Easy Meal Prep For The Week
Your How-To Guide
Meal prepping can make or break your health routine. Whether you work from home, an office or go to uni, dedicating some time and effort towards a weekly food prep will set you up for a healthy and successful week. It means that you are less likely to reach for the convenient store-bought option, spend less money and ultimately enjoy more nourishing home-cooked meals.
For me personally, meal prepping has become somewhat of a Sunday ritual. I love nothing more than going to the farmers market on the weekend (Bondi Farmers Market in Sydney and Prahran Market in Melbourne) to get all my fresh produce, stroll around, maybe grab a coffee, and then spend two hours or so in the evening preparing my meals for the week. It gives me routine, it gives me structure, and it also means that I’m prepared for those days where I’m too time-poor to create a meal from scratch. We all have been there: you come home after a long day of work, open the fridge starving, and realise that there’s nothing editable to be found. Too exhausted to make anything, you reach for whatever is left in the pantry and start mindlessly snacking trying to figure out what you could quickly whip up. Before you even realise, you’re full yet still not really satisfied. Sounds familiar?
This week was a perfect example of how meal prep literally saved my life. OK maybe not literally, but you know what I mean. I had a couple days where I was stuck in group work until late in the evening, and THANK GOD I planned and took lunch and dinner as well as a snack with me each day. Whilst my group members went to the nearby junk food places scattered around uni, I dug in to my homemade meals. Win!
Long story short, I think we all can benefit from implementing a little meal prep into our routine.
Let me preempt: I’m not the type of meal-prep ‘gal that has all breakfasts, lunches and dinners pre-portioned and perfectly organised in the fridge. Instead, I prefer to whip up big batches of whatever I’m making, keep them in individual containers and then mix ‘n’ match them together on the day as my heart desires. I call it the buffet-style meal prep. For example, I love making a big batch of roasted veggies, rice, plant-based protein, salad and hummus. In the morning, I’ll combine them depending on what I’m craving on that day, add some sort of dip, salad dressing and I’m ready to go.
Obviously I’m not superhuman and I don’t have everything planned out to a T every week. That’s totally fine, but because I know my weeks flow with so much more ease and grace when I do invest that bit of time, I really do try to make meal prepping a priority as much as I can. You just have to find a way that makes it fun for you - for me that means going to the farmers market in the morning, then putting on a podcast while cooking with Phil and sipping on kombucha. As the cooking process can easily take two hours, we try to make it as fun as possible and sometimes even combine it with a glass of mine. It always ends up being great quality time and it’s honestly just a lot of fun. My definition of a Sunday evening well spent!
Below are 5 non-negotiable meal prep things I do every week:
Oven-roast a big tray of veggies – We like to mix these up every week, but broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, eggplant and sweet potatoes are on particularly high rotation. I’ve also recently started experimenting with cruciferous veggies like kale and cabbage in the oven, yum! All I do is drizzle a little bit of coconut oil or avocado oil over the veggies and sprinkle them with salt, pepper, some cayenne and maybe a herb mix that I fancy at that moment. This ensures we get a nourishing dose of veggies and satiating carbs like the sweet potatoes. On that note, my favourite way to cook sweet potatoes is to add not only coconut oil, salt, pepper, and cayenne, but also some almond meal and cinnamon. It makes them nice and crunchy and enhances the natural sweet taste of them.
Boil 2 cups of grains - and I mean whole grain options like quinoa or brown rice. Choose two each week and make sure to alternate regularly so that you get a variety of nutrients. If you’re looking to consume less grains, making cauliflower rice is also a great option and it easily lasts a couple of days in the fridge
Prep your leafy greens - Spinach and kale are the two leafy greens you’ll always find in my fridge. What I’ve noticed however, is that if I don’t prep them ahead of the week, I often forget don’t use them as much as I’d like to and end with soggy, brown leaves. Not fun. To combat this, I do the following:
Spinach: Wash and dry the spinach, then put them in a glass tupperware and store in the fridge in plain sight. This way you’ll remember to add this to errrrthing - smoothies, salads, scrambles and any other cooked meals.
Kale: I don’t know why, but kale really intimidated me when I began my health journey. I knew it tasted great when I ate it out in restaurants, but I could never manage to recreate it. By now, I’ve found a handful of kale salad recipes that I really love (like this one) and make almost weekly. But I know that if I don’t do it as part of my meal-prep, the kale will most likely wilt away in the fridge until it’s too late. So prep your kale beforehand - wash, dry, chop and place in a glass tupperware together will all the ingredients except the salad dressing and store in the fridge. Simply add the dressing on the day, and you’ve got yourself a nourishing salad.
Don’t forget your protein - for this, I suggest a couple of different options:
Marinade tofu in tamari sauce and some spices, and oven-roast this together with the veggies. This will take more or less time than the veggies depending on what veggies you’re cooking, so just make sure to use a separate try so you can take it out earlier/later. I also often prep some hard-boiled eggs in case I need a quick high-protein snack.
Make sure you’re stocked up on legumes like chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans and cannelloni beans, or cook them from scratch. Tbh, I just don’t have time for this at the moment, so I make sure to buy pre-cooked organic canned beans with no added salt. They’re so easy to throw into a curry, stir fry or simple mixed into your salad.
If you eat eggs, hard-boil some eggs so you can add them to salads or eat as a quick protein snack on the go.
Prep convenient breakfast options for those early mornings - some mornings I run out the door without having much time for anything, and this is where pre-prepped breakfasts like bircher muesli and chia pudding come really handy. These honestly only take five minutes to create, and are easy to take to work/uni in a tupperware if you are rushed. *PS the below ingredient ratios are for one meal only - I usually only prep one of each and then have smoothies, scramble or other breakfast options on the other days.
Chia pudding - The night before, simply mix 1 cup of your preferred mylk with 3 tbsp chia seeds and a dash of cinnamon and shake/stir well. The next morning, top with fresh or frozen fruit, coconut yoghurt and anything else that your heart desires.
Bircher muesli - The night before, mix 1 cup of your preferred mylk with ⅓ cup of oats, 2 tbsp of your preferred nuts/seeds (i.e. almonds, walnuts, chia, sunflower seeds), a dash of cinnamon and ½ grated green apple. Mix together and store in the fridge. The next morning, top with fresh/frozen fruit, coconut yoghurt or peanut butter and anything else that you fancy.
Recipe Tips
When looking for specific recipes to meal prep, I mostly flick through four cookbooks: The Healthy Life by Jessica Sepel, The Compassionate Kitchen by Gemma Davis and Tracy Noelle, The Beauty Chef by Carla Oates and Eat Good Food by Lorna Jane Clarkson. I also got some amazing friends who create incredible recipes, like my good friend Sami Bloom (I literally recommend all of her recipes), Liv Kaplan, Jacqueline Alwill and Sally O’Neil.
