The difference between our meals during weeks when we take the time to plan and prep and the weeks when we don’t are night and day. I’ve shared a few of our weekly meal plans in some of my Monday morning weekend recap blog posts, but I’ve had more than a few of you request a more elaborate post about our meal planning routine. Today’s post will take you through our weekly meal plan for this week and includes details as to what I prepped ahead over the weekend to make throwing dinner together a breeze at the end of a long day.
Please note: All recipes I followed for this week’s meal plan are linked below.
One Week Meal Plan: Prepping 5 Healthy Dinners
- Monday: Vegetable Noodle Soup with Fresh Berries
Prep ahead: Chop celery, carrot, garlic and onion.
Day of: Cook soup on stove top. (I added some frozen shelled edamame to our soup on Monday night for a punch of protein and made a double batch so we’d have leftovers.) Serve with fresh raspberries and blueberries on the side.
- Tuesday: Italian Meatloaf with Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Whole Wheat Garlic Bread
Prep ahead: Prepare meatloaf and cover but wait to bake it. Prep sauce. Chop the ends off Brussels sprouts and slice in half.
Day of: Bake meatloaf. Toss Brussels sprouts in olive oil and garlic salt and roast while meatloaf is baking. Heat sauce and bring to a simmer. Spread a smear of butter on top of a couple of slices of whole wheat bread and sprinkle lightly with garlic salt before toasting.
- Wednesday: Chicken Sausage Hoagies with Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Prep ahead: Slice 1 large onion and 1 large sweet bell pepper. Slice 4 chicken sausage links and combine everything in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cover and store in the fridge. Roughly chop 4 sweet potatoes. (You will save two of the chopped sweet potatoes to serve for dinner on Friday night.)
Day of: Place chicken sausage, peppers and onions in the oven and bake at 350 for 45 minutes, or until onion becomes soft. Toss chopped sweet potatoes in olive oil and Montreal Steak Seasoning (or salt and pepper) and roast along with the chicken sausages. Scoop cooked chicken sausage, peppers and onions into whole wheat sub rolls and serve with sweet potatoes. Store leftover sweet potatoes in the fridge.
- Thursday: Black Bean Quesadillas with Leftover Veggie Soup
Prep ahead: Chop vegetables for quesadilla. (I used onions, peppers and kale.)
Day of: Cook quesadillas on stove top. Reheat leftover vegetable noodle soup from Monday night.
- Friday: Breakfast for Dinner: Chicken Sausage and Spinach Frittata with Fruit Salad and Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Prep ahead: Chop pepper, onion and chicken sausage. (Note: You can also make the entire frittata ahead of time and simply reheat it for dinner if you prefer! I intentionally planned a frittata for dinner on Friday night in case we end up going out to dinner instead since it would also work well for breakfast on Saturday morning.)
Day of: Make frittata and top with a sliced avocado. Reheat leftover roasted sweet potatoes from Wednesday night’s dinner. Chop favorite fruit to make fruit salad.
And that’s this week’s meal plan! Woop!
When it comes to leftovers, I will often eat them for lunch the next day or they’ll sometimes make an appearance for dinner later in the week (like the veggie noodle soup on Monday reappearing on Thursday). For me, the key to food prep is chopping up everything that needs slicing and dicing ahead of time. For some reason, chopping vegetables is always quite time consuming for me and if I have to take the time to chop Brussels sprouts on a weeknight, I’m much more likely to forgo a serving of veggies at dinnertime. Simply setting aside some time on Sunday to prep some of our meals for the week makes it much easier to eat healthy during the week.
And added benefit of meal prep? Our kitchen is (usually) cleaner! Since most of the food prep is done over the weekend, there are significantly less dishes to do while preparing dinner during the week. Heck yes!
Finding Recipes + Easy Access Screenshot
As for how I go about finding recipes, I’ll often just go by whatever I’m craving, past favorites, new cookbook or magazine finds and tasty-looking recipes I find on the internet or food blogs. I will often screenshot whatever recipes I find online so I have them on the phone, making them both easy to find again and consult during my weekend trip to the grocery store. Then, when it’s time to make the recipe, it’s easy for me to find it in a flash because it’s saved as a screenshot on my phone. Screenshots for the win!
