Category Archives: Meal Planning

Meal Prep and Me

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I live a crazy busy life. My alarm goes off at 6 am and I roll out of bed immediately and stumble to my home office and log into my work computer, and thusly my day starts. There’s a 6am rush that trickles down about 6:30, a 7 am rush that lasts about twenty minutes, then it’s a steady but random influx of work requests for the rest of the day. My first meal is grabbed around 8 am so that I can take my morning medicine and supplements with it, but I do not have the time to be away from my computer for very long. Whatever I do in the morning has to be fairly fast and something I can gnosh on while I am working at my desk.

Lunchtime isn’t really that much more leisurely; I like to take a shower or get tasks done on my thirty minute break, so that doesn’t leave much time for lunch. It’s funny because before my lifestyle changes and surgery I nibbled and let myself be hungry all day then binge ate when it was time to leave the house to pick up the kiddo. Taking him to school was my morning break and it almost always either ended in a coffee or McDonald’s breakfast run. Those habits are done for, thankfully — so I needed to do some stuff that was easy to get going and wouldn’t ruin what I was trying to accomplish. Enter, TikTok and Meal Prep.

My nutritionist stressed about how important it is to eat more than once a day. We focused on healthy, protein and fiber rich foods to eat. I grabbed some rotisserie chicken and supplies, and did meal preps for the freezer. This was what I grabbed for ingredients:

♥ Rotisserie Chicken (Costco or Sam’s Club memberships are great for this!)
♥ Carb Friendly Tortillas (I prefer La Banderita carb counter over mission. Lower net carb and higher fiber – and bigger)
♥ Greek Yogurt
♥ Low Fat or Fat Free Sour Cream
♥ Taco Seasonings
♥ Brown Rice, Cooked to instructions
♥ Mini Tri-color Bell Peppers
♥ Onions
♥ Mushrooms
♥ Jarred Salsa
♥ Black Beans
♥ Shredded cheese of your choice

These supplies will make two different dishes. First thing you want to do is remove the chicken from the bones, discard the skin (I like to keep the bones to make chicken broth with) If you sautee the onions, peppers, and mushrooms (add garlic if you wish for razzle dazzle) in avocado oil and mix with the chicken, drained and rinsed black beans, cheese and salsa, then it’s ready to divide up. I took the greek yogurt and sour cream, mixed it together along with the taco seasoning. For the bowls, I put a scoop of brown rice at the bottom, the chicken mixture on top, then topped with the yogurt and sour cream mixture. delicious!

For the burritos: I packaged these individually for the freezer so it could be easily pulled out and dropped into the air fryer. I laid out a large square of wax paper then placed a tortilla on top of it. I put a little of the yogurt and sour cream mixture, then the chicken mixture. I wrapped it into a burrito, then wrapped the wax paper around it. I then placed it into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and put them all into the freezer. When I want one, I will take it out and drop it into the air fryer at 375 around 9 minutes. I sometimes smear one of those individual things of guacamole on top of it for some “Freshness”. These things have been a staple of mine along with other quick meals, which I’ll save for another post!

Adventures in Veggie Burgers Gone Wrong

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A year ago, when I was really considering wanting to start this journey, the one thing that was holding me back was the thought of having to make two different dishes for every meal. I also had all those voices in my head telling me it’s a lot of work and probably wouldn’t even matter. When I tell you that doubt is the Devil, believe me. I was like “you know, you right. Why would I bother with all that fuss if it wasn’t going to help me?” Wrong, Kellz. Stop being wrong.

So flash forward to my commitment to not being a slob forever, and now I am looking at things SMRT-ly. What can I easily change that we can both eat, or what components can I do two alternate ones (like side dishes) to make it more palatable for Mr. Metabolism? I started doing things like using a meat blend (pork/turkey/beef) instead of straight up ground beef. Using pork panko instead of bread crumbs. Mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes. I tried focusing on things that my husband wouldn’t mind or notice. I also started to branch out and consider two different meals altogether. Like if they do take out, I do something from the meal prep stash. This weekend at the grocery store there was a special on wagyu burgers that I grabbed up, so I decided I’d make those for Father’s Day (he got his big meal the night before) and I’d attempt these veggie burgers I saw in the food network mag.

Well, let’s just say these things had potential but fell short. I have attempted veggie burgers in the past, and the problem I always had with them was that they were mush. Like fall apart mush, not a patty at all. This time I followed the recipe to the letter. The only difference is I substituted the barbecue sauce with lower sugar ketchup and replacing breadcrumbs with pork panko (but added a bit more). I even took video and photos along the way because I wanted it to be the first actual cooking thing I posted on this blog. I let them sit in the fridge for longer than expected while I cooked everything else – bacon, the Mister’s burgers, everything then I pulled them out to finish up. As soon as they hit the oiled pan they fell apart. They cooked up but it was just piles of mush. Did I still eat it? I did. I spread it over my bun halves loaded up with veggies and ate it like avocado toast. Later I had the rest of the mush on a lettuce boat and turned it into a little wrap. Would I do it again? Not without figuring out why this happens.

I was so disappointed! I wanted a great cooking experience. Tonight is air fried sausages and fixins, which probably isn’t going to be very exciting. C’est la vie.