Keeping Us Moving: Meal Prep

This feels a little off topic, but a family has to be healthy to keep the kids healthy, right? Lately, meal prep has been what we do to make sure we do not over indulge during the day or night. Plus we are now eating a bigger variety of vegetables than ever. Now if only the kids can get into the groove, it will be awesome. But – one step at a time. Here are the latest meals. If you have any ideas for new meals, let me know!

Our first week of meal prep was in January and it was actually chicken fajitas with rice and black beans, but I don’t have a photo. The photo above is meal prep week two: there were two kinds of meals: chicken with edamame and rice, and cabbage rolls with spiraled carrots and rice. The cabbage rolls were made months before and were frozen. Usually when you make cabbage rolls there are always too many and you are cabbaged out – so freezing some and having them for meal prep later on was so easy to do. Not pictured are the black beans added to each bowl later on. They were still cooking!

Week 3: sausage and peppers, with cauliflower fried rice (soy sauce, scrambled eggs, peas, carrots) and white beans. Sriracha on the fried “rice”

Week 4: (I realized I wanted to do a blog post and started making horizontal photos!) Black pepper lemon chicken with green onions, jalapeños, onions, sweet peppers, snap peas, green beans, cauliflower, and rice. However, three of the bowls have curry tofu nuggets instead of chicken. (And those things are delicious.) These bowls are my favorite to date.

Over the years when I would see people post online about meal prep, it looked mostly complicated and time consuming. But thanks to finally getting organized, it’s a piece of cake to do all this cooking on one morning during the week! The feeling of knowing you are done with all of this is just awesome, so we can do other things besides cooking.

So how did I get organized? The first reason this is so easy is because of Imperfect Foods. We have used them ever since the company arrived in Portland. Mostly the vegetables and fruits I ordered were always for the kids, especially G because of his purees packed with nutrients for his picky diet. But later on, as Imperfect added new categories like dairy and canned goods, I get not only different vegetables delivered (like snap peas, jalapeños, sweet peppers, herbs, etc.) but I can add canned beans, cheeses, sauces, and new things to try like tofu nuggets or vegan meat replacements. We are basically on a new food journey all the time thanks to them. The best part (knock on tofu) is that ordering is so easy, and their deliveries have always been on time. I have nothing but positive things to say about Imperfect. Just awesome! Check out the latest order to see what I mean about the prices and variety:

Your order details for Wed, February 26th, 2020

ORGANIC BOX

Product	Quantity	Price
Organic Italian Parsley Bunch (1 ct)	1	^$1.19
Organic Lemons (1 lb)	1	^$2.03
Organic Potatoes (1 lb)	1	^$0.79
Organic Green Beans (Organic Green Beans) (8 oz)	1	^$2.49
Organic Mini Sweet Peppers (1 ct)	1	^$4.25
Organic Carrots (1 lb)	1	^$1.07
Bitchin’ Sauce – Original (8 oz)	1	^$4.99
Nasoya Organic Tofu Vegetable Dumplings (9 oz)	1	^$4.99
Conventional Zucchini (1 lb)	1	^$1.99
Cento Black Beans (15.5 oz)	2	^$1.98
Cento Cannellini Beans (15.5 oz)	2	^$1.98
Cento Chickpeas (15.5 oz)	1	^$1.49
Organic Rainbow Chard (1 ct)	1	^$2.15
Subtotal	^$31.39
Discount	^$0.00
Delivery Charge	^$4.99
Credits	^$0.00
Grand Total	^$36.38

The second reason that made this all so helpful is that I just make sure I always have the main staples on hand. There’s always jasmine rice stocked in our house and frozen cauliflower rice, spiraled carrots, edamame, etc. from Trader Joes. Also having frozen chicken or other frozen meat is key too. But I also buy fresh meat and marinate it right away, then I know I have to cook it in a few days and get the meal prep going again.

The best part? Daniel already lost about 15 pounds, and I’ve lost 10.