Question of the Day
I’d love to turn it over to you guys and hear about any tips and tricks you may have up your sleeves when it comes to meal planning and food prep. Please feel free to share your tips in the comments section of this post!
Have a great Wednesday!
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Yay! Thanks for this post! I’ve always been so good with meal planning but since becoming pregnant I am so picky and never know what I will want (or not want!)
Your recipes look great, I’ll definitely be checking those out!!
I’m such a slacker when it comes to meal planning. We shop a lot at Costco, so we normally always have blackbean burgers and other semi-healthy frozen items on hand that I’ll cook with a veggie on the side (I love sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash, sauteed onions and peppers, and brussel sprouts!). Lately I’ve been making chili once a week which is fabulous in this dreary, rainy weather!
Thanks for the tips!! One of these days I’m going to have to give chopping all my veggies on Sunday a try!
I have nothing to contribute to tips on meal planning because I’m terrible at it and still haven’t gotten on the meal planning train (although I know I should) because I got so deterred last Sunday. I watched a couple youtube videos of people prepping lunches and dinners for the week ahead. Perfect for a busy student, right? And why not cook a big batch of something sunday to eat throughout the week? On Sunday I made a big lentil salad and put out 5 tupperware bowls and made my lunches ahead of time. Come tuesday, I was LOVING meal prep and all over it. Easiest lunch ever! Wednesday I had a particularly long day and dug into my salad only to taste the lentils had gone bad! :'( womp womp. 3/5 prepped salads went to waste which was a HUGE bummer. I guess make-ahead meals are different than PREPPING them !
I’m hoping to get over my traumatizing experience because meal prep / planning seems like the way to go!
oh man, that IS a bummer!!! hope you have better luck next time!
These are awesome meal prep ideas Julie, I’m definitely going to have to try them out!
I find that prepping meals in advance is absolutely key in having healthy dinners in our house. My 1-year-old is at the stage where she gets a little crazy in the kitchen with pulling everything out of the cabinets and causing mayhem, so I like to keep dinner prep during the week as short as possible. I really do need to work on my consistency with the prep work though, I don’t always do it every week!
Even if I just know in advance what the plan is, and make sure to have all the food I need to make 5 dinners during the week, that seems to help me tremendously!
These are great! When I did the Whole30, I learned that prep is key! What’s most important for me is roasting sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts at the very minimum every Sunday. I top these with eggs for breakfast. I also have them for quick dinners if needed.
Thanks again for this post! Very helpful!
YES! I want to do a meal prep post about breakfasts, too, and I am always roasting a big batch of sweet potatoes for breakfast these days. I LOVE them with peppers, onions, kale and runny eggs and avocado on top!
i really only have time to meal prep on the weekend but if / when i cook during the week, i make a large batch so it lasts for a few meals
I really really stink at meal planning and need to get on the ball with it!! My goal is to have at least 3-4 meals planned/prepped for next week!
These all look so great! I love that such a small amount of prep makes so many great easy meals!
All I can think of is how soggy the veggies must get during the week?! No? Do americans (I’m european) have some super fridges or are all veggies so stuffed with conservatives that they last – chopped – for a week? I usually prep and cook large batches of food that can be frozen, then thaw them during the weeks to come and just add fresh veggies and boil fresh pasta or whatever I want to eat with it. Like, making pasta meat-sauces that just needs re-heating, chop a salad and boil some pasta – dinner in 10 minutes. Or making soups that I freeze, let thaw in the fridge during the day, then heat on the stove (or microwave if I’m lazy) – dinner in 5 minutes! Roll a massive batch of meatballs, chicken casserole etc, FREEZE and just boil pasta/rice/potatoes to have a “fresh” meal every day. I usually only let food sit in the fridge maximum 2 days before it has to be eaten.. On the other hand I can easily eat stuff thats past date if it looks, smells and taste ok. Guess its just me 😛
Yes, Julie please share your secret on how to make the chopped veggies on Sunday stay good and fresh until Friday! Also, if there is any special chopping tools that make this easier for you on Sunday that would be helpful!
