Healthy Meal Prep: Quinoa Bowls + Kale Smoothie Bags! (Gluten-free & Vegan)

Meal prep is one of those things that you're going to do today and it's not going to take you very long and you can watch your favorite TV show while you do it and your future self is going to thank you for the rest of the week. When you have a healthy meal that's delicious and ready to grab from the fridge, you're a lot more likely to reach for that than to go through the drive-thru or call for takeout. So I think that's where it really helps build up your momentum and keep your healthy eating habits going. Now I'm actually going to set a timer so that I only work on this for 30 minutes and we're going to see how much I can get done. So with that being said, I'm going to start my timer and get started. Now there's a method to my madness here. When I have a little to-do list of things I want to meal prep, I always start with the thing that's going to take the longest to cook. So in this case, it's roasted sweet potatoes. I have my oven preheated to 400 degrees and I'm going to get started on these. Now I don't bother peeling my sweet potatoes as I cut them. For one thing, I want this to be as fast as humanly possible and also there's nutrition in the sweet potato skin so I don't want to lose that by peeling it away. So I'm just cutting these potatoes into one-inch squares so that they will roast quickly and evenly. And this should really only take you about five minutes of time at the very most. Now that my sweet potatoes are cut into squares, I am just going to transfer them to a sheet pan and I'm going to arrange them into a single layer, drizzle them with a little bit of olive oil, and just toss them to coat them in oil. I try not to use too much oil when I cook but the oil kind of keeps the potatoes from drying out in this case while they roast. I try to prevent the pieces from touching so that they will cook faster and more evenly. Then you just season it with some salt and you're going to roast it for about 20 to 25 minutes in the oven. Now that my sweet potatoes are roasting away in the oven, the next thing I'm going to make is some quinoa. And I'm using my instant pot to cook it because it makes the process totally hands-off. So as soon as I get it in here and press a button, I can move on to the next item and be as efficient as possible. To make quinoa in your instant pot, all you need to do is add the dry quinoa. I'm going to make two cups so that I have plenty of quinoa for everything I want to eat this week. And now I'm going to add two cups of water and then you just need to seal the pot, secure the lid, move the steam release valve to sealing, and cook it on manual for just one minute. And then you're going to let the pressure naturally release for 15 minutes after that. Next I'm going to make a soy ginger dressing which I'm going to use on my quinoa bowls for lunch. I can use it for an easy like Chinese cabbage salad or I can use it over a stir fry like the rainbow lo mein that's in my second cookbook, No Excuses Detox. So you can use this for a variety of things to make your meals a little different. I'm starting with three quarters of a cup of olive oil and then I'm using a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar and a quarter cup of tamari which is a gluten-free soy sauce. Soy ginger dressing is always a little sweet so I'm using a quarter cup of maple syrup. Remember we're making a double batch here. Now in case you're not familiar with how to peel ginger, using a spoon is a really fast way to get the peel off. And I'm using a pretty big hunk of ginger because I love the flavor but this is your recipe and you can use as much or as little as you want to. So I'm adding that big piece of ginger to the blender along with two cloves of garlic. Now I'm also going to add two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil and in this case just a little bit goes a long way but it adds a really nice flavor. Now I just have to blend it. Okay now my dressing is all blended so I'm going to pour it into a jar and store it in the fridge for later. Okay my quinoa is all done. I let it naturally release for 15 minutes so now I'm going to move the steam release valve to venting although you can see the floating valve in the lid has already dropped which means there's no more pressure in the pot and it's safe to open the lid. And now I'm just going to fluff it with a fork but as you can see it's perfectly cooked and it did that while I was making that dressing so I didn't have to waste any of my time checking the stove to make sure the water was boiling or turning down the heat to make sure the quinoa didn't burn on the bottom. Now while I'm working here I can smell that my sweet potatoes are starting to smell like they're done. I usually use my nose when it comes to roasting vegetables because they'll start to get really fragrant when they're tender so I'm going to check on those real fast. Oh my gosh they look perfect. Okay now the easiest way to