Tag: no food waste

Meal Prep Thursday, April 15

ErinLeave a comment

The weather here in New England has no idea what it’s doing and it’s leaving me in a huge food funk. Anyone else? Here is what I managed to assemble for this week’s meal prep. Breakfast and lunch are both very budget-friendly if you are looking for some cheaper meal options. All of them are delicious, though!

Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal: Sometimes I think, “I’ve had too many oats. I need something different”, so I bake them. And without fail, I always think stove top is better. This recipe is delicious! but, personally, I just prefer stove top or overnight oats. What is your oat preference?

Carrot Cake Baked Oats from Tone It Up

serves 2

  • 1 cup of oats
  • 1/2 cup grated carrots
  • 2/3 cup unsweetened almond milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 TBSP maple syrup
  • 2 TBSP pecans
  • dash of cinnamond
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Blend all ingredients except pecans and pour into an oven-safe container. Mix in pecans.
  3. Bake for 35 minutes or until fully cooked.

Sweet potato and kale “breakfast” hash, eggs and avocado toast: Because God forbid, I don’t have an egg meal, I chose to have my eggs for lunch instead of breakfast. I recently purchased The Whole Food Dairy’s Basic Cookbook and the dessert cookbook, The Whole Treat. I haven’t had a chance to try any of the recipes from the Treats cookbook but so far, all the recipes from The Basics cookbook are winners. The PB&J Skillet cookie? OMG- I won’t share with you the embarrassingly short amount of time that cookie stayed in my fridge. Let’s just say, though, that it should have lasted me a week and it very much did not. I really like that the recipes aren’t fancy and there are a lot of substitution options if you are missing an ingredients (that’s encouraged! Kezia, the author, is team “Use What You Have”). This recipe worked well for meal prepping. I chose to serve the hash with fried eggs, which I made fresh each lunch, but if you are meal prepping this, you can pair it with hard boiled eggs or leave the egg out and just have it with the avocado toast. If you aren’t eating the egg with it, I’d probably scramble up some tofu or add some beans so you have a protein source.

Also, yes those are Halloween Pyrex bowls that I use year round because 1. you can get them discounted at Target the day after Halloween if you are lucky and your store still has some in stock and 2. They make me happy 🙂 #sorrynotsorry

Rainbow Thai Salad: This salad is the perfect meal prep salad because if you keep it in a well sealed container, it could last you 1.5 -2 weeks. I should know- I stretched mine for 2 weeks! I used this recipe as a bit of a template and didn’t follow it too closely. I added a bell peppers and traded the green onions for a sprinkle of red onion, which I already had in my fridge. When you meal prep, always make sure you keep your dressing on the side.

For week 2, I had two more servings left so I halved it and added some quinoa to each of the 4 bowls. Changing it up stretched it for another week and gave it a little bit of a different texture. Feel free to change up the dressing for a bigger taste difference.

Snack- I still had some of the Mocha Bliss Balls left over from last week so I kept snacking on those. Check out last week’s blog for that recipe.

What’s on your meal prep for this week?

Meal Prep Thursday, April 8

ErinLeave a comment

Welcome to Spring, everyone! It seems like even here in New England the weather is starting to warm up. Of course, by saying that, I have officially jinxed us and it will now snow on Mother’s Day but I’ll enjoy these days while I can!

I feel like it isn’t warm enough to start rolling out the regular salads but it isn’t cold enough for soup every lunch either so I settled on something in between.

If you aren’t familiar with my meal prep posts, I usually make about 4 servings of my meals on Sunday or Monday. I try not to make too much more than that or I start getting sick of it. Then, on Thursday evening or Friday afternoon, I’ll do a feature over on my Instragram called What’s In Your Fridge Friday were I go through what’s left in my fridge and use up whatever is left to get me through the weekend and clean out my fridge before grocery shopping. It helps me minimize food waste, something I’m always struggling with as a solo cook, and also prevents me from buying things I already have, which helps with budgeting. It’s a win-win! Be sure to follow me over on Instragram at trees_and_honeybees if you aren’t already. Now, onto the food!

Breakfast- Scrambled eggs with some sort of carb and hummus: I’m always eating some version of eggs + carb + avocado for breakfast. Eggs are my one, non-vegan food that I just can’t quit. I’m very lucky to get mine locally- sometimes from a friend of the family (Hi Liz!), other times from my co-op, which stocks eggs from members of the co-op.

This week, I scrambled eggs with onion, spinach and mushrooms and topped it with avocado and tomato (and a little ketchup, not pictured because that doesn’t photograph well!) and had bread or english muffin with hummus on the side.

You can scramble up the eggs and veggies ahead of time and just pop them in the microwave each morning. I kept the avocado and tomato on the side so they wouldn’t be heated.

Lunch- Edamame and Barley Bowl: This recipe was tweaked a little bit from a recipe which I can’t find anymore on line so I’m going to include it below. All measurements are rough estimates. For instance, the recipe I wrote down has 1/2 cup of kale and 1/2 cup of sweet potato but I think I probably did closer to 1 cup of each as it didn’t look like it was making enough. The recipe is simple but it tasted so good. I love roasted edamame. Swap the edamame out for whatever protein you want. Tofu would work well.

Edamame and Barley Bowl

serves 2

2/3 cup of cooked barley

1/2 cup kale

2 tsp coconut oil

2 TBSP soy sauce

1/2 garlic clove, minced

1/2 tsp grated ginger

1/2 cup roasted edamame

1/2 cup baked sweet potato

Directions:

DIRECTIONS

  1. In a pan over medium heat, sauté cooked barley and chopped kale with coconut oil, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger for about 5 minutes, or until the kale has wilted.
  2. Add the barley mixture to a bowl. Top with roasted edamame and sweet potato.
  3. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and red chili flakes, if so desired

Dinner- Lentil Tacos: I used the filling from this Pin on Pinterest and served it on corn tortillas with hummus, avocado and quick pickled red onion and it was delicious! Tacos are always a win for me. I could pretty much eat them every day. If you have leftover quick pickles, they taste awesome on avocado toast.

Snack- Mocha Bliss Balls: I made the Mocha Bliss Balls from Alexandra Andersson over at Fivesechealth. Sometimes when I’m in a food funk, I watch vegan What I Eat In a Day videos to get inspired. I could never do that because my meals would be the same for 4-5 straight days but they are good for ideas! The recipe is at the 3:45 mark if you want to skip ahead. I would advise drizzling a little chocolate over these to add a little oomph. I had just run out so I ate them plain.

What do you make when you are in a food funk? Or what do you do to de-funk?