I’m intrigued by Blue Apple. You can get them at Bed Bath & Beyond. They’re supposed to be a huge help in keeping veggies fresh in the fridge. Not sure if they’ll work for pre-chopped, but I’m going to test them out.
I was going to ask the same question – how do you make chopped veggies last? Not sure if it’s the quality of veggies I get at my local supermarket in London or if I don’t have decent Tupperware?
I was thinking the same thing- it kind of grosses me out to think about eating veggies that were chopped 5 days ago because the way I do them I know the quality would not be as good. For some reason, the onion really bothers me. I’m good at meal planning, but I chop veggies fresh for my meals. It would be nice to save the time if there is a trick to do it all at once at the start of the week.
If I feel like veggies are going bad, I’ll just swap recipes and use the veggies that are on their last leg earlier in the week and the ones that are still okay later! I also saw one reader suggest freezing them and then letting them thaw in the fridge on the day you want to use them which I thought was really smart!
I started doing Wildtree meal bagging. I did it with a group of ladies but now I just pick up the grocery list and bags of spices and I’m good to go. I don’t know if anyone else has tried this but they give you 10 meals using Wildtree oils and spices/products. You add in the meat and veggies, apply the cooking instruction label, and pop it in the freezer. I love them because if I’m coming home late my husband can pull one out and they are easy enough for him to follow. Plus if we find a recipe we love, then we make more!
I am a rep for Wildtree and their Freezer Meal Workshops have changed my life! We always know what we are having for dinner and I love always having a freezer filled with delicious and healthy meals!
This has been my family’s biggest struggle since having a baby and both of us being back at work out of the house for work full time. One thing that has helped me is the paprika app. You do have to buy it and there are different versions for different devices but it’s a one time cost and a lot cheaper than some other things we have tried. Once we got over the hump of paying for it, I LOVE it.
I’ve never heard of that app! Thanks for sharing!
I’m trying to get more into meal prepping bc it makes my life so much easier! I would love to make any of these dinners, they all look so easy and delicious!
I don’t have kids, but my husband and I often don’t get home until 8 or 9. We like to cook a giant 10-serving Mexican casserole or pot of dahl with beef and veggies. It’s an alarming amount of food to cook at once, but only takes an hour or two and then we have dinner for the whole week.
Great recipes! I’d say planning and making meals 2 for 1 would be my tips. Something easy to make different another day.
I’ve been really working on meal planning because I know it will be a game-changer once we have a newborn, but I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet lol. So I really appreciate reading about how others make it work!
Oh thank goodness. I now know what we are eating next week! (THANK YOU!) I am actually a champion meal PLANNER, however, I’ve never really thought to PREP ahead. I also love the fact that your kitchen stays cleaner. That right there is motivation enough for me!
Here’s my one and only prepping advice: When I buy a bag of onions, I chop them all at once, then freeze them in half-cup portions wrapped in cling wrap. I then stick the little baggies in a gallon-sized freezer bad and stick it in my deep freeze. It’s perfect for quickly grabbing and adding to soups and other meals. (I, too, hate chopping. Especially onions!)
I love this idea for onions! Thank you!
I just started meal prepping on Sundays for the week ahead, because I work 8-6 in an office now and commute by walking for about 1/2 hour each way – so there isn’t a lot of time otherwise, and if I didn’t meal prep I’d be eating salads or Amy’s meals every night (better than the typical 20something NYC seamless habit, but still!) I LOVE to make a frittata ahead and have it with a baked sweet potato as a breakfast for dinner option, or do a spaghetti squash casserole, since those will make multiple meals that I don’t mind a few days in a row. Or, I keep steamer bags and can quickly steam some frozen fish and veggies in the microwave for a real dinner in 10 minutes.
Thanks for sharing- I always love seeing the meals and set up for other peoples food prep- would love to see a post like this again!
I always have great plans to do meal prep, and sometimes they work out, sometimes I just don’t get around to it.
