MEAL PREP WITH ME _ easy recipes & what I eat in a week

I love meal prepping not only because it saves me time during the week, which I really do appreciate during busy seasons of life, but also because I am not the most adventurous in the kitchen. So whenever I have to meal prep, I feel like it inspires me to try out some new recipes and kind of advance my skills. So that's what I'm doing today. I'm taking you along for the ride as I cook some new things, do some prepping, do some eating. It's going to be a fun time. If you want to see more food content like this, make sure you're subscribed and hit the notification bell so you don't miss future uploads. I also created a meal prep freebie download that you can get for yourself by clicking the link in the description box below. But with that being said, let's get cooking. Kind of lied to you there. The first step to meal prepping is not the cooking, it's the meal prepping. So one of the first things I always like to do is scroll through Pinterest to find recipes that speak to me, that inspire me, that get me excited to eat. Because if we're going to do all this cooking, I want to make it food that I am thrilled about. Of course, if you are more of a veteran in the kitchen, you might just have some go-to recipes already in that noggin. So if that's you, bowing down. Once I choose all the recipes I want to do for a meal prep session, I write out a grocery list and it's at that point that I try and refine my recipe list so that I'm making things that are using similar ingredients. If you want to be budget friendly with this, it'd also be a good idea to have your grocery store flyer open so that you pick recipes that have ingredients that are on sale. All that's to say, don't ignore the planning process of the meal prep because you can save a lot of money and you can find some cool recipes that are going to make this more fun. I was able to divide the pancakes so that I have two pancakes for the next three days. A few weeks ago, I discovered the magic of roasting a red onion, it adds so much flavor. So I just cut up some peppers and some onion and I'm going to season it starting with some olive oil. I'm just going to go give it a little drizzle, classic black pepper, the seasoning I use on everything, garlic powder, and I'm just going to go in with my hands and mix. I could do this in a bowl, but why waste a dish today? I'm using a lot of dishes. I've taken all my shredded zucchini and just put it in the strainer to let it drain out a bit. This is how much I was able to squeeze out of the zucchini and we want as much moisture out of it as possible. You can use a cheesecloth or a clean dish towel to drain it out, but I find this is actually working out quite well. I just squish it down and it comes out, but I'm going to let gravity try and do a little bit of the work for me for a few minutes. I ended up cutting up a cucumber as well just so that it's ready to go because I have hummus packs in my fridge, so this will promote me actually eating the cucumber and the hummus. Quinoa is over there, our zucchini fritters, veggies, lots of good stuff happening. Well your tomato sauce, you don't have to add those to your veggies. What I would do is add a little bit of sauce, what do you call it, a soup, I think, ladle? Yeah. A sauce on the bottom and then put your noodles on. I'm going to prep the baking dish. I wasn't able to find just plain tomato sauce. I ordered my groceries online and they were all out, so they gave me this fire roasted tomato and garlic version instead, which will be fine. And then I also have noodles that are oven ready, so I'm going to start with a ladle of tomato sauce and then a layer of noodles so that it's ready for the veggies. I'm just going to season my veggies here with some pepper and some garlic powder, the salt. I've got some frozen spinach too, so I'm just going to plop that in. Get some greens in there. I've never made lasagna before, so I'm not sure how this will go. But I mean, I did load it with a good amount of cheese, so how bad can it really be? Did I make a decent lasagna? Good anticipation kills me. This is like that time that I made chili. This feels like such a mature dish to be making. Probably going to have another slice of this and then I'll be able to put the rest in the fridge and this will be a really easy thing to preheat. I've already cut it all up so that it'll be easy to take out. It's the moment of truth. Time to try the pumpkin pie overnight oats. I'm a little nervous about this one. Okay. Oh, that is sweet. You know what? I bet you the pumpkin pie filling has like sugar in it already. I'm gonna have to look into that because if that's the case, I definitely didn't need the maple syrup. Time for the zucchini fritter. The recipe called to add parmesan to the zucchini fritters. I didn't end up doing that and I think that's fine. I'm sure it would taste even better with parmesan, but I put a lot of cheese in my lasagna this week, so I'm like, you know what? We'll cut back. How's the lasagna? Oh, it's better day two. Whoa. It soaks. Yeah, my mom said that it would be better today, but like, wow. Was she right? There's ricotta. I spent $7 on cheese for this. Not counting the mozzarella on top. I just mixed some olive oil and balsamic vinegar together and I'm gonna pour this into my quinoa veggie salad. This has been sitting for a couple of days in my fridge, so I feel like the flavors of the veggies are really gonna be intense and I think it'll be delicious. It's my last pancake day and I'm kind of sad because these have been amazing. They just freeze and reheat very well. I'm very impressed and they feel super festive for fall. Having the last of my quinoa and veggies and I added some chicken nuggies. These are from Gardein. They're fake chicken nuggets and they are actually so good, but I thought I would just add something a little extra special to this dish. I also like just find it so amusing that this looks like a fancy bowl, but it's just chicken nugs. But alas, I think this is gonna be delish and I definitely would recommend doing the roasted peppers and onion. It adds so much flavor. This is my last remaining meal prep item. I actually made a new version of the pumpkin pie overnight oats just because the recipe I was using used puree and I found out that pumpkin pie filling is quite sweet. So I didn't use any extra spices. I didn't add maple syrup. This is just pumpkin pie filling, overnight oats, oat milk. Chia seeds and a little bit of vanilla. Moment of truth. Let's try it. A lot better. I think I put like a heaping teaspoon of pumpkin pie filling in here. I probably would up it to like a tablespoon just because I'm not getting super large amounts of pumpkin flavor, but this is a lot more balanced. But I am curious to try the actual recipe as it's intended with a puree at another point. So it will be linked below and put this aside. But as a whole meal prep was a success. I think lasagna and the pancakes were definite highlights for this meal prep. This strategy of making my dinner the same every night and then making my lunch a little bit more flexible with the zucchini, the quinoa, the veggies. It wasn't all the same. There was still a little bit of flexibility there, which kept things interesting. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a big thumbs up. Let me know in the comment section down below which recipe in this video seemed the most enticing to you. Don't forget to also check out the bonus meal prep freebie printables in the description box below as well. And I will see you all very soon with a new video. I'm about to go eat the rest of these and get started with my day. Bye everyone. Bye.