This Is This Week

This week, I have been continuing to follow the mantra, “What can I do right now to make life easier later?”

The weekend was nutty and I didn’t end up with as much energy or time for my Sunday meal prep as I had hoped. I ended up waking up late and then had to be out of the house fairly early, and the afternoon disappeared in a blink.

Despite the challenges, I was able to capitalize on a few small pockets of time to ensure that meal prep still happened! 

Here’s what I made (Sunday):

1. Ramen bowls with roasted tofu, veggies, and stir fry sauce
2. Pancakes (thawed and portioned from the freezer)
3. Roasted tofu/veggie bowls (steamed carrots and sauteed mushrooms plus some green beans I had previously prepared) with chili crisp
4. Roasted potatoes
5. Chocolate silken tofu mousse with raspberries
6. Greek pasta salad jars

The meals were sufficient to carry us through the beginning of the week, and then on Tuesday, I used another small window of opportunity to meal prep some more snacks and meal items.

Here’s what I made (Tuesday):

1. Roasted broccoli
2. Two small roasted chickens
3. Steel cut oats (half left plain in a large container for kids to add fruit, honey, etc. to and half portioned into jars with frozen berries, cacao nibs, almond milk, etc. for me!)
4. “Pizza pasta bake” – a concoction I invented with noodles tossed with sauce, chopped spinach and pepperoni, and topped with mozzarella. We’ll see if the kids like this experiment…
5. Cut veggies (celery, peppers and cucumbers) with mini hummus cups*
6. TexMex potato jars (salsa, black beans, corn, and veggies layered in jars with some of the roasted potatoes I prepared on Sunday)
7. Two portioned containers with broccoli: 1 packed with the rest of the tofu from Sunday’s meal prep and 1 dished up with potatoes and a little barbecue sauce. I topped the tofu with my favorite spicy condiment of late: chili crisp

The Tuesday evening meal prep took me about an hour and a half from start to finish, and I have easy lunch and dinner options to carry us through the rest of the work week.

*I strongly dislike individually packaged products, but I ordered my groceries to be delivered this week given the chaotic schedule, and it was actually cheaper to buy the preportioned option. Plus, I think we will end up wasting less hummus since my littlest kids can’t double (or triple) dip and stick their fingers into the giant tub of hummus.

I’ll likely make an easy breakfast for dinner option for Friday night unless we have more leftovers from the aforementioned ingredients, and I may need to chop more veggies and make PBJ for some kid lunches.

Top Tips This Week

Reflecting on this week’s meal prep, I think there are three tips that have been making me more successful at maintaining this habit.

First, I allow myself to “phone it in” a little when the weeks are crazy. By that, I mean using shortcut ingredients like jarred sauces or dressing or chili crisp.

Although I made the vinaigrette for the Greek pasta salads on Sunday, I totally used jarred stir fry sauce for the ramen bowls and chili crisp on my tofu, and I used premade salsa from our canning endeavors last summer when I assembled the TexMex potato jars. Sometimes, pantry staples are your best friend!

Second, I have been sticking to a basic routine for meals. The skeleton I have been using is essentially as follows:

• Wednesday nights = pasta night
• Thursday nights = some kind of bowl (rice bowl, baked potato bowl, noodle bowl, whatever)
• Friday nights = leftovers or breakfast for dinner
• Saturday nights = homemade pizzas
• Lunches = leftovers or a simple option like PBJ or tuna

This framework has taken some of the thought and planning out of meals while still allowing room for variation and space to use whatever I have in the house that needs to be used up. The bowls and pastas, in particular, have varied from week to week based on whatever groceries were on sale or what I had in my pantry to use.

And third, I allow for some choice, which reduces (though doesn’t eliminate) the whining from my kids and the fatigue that comes for me if I eat the same thing on repeat.

• For the kids, they usually have two options for breakfast (this week is the prepped oats or yogurt and granola – either option with fruit) and two options for lunch.
• Dinners have been somewhat customizable (build-your-own bowls and homemade pizzas allow for this naturally) but everyone is eating together still.
• And for me, I have a selection of portioned options that I can mix and match each day.

This mantra, “What can I do now to make my life easier later?” has been making me far more productive without making me feel like I am constantly working. I highly recommend asking yourself this question, and I hope some of the tips I shared this week prove helpful if you give them a try!

Next week, I’ll share a little about how I am applying the concept to some other household chores like yardwork and cleaning!