I have found a ton of great tips and ideas on Pinterest on how to prep for a week, a month, etc. We have a food sealer so we use that if we can. We always pre-make our shakes and put all the “dry” ingredients (spinach, fruit, etc) in a ziplock bag and freeze it and then all you have to do in the morning is add the liquid of your choice (almond milk, etc) in the blender and you have a shake in minutes! Saves you from having to chop up veggies, fruit, etc early in the morning!
I think its such a great idea to prep meals early – saves sooo much time!
Meal prep nerd right here! I’m usually just cooking for me, so I mostly make things I know will freeze well. Soup is great this time of year. I’ll make a HUGE pot over the weekend and freeze 1-2 portions in ziplock baggies. If you lay them flat to freeze it really maximizes freezer space. It’s great when I’m away for the weekend, but don’t want to get stuck eating out on a Monday. Grab a bag of soup & it’s thawed by lunch!
Baked Oatmeal recipes from Budget Bytes website are great. They freeze well & are delicious with some greek yogurt or milk.
I don’t get bored with food easily, so I usually only make 1-2 meals each week, and rotate my freezer stock to add variety. I also try to make a big batch of buffalo chicken in the crockpot & keep a steamer bag of broccoli on hand for when I just cannot handle cooking.
I try and meal prep every week because like you said, the quality of the meals we get when prepped as compared to those on the fly are drastically different. I have lots of Tupperware and I try and divvy things up into portions so we can just take it out, throw it on a plate and heat it up when we get back from work.
I’m hoping to start some meal prepping after next week, since my midterms will be done and I won’t be spending my entire weekends studying/writing papers. I’ve been making the same 3 super-easy things for dinner or just hitting up Subway because it’s convenient, and I could use some healthy variety 🙂 Also, I’m hoping to get some freezer meals made to help with the finals rush in a few more weeks!
Finding quick dinners can be so hard… I fall into the trap of spending way too long making dinner. Thanks for these suggestions they look so delicious!
Thankyou for the ideas, this is so nice! Meal prepping makes such a difference.
Oh, I have found with doing salads ahead of time, putting them into mason jars really does extend the life of the lettuce, but I skip adding in the dressing and just keep it in a small container to add when I actually eat it, I find that works much better.
Do you follow http://www.theleangreenbean.com/
She is awesome at meal prepping!
I do a lot of meal planning on the weekends, but not prep (which I really need to do). But meal planning takes me hours to complete! Hours! I wonder what I am doing wrong? I have a list of all of our favorite dinners and I print out receipes that I want to try. Still I spend hours. Question: what do you guys do for lunches with no leftovers?
While we don’t have a baby, our busy schedule would totally lead to frozen pizzas and burritos if I didn’t meal plan. I write out a menu every week and use our schedule (mine changes daily) as a guide. There are two of us and I always cook for (at least) 4- we eat left overs every other night and I plan left over night on evening’s where we get home later so we can just pop it in the microwave. I have a hard time grasping how some people manage to cook new meals every single night- both time wise, as well as financially. Also by cooking for 4 and eating the same thing 2 nights in a row, it helps with portion control- if one of us eats half of the meal then there won’t be enough supper for the following night.
Wow, you are so creative with your meal planning! My meal prep simply means making a huge amount of one dish and eating it for four nights, hahaha!
I’ve finally figured out what works for our family with two kids and busy schedules in the evening. I use a monthly calendar and write our meals on it… when I’m on a roll, I will sit down at the beginning of the month and try to plan for each week. I can also go back to previous months for ideas when I’m stuck. I actually have the calendars dating back to 2014 and it helps a ton. I only plan for dinners Sunday-Thursday. Sunday tends to be a ‘nicer’ family dinner, Monday is always crock pot something (I prep that on Sunday); Tuesday and Wednesday are family dinners, but quicker and easy. Thursday is Fend For Yourself (leftovers or whatever anybody wants; free night). Friday is typically pizza. Saturday is however we’re feeling. I also try to do as much as I can on Sunday; but figuring it out ahead of time, versus all-out prepping is over half the battle for our family! Love some of your recipes! Thanks for sharing.
thanks for this post! it’s always great to read how others do it. i’m all about prepping food i buy- if it’s celery, i will wash it and cut it up. berries, same thing. i hard boil eggs and chop up toppings for salads. that way, even if i dont’ have a meal plan. i have some stuff put together for snacks.
