One of my favorite parts of meal prepping is all the cutting, dicing, and cleaning. And the colors. I love how colorful all of the veggies and fruits are.
This week, I chopped 3 pounds of red potatoes, and roasted them on 400 for an hour. I seasoned them with some lemon pepper. The ones on the bottom became nice and crunchy and the top ones are really silky. I also cooked 2.5 pounds of green beans. I cleaned them and trimmed the tips. I didn't go all out on the green beans this week. I blanched them in boiling water for 10 minutes. They are still firm and a really bright green. I learned my lesson last week with soggy green beans. Ick. The green beans will fully cook and become tender after reheating for lunch time. The blanching really brought out a bit of sweetness in the beans.
While my beans and potatoes are cooking, I mixed up my fruit snacks, started the wild rice, and set my husband to grilling the chicken. This week, grapes and raspberries were on sale, so I added them to my fruit cups. One note though, I did find out that the raspberries don't hold up too well being mixed and then frozen and then unthawed. They go mushy. On the other hand, frozen grapes are a treat all unto themselves. The rice is a rice-a-roni long grain and wild rice mix. It's 190 calories per serving of 1 cup. I cut it in half, using only a half cup for my meals. My husband seasoned the chicken with smokey mesquite. He grilled 16lbs of chicken at once. It was on sale at for $1.99 a pound, so we stocked up on some extra for his protein snacks.
We're getting close to the end. I bagged all my fruits into 4oz snack bags, and chopped the chicken up to be weighed into 4 oz sections. And my potatoes are yummy! Finally I set out all of my containers. I use the small 2 cup rubbermaid and ziploc containers. The rubbermaid ones are my favorite and they seals hold better and they also microwave easier. I found the ziploc ones flimsy, but hey they were on sale too. I first laid out my 4oz carbs into each container. Seven got potatoes, and seven got rice. Then I just divided the green beans evenly into each container. It worked out to be about 3 oz per container. Green beans are healthy all the way around, so you really can't have too many. Then on top, is 4 ounces of grilled delicious chicken.
Very delicious! I let them cool with the lids off on the counter before I put the lids on the and froze them. I found that if we freeze hot rice, it crystallizes the whole bowl and isn't very tasty after it's reheated.
So, if you guys are really interested for the cost of these, here's the breakdown:
3.5 pounds of chicken @ $1.99 pound = $6.97
2 boxes of Rice-a-Roni @ $1 box = $2
3 pounds of green beans @ $1.29 a pound = $3.87
1.75 pounds of red potatoes @ $1.99 a pound = $3.48
4 pounds of grapes @ $0.99 a pound = $3.97
1 quart of strawberries @ $2.98 per quart = $2.98
1 pint of raspberries @ $2.29 per pint = $2.99
Total cost of shopping trip = $26.26
Cost per lunch = $1.17
Cost per fruit snack = $ 0.83 (I got 12 snacks out of the mix.)
This week, I price shopped around, and had a list of sale prices from different places with me when I went shopping at Wal-mart. I love their price-matching. All you have to do is tell the cashier that so and so has what ever you are buying on sale for a specific price and they'll match it. They don't match percentage based sales, BOGOs, or 10 for , but if grapes are on sale at Target for 99 cents a pound and they have them for 2.48 a pound, they will change the price for you. I love saving money.
Diet is only part of the equation for effective weight loss and my change of lifestyle. Next time, I will introduce you guys to my six days a week workout. It's working well; I am down six pounds!