make sure your potatoes are tender is to just pierce them with a fork and these are perfect. So I'm going to let them cool while I finish the rest of my meal prep. Now I'm planning to use the quinoa and the sweet potatoes and the soy ginger dressing to assemble really fast and easy lunch bowls this week and I also want a few raw vegetables that I can throw on top. So I'm going to take my remaining meal prep time to quickly chop up a head of cabbage and some cucumber that I will store in the fridge until I'm ready to use. When I cut cabbage I like to cut it into four pieces. So I always just remove the outer leaf and you can use a food processor if you would rather shred your cabbage that way. Since I already have my knife and cutting board out I think it's just easier to use a knife to shred the cabbage. It's going to take me less than five minutes to cut up this whole head and then I don't have to clean my food processor later. Okay so this is just what a half head of looks like. As you can see it makes a ton so if you're trying to save money shredding your own cabbage is such a budget saver compared to buying the pre-shredded coleslaw mix. I'm also going to cut up a cucumber and to do that I usually cut it in half and then I cut it lengthwise into small strips. I find that it's easier to cut more uniform pieces when you cut lengthwise first and then you can kind of just go down the cucumber and dice it into smaller pieces. Okay I think my timer is about to go off but it hasn't yet so I'm going to try to do one more thing in the 30 minutes and that is to make smoothie bags. I'm going to fill up these reusable silicone sandwich bags with my smoothie filling and then I'll just be able to dump it into a blender add liquid and press a button and my smoothie will be ready in the morning so it's going to make my mornings a lot easier. So I'm making my kale smoothie and for each bag that I make I need half of a banana and make sure the banana you use is ripe with plenty of brown spots on the skin and I like to use dino kale leaves they look like this and to quickly get rid of the stem I just hold the stem at the top and then I drag my fingers down along the stem to help get off the leaves. I only use the leafy green to go in my smoothie and I'm just going to stuff these leaves among my four smoothie bags. So again to remove the kale leaf you grab it at the end and then drag your fingers down trying to get just the leaf and not the tough stem. The stem can be hard for traditional blenders to blend up and I also think it has a more aggressive kale flavor. Kale is already kind of an aggressive green so you don't want to taste too much of it. Now this smoothie recipe only calls for two kale leaves because they're pretty big I would say each kale leaf is about a quarter cup so we're putting a half cup of kale in each smoothie bag. The next ingredient in this smoothie is frozen mango and I mostly use frozen mango because the work is already done for you so all I have to do is scoop it to measure out one cup instead of worrying about peeling it and getting the pit out of a fresh mango. Now normally this recipe calls for a quarter of an avocado which makes it creamier and a little more filling but I couldn't find a good avocado today so I'm just swapping that out for two tablespoons of ground flaxseed instead. All right now I have four smoothie bags that are ready to go in my freezer and when I'm ready to make these I will just dump the contents of one bag into a blender add a half a cup of water and a half a cup of orange juice to the blender and blend it until it's smooth and then it's ready to drink. Okay now all I really have left to do is to store what I've made so that it's ready to grab for the week. So I made close to seven cups of cooked quinoa using the two cups of dry. I like to let my sweet potatoes cool down on the pan for a few minutes so that they're not piping hot when I pour them into my storage container otherwise they'll keep steaming and get a little softer. So these have cooled for a few minutes on the counter and now I'm going to transfer them into a glass storage container also. Okay my time is up and in that 30 minutes I've managed to get a huge container of cabbage it actually made two storage containers worth, roasted sweet potatoes, a big batch of quinoa, and some chopped cucumbers, and a big bottle of dressing that I'm going to use over my lunch bowls this week. Now I like to keep it all stored separately so I can assemble the bowls for my lunch or use it for dinner however I see fit but if you're more the type who wants your lunch ready to grab from the fridge you can also assemble your lunch bowls in separate glass containers and have them ready to grab that way. I hope watching me make all of this stuff in about 30 minutes has shown you how approachable healthy eating can be and I hope you'll try it and it will make your life a little easier too. For more healthier recipes be sure to visit my website and I'll see you here again soon.