We always cook our most complicated (aka most prep) meals on Saturday and Sunday and frequently we double the recipe. We LOVE leftovers so we rarely cook anything on Wednesday or Thursday as those are leftover days (clean out the fridge). We also like shopping on Friday night as we are wild and crazy like that so we have everything for cooking on Saturday evening!
My best tip: store your meal plans each week. Put it on the computer or we are ‘old school’ and store it in a smaller notebook that we keep on the kitchen counter. When I struggle to figure out what to put on our menu for the next week, I now have three years worth of menus to look back on and pick out something we haven’t had in awhile. I always put where I found the recipe as I am notoriously bad about storing the recipe (when printed off the internet) in the same place. This makes it is easy for me to find and print the recipe again.
Love these food prep posts! Keep them coming.
My favorite way to meal plan is to cook a large amount of protein on Sunday and use it in different ways throughout the week. This month’s edition of Cooking Light had a “Cook Once, Eat Three Times” that started with pot roast and then turned the leftovers into enchiladas and Italian subs, which I’ve been absolutely loving this week. Just talking about it is going to have me heating up my enchiladas a little early today 🙂
I’ll also do a big batch of multi-purpose chicken in the crockpot on Sunday’s and use it throughout the week to make quick lunches or dinners. The best thing about chicken is you can make virtually anything out of it. Having the meat prepared usually has my dinners coming together in 30 minutes or less. It’d be even quicker if I took your advice and pre-chopped my veggies!
I just have to make sure I have everything I need in the fridge for the week on Sunday – If my fridge is not stocked we end up eating out!
I’m getting more and more into meal prep, and it makes me weeks so much simpler. I usually do twice a week- Sunday and Wednesday. I don’t necessarily plan before I get to the grocery store. I usually check out what’s on sale and go from there. For example, I get to the store and see that ground turkey is on sale, then I pick up the things I need for meatball wraps, tomato sauce, and probably a spaghetti squash. I like to build a few meals around a money- saving ingredient.
These meals seem totally do-able! I had all these goals of using my pre-baby maternity leave to stock my freezer with tons of prepped dinners that would just need to be cooked for after the baby. But I have been so fickle with food this whole pregnancy and am seriously lacking motivation to even go grocery shopping let alone prepping any foods that my whole freezer meal goal has totally crashed. These recipes seem pretty simple and fast to bang out over the weekend so there is still food for the week – totally worth it.
Recipe screenshot=genius!
Meal planning/prepping is so important to me! I don’t know how we would eat on the daily with out planning ahead. You have some great tips! I’m also big on freezing things for later. So, for example, making a ton of soup and freezing some for later, or even freezing individual servings for quick lunches. Dividing large casseroles in half so we can have one meal right away and freeze the rest for a later meal, or sometimes I’ll double things to do the same. A lot of healthy meals freeze well and then I can pull things out later on and have a yummy meal without having to do more work 🙂
Wednesday’s dinner sounds amazing!! I usually don’t prep full meals, but I’ll boil eggs and cook meat for the week!
I actually do all my cooking on the weekends and reheat throughout the week. Each Sunday is Soup Sunday, so I make a whole batch and freeze the rest.
Now that the sun is set by 5pm, there are times when I want to come home and just sit on the couch with hot food and Netflix. Cooking on the weekend is key for me. I need to learn to prep my veggies and snacks for the week.
I love meal prepping on Sundays! I don’t think I really have any tricks except to try and incorporate leftovers into future meals for the week as well. (Which, from your post, looks like you already try to do!)
