Sunday Meal Prep

“What’s for breakfast” and “what’s for dinner” are dreaded phrases in my house. We are so rushed to get out the door in the mornings, I need a quick and easy, but still healthy breakfast, and then by the time evening comes, making dinner is about the last thing I want to do. I had heard a lot about Sunday Meal Prep. Basically, you take a day, and prep all the food you need to eat for the week. Honestly, the thought of spending an entire day in my kitchen, and then ALL the dishes that would result, was a bit overwhelming. So I decided to try a scaled down version for my first go around.  At the end of it, this is what I had.

     

Hard boiled eggs for an easy breakfast, addition to lunch, or even a snack, roasted mushrooms and broccoli for dinner add ins, homemade granola, and washed, ready to go strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and cucumbers. I enlisted the help of my husband and asked him to BBQ some steak, chicken, and a port loin roast. All of that already cooked meat will come in very handy at dinner time! And probably my favorite time saver, the egg casserole. I love having this ready to go. I can make two meals from the prep (I will talk more about this in a minute) and in the
mornings, all I have to do is cut a piece, warm it in the microwave, and I have a healthy, veggie packed breakfast! The meal prep was a huge time saver! It was so nice to have fruit and veggies already washed and cut. I think the grilled meat was the biggest time saver. We had meat for salads, tacos, veggie and rice dishes. All I had to do was reheat! I think the meal prep also helped us to eat healthy all week and avoid the Friday night cheese crisp or pizza dinner.

Now here is how I did the egg bake and got two meals out of one prep!!

I started off sauteing some zucchini, squash, and mushrooms. Once they started to cook down and soften, I added a whole bunch of spinach. If you have never cooked with spinach before, you want to add A LOT. Trust me. You will start with this…….

  

And then you will end up with….

After the zucchini, squash, mushroom, and spinach mixture is cooked, I put half of it in a greased casserole dish. Remember the chicken my husband grilled? Well the other half will be added to some of that chicken, and when it is dinner time, I will reheat the chicken and veggies in a skillet, cook some brown rice, and dinner will be ready! But back to the egg bake. I remembered I had some roasted potatoes and peppers in the fridge, so I pulled those out and added them to the casserole dish. In a separate bowl I cracked some eggs and prepared them the same way I would for scrambled eggs. (I used 7 eggs, one for each day, and 7 TBS of milk) You can really use any amount of eggs you want. The more eggs you use, the longer the baking time. After I whisked the eggs and milk together I poured them over the veggies in the casserole dish. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes to 1 hour. (If using a square casserole dish, it will need about an hour. If using a 9×13 pan, it should be closer to the 35/40 minute mark)

You can customize this dish any way you wish. You can add meat, cheese, any veggie you wish! I bet a Greek or southwestern bake would be delicious!!

By Kari Green

Thank you Kari for these wonderful tips! Looks delicious and sounds like a great time saver for the week! Check out Kari Green’s teacher page to learn more about her!