-4 ounces (chicken is 1 WW point per ounce) per serving. tomato sauce. Divide and toss in the peppers and DONE! Now when you are ready to eat this add a side of seasoned rice or noodles with tomato sauce on it. I like to make those on the day I want to eat them.

With 10 minutes left I portioned out my snacks and labeled the bags. These are tasty! and 4 WW points per serving.

Now you are all done! 8 meals and crock pot full of soup! The soup needs to cook for about 5 hours but you dont need to do anything else to it unless you want to add noodles which I suggest to make the day you want to eat the soup because they tend to get mushy if kept in the soup. Hope this helps give you an idea of how to prep meals for a week in a timly fashion. HAPPY COOKING!!!