Food Prep Sunday!

"There is no substitute for hard work." ~ Thomas Edison

To make sure my meals are prepped for the week I did a massive cooking session on Sunday. I have always done food prep to a degree - but The Baking Mad Gym Addict inspired me to take food prep to a whole new level! After watching this video I gave it a try. Here is what my Sunday food prep looked like.

Prepped two chickens for roasting. This is place the chickens breast side down in a roaster. Pour boiling water in the pan, spray with canola spray, add salt and pepper. Cover with foil and bake for at least two hours.

While the chickens are starting to bake I pealed and chopped sweet potatoes. These I placed on a baking stone, sprayed with conola spray and put in the oven for about an hour.



Chickens roasting on top - sweet potato on the bottom

While the sweet potatoes were baking I cut up zucchini and placed on other baking sheets. The zucchini was sprayed with canola spray, then sea salt, pepper and Italian spices were used.  At this time I also set a dozen eggs to boil (hubby eats lots of eggs). After 50 to 60 minutes the sweet potatoes are done - out they come and in goes the zucchini for about 20 minutes.

Zucchini prepped and waiting for the oven

While this I going on I started prep on green beans. From The Baking Mad Gym Addict I have found it faster to boil water in the tea pot and then blanch green beans for about 10 minutes. I use a 1 pound container of fresh green beans from Costco and then distribute over 5 meals (about 6 oz each).  The cooked sweet potatoes go into containers with the green beans - these are my lunches.  Once I measured how much I had from the sweet potatoes - I cooked enough brown rice to round out my carbs. The brown rice was then packed into individual containers.

While the green beans are blanching I prepared to start cooking ground turkey in a sauté pan. I cooked up 1 large onion and then two packets of ground turkey. After making sure this is cooked through - I divide into containers - measuring out 6 oz each and then topping with zucchini.

Dinners for the week - Ground Turkey + Zucchini

At this point - the chickens may need to keep going. I check them at two hours and see how they are doing. While waiting on the chickens, I measure out a weeks worth of AM protein shakes into my Magic Bullet cups. This is a scoop of protein powder, 1 tsp of glucosamine and a scoop of instant coffee. I also used this window to measure out my servings of oat bran.

When the chickens are cooked through - they come out of the oven and rest before being cut up. This part is a little messy - but worth it.

Roasted Chickens - all done

After separating the chickens - 4 oz is measured out into my lunches. Some weeks hubby takes some of the chicken. This week he did not - so I separated 4 oz of chicken and wrapped in parchment and froze into once big container - I have enough chicken for two more weeks of lunches.

Lunches for the week

In three hours of prep I had the following meals prepared:

• 1 dozen eggs
• 5 shakes prepped
• 5 mid morning snacks prepped
• 5 lunches - chicken, green beans, sweet potato, brown rice
•  protein for two more weeks of lunches (meaning next weeks food prep is mostly cooking up and rice veggies!!!)
• 5 dinners - ground turkey + zucchini
•  two additional packets of ground turkey to use for the following week.

All of my prepped food lined up!