I am big on meal planning (even pre-baby), but now it’s a must (I have an 11 week old). I found that putting things on the calendar in my phone with a reminder set has really helped me. The reminder will pop up and if I need to pull something out of the freezer to thaw, I won’t forget. We also buy bigger packs of chicken, ground meat, or fish and freeze it. Also, frozen slow cooker meals are a huge help! I prepped a bunch of those before she was born and we are still eating off them! 🙂
These all look delicious, thanks for sharing – as always!
I’m impressed by your organization! This may be just the post to inspire me to FINALLY try to do this! I know our mealtimes suffer because I don’t. Thank you so much for your ideas!
SWEET POTATO TIP – we eat a ton of sweet potatoes and I have always hated slicing them raw ( hubs usually does it). We figured out if you microwave them for about 2 minutes it makes slicing them sooooooooo much easier! We also use lots of steam in the bag vegetables as a side to save time! Cooking with a baby is no joke!
I wondered about microwaving the sweet potatoes before chopping them! I LOVE LOVE LOVE roasted sweet potatoes, but they are such a b**** to chop. Can’t wait to try this!
Thank you for all of the tips! I meal plan and grocery shop once a week which helps, but I’d love to start prepping ahead of time too, and maybe even plan for an entire month at a time, since that’s my least favorite part.
I’m obsessed with the [free] app called AnyList… it’s a pretty simple concept, it’s basically just an app that stores all of your lists in one organized place (to-do lists, grocery lists, etc.). My favorite feature is that you can choose to have your grocery list organized by section for you, so when you type something in, it automatically places it in sections with similar food, like “meat”, “dairy”, “produce”, “baking”, etc. and you can always change the section placement, if you know that your grocery store keeps the certain product somewhere different. This saves me so much time from running around the grocery store in circles! Having it on my phone also ensures that I never lose my list or leave it at home, like if I stop by the store when I wasn’t planning on it. And since I usually have my phone with me, it’s easy to jot down household items that I need (like toothpaste) when I’m not near my grocery list in the kitchen.
I also keep a “meal ideas” list on the app, and I use that to help me meal plan. If I see a good meal idea, like at a friend’s house or restaurant, I put it in there so I don’t forget it, and then refer to the list when I’m deciding what to make for the week.
I know that I sound like an advertisement and I promise I have no personal ties to this app, I just use it every day and I feel like it really helps me a lot! 🙂
Thank you for this inspiration to get my butt back into gear and making full meals instead of a hodgepodge of whatever I have in my fridge! 🙂
I almost always have something going on after work, so I’ve become HUGE on lunch prep, since I bring my lunch to work every day. I set aside an hour or so on Sundays and go to town making all of my lunches for the week (which includes all the major veggie chopping I’ll have to do during the week). It’s been really helpful, and I’m sure if I had to make dinner every night (which fortunately I don’t), I’d be super into dinner prep as well.
Hi Julie! I was just wondering who did your blog (sorry for the irrelevant comment). I love your layout and how fresh it all looks, so I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction. 🙂
Swoon Creative!
i just started using Cooksmarts for meal planning and I love it. It is an online service that sends you four recipes for the week with weekend prep instructions. I find that I typically only make three of the meals, then pick another family fave for the 4th night, then leftovers and/or takeout for the other nights. It is SUPER affordable ($7/month or something like that!) and the recipes are generally very quick. It has given me hope with meal planning and prepping! I have always loved to cook, but never enjoyed planning for it in advance, which is a necessity with jobs, babies/kids/life/pets, etc. haha 🙂
It is such a good idea to chop the veggies in advance – I never thought about doing it, but now definitely will! I usually come home from work in the early afternoon and by then am starved, so any tricks to save time on cooking my lunch is welcomed. In terms of meal-prep, I usually cook it in advance at the weekend and then freeze it immediately and take it out during the week and heat it up. I do realize this is not ideal, but sometimes the only way a healthy meal is happening.
How do you do Pyrex straight from fridge to oven? I thought it shattered?
I don’t know! I’ve never had this issue! This wasn’t specifically a Pyrex dish — just a glass baking dish. I do wait for the oven to preheat before putting it in the oven, so maybe that gives the glass enough time to come to room temperature?