Hellobee Boards

I only semi meal prep – I make big batch lunches every Sunday and try to prep some of our dinners for the week then too.

Our main lunch rotations are:

Ground turkey and bean chili (a couple variations)
Grain salads topped with grilled chicken
Soups/stew
In the summer I’ll do more cold salads for lunch and just prep the grilled meat and salad toppings.

For making lunch, I'll make extra at dinner so I can have it the next few days, or I will make a special "casserole" and portion it out for the week. Or a sandwich for lunch.

For summertime salads, Costco is my friend. I buy a pack of their vacuum sealed rotisserie chicken meat (its white meat, already skinned and pulled off the bone, and yummy), a bag of romaine or a tub of baby greens, a tub of grape tomatoes, a bag of the Persian cucumbers and make that my salad base. Then I go to Trader Joe's and buy extras to change it up, like shredded carrots, avocado, bacon, feta, bleu cheese, nuts, dried fruit. And I keep a bunch of different dressings around.

I pack the salads for DH and I in these big bowls:

http://amzn.com/B0009P67ZS

and just stack them up in our fridge. It takes up like an entire shelf on the fridge, but oh well. We just grab a salad and a bottle of dressing and put them in our lunch bags on the way out.

DH is usually more into sandwiches the rest of the year for lunch, whereas I tend to eat leftovers from dinner. So on Sundays, I make sandwich packs for DH. I get quart size ziploc bags, slip in 2 slices of whole grain bread, a leaf of washed lettuce rolled in a sheet of paper towel, and a sandwich size ziploc bag filled with his choice of cold cuts and pickle slices. I make 5 of those and then I make 5 ziploc bags of baby carrots with individual portions of hummus or celery sticks with individual portions of peanut butter. I stick all of those in a plastic basket that I keep in the fridge. In the mornings, DH grabs a sandwich pack, a bag of carrots, a piece of fruit and a granola bar and that's his lunch. He keeps a bottle of mustard in his bag.

Breakfasts we tend to do the same thing on a weekly basis. So if its oatmeal, I make a big pot of oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar already mixed in and portion them into tupperwares. Then I leave a tupperware of dried fruit and nuts on the table and each person can spoon some on when they're ready to eat. We usually alternate that with yogurt bowls, which just requires yogurt, some sliced banana, and a handful of storebought granola. If I know I need them on the go, then I will pre-portion the yogurt into tupperwares and keep baggies of granola and a bunch of bananas on the counter.

@gingerbebe: I've never seen that chicken at Costco, but I am probably not looking in the right place...in what section is it?

@looch: Its in the prepared food case just next to the rotisserie chicken cart, like