Happy Thursday! How are we feeling about the meal prep posts being on Thursday? I think I’m liking it! I did a poll on my Instagram (@trees_and_honeybees, if you aren’t following me yet) asking people which day they preferred meal prep posts and the majority said it didn’t matter because the search for recipes when they go to meal prep. So, as much as I love the alliteration of Meal Prep Monday, I think we are going to continue to try out Thursdays for a little bit.

I’m still trying to be a little more conscious of what I have in my pantry and fridge when I go grocery shopping so this weeks meal prep was based on the fact that I had a fresh batch of sourdough rolls, some dry pasta and some edamame chilling in my freezer.

Breakfast: homemade sourdough rolls with avocado (or hummus), fried eggs and fruit. I rotated between apples and sumo oranges. I’ve loving sourdough rolls lately. I only have one proofing basket and my go-to bread recipe makes two loaves so I just use the second half of the recipe for rolls instead of bread. This week, I did a mix of all purpose, whole wheat and spelt flours. The only thing from breakfast that comes in packaging is the eggs and I buy that at my co-op so they are local and in repurposed egg cartons.

Lunch: Last week’s curry was so yummy! But, I’m back on the soup train this week. Soup is just so cheap, quick and easy! I noticed I’ve been eating a lot of chickpeas lately so I opted for a cannellini soup this week. This soup really is super cheap, easy and quick. For some reason, I thought it had carrots so I used two that were starting to look a little sad in my fridge. I also used kale instead of spinach for the same reason as I used the carrots. Soups are great for using up veggies on their last leg. Soup is so easy to make low waste as a lot of the ingredients can be bought fresh with no packaging or in aluminum cans.

Dinner: Since lunch felt a little lacking in fresh vegetables, I opted to load up on them for dinner. I did a really simple cold pasta salad with edamame, sugar snap peas, carrots, mushrooms and red peppers with pasta and a sesame ginger dressing. I cooked the edamame and mushrooms just because I prefer the taste of those two cooked but everything else was left raw. I roasted the edamame at 375 for 20 minutes. You could tweak this recipe with whatever vegetables and dressing you have on hand. I had been planning on serving this with a peanut sauce but I couldn’t find Teddie’s peanut butter while grocery shopping so switched to a sesame ginger dressing we already had at the house. Except for that 1 lone serving that has the very last bit of Tessamae’s Buffalo Dairy-Free Ranch. Nothing in the salad has any seasoning so any dressing you like should work. Use what you have! I was able to buy all the vegetables and pasta without packaging.

Snacks: This weeks dessert comes courtesy of The Whole Food Diary- Sourdough Discard Chocolate Cake. My favorite part of this recipe is that it has minimum ingredients and chances are, you already have all of them (if you make sourdough). I didn’t have to buy anything for this recipe which is my favorite kind of recipe! I don’t have ramekins so I opted for a large muffin pan (it may even be called Texas Muffin pan?) and made 4 servings (I definitely ate one before taking the photo!). Mine didn’t come out gooey as Kezia mentions in her recipe but I suspect the change in pans and the increase in servings caused that. The texture was definitely some sort of bread / cake hybrid but it was still very moist and tasty. It’s not very sweet so I like it as a little mid-day chocolate fix. You can increase the sweetness by adding your chocolate of choice, Kezia recommends 2 TBSP of chocolate chips. I had some peanut chips kicking around so I sprinkled a little on the top of the cakes. I should have mixed them in better but they are still delicious. I store these in the fridge. If you do this, you may need to reheat them for about 15 seconds in the microwave before eating.

Additional snack options- I have recently discovered the joys of vegan yogurt in glass packaging. I’ve never been a yogurt fan but the Culina yogurt and the Oui by Yoplait versions are both so good! I prefer the Culina yogurt, though it isn’t cheap so I try to stretch it out by getting two servings from each container. I load it up with nut butter, fruit and granola and get a pretty tasty snack out of it! My fav combo this week is Culina Bourbon vanilla yogurt, apple, peanut butter and a little bit of chocolate peanut butter granola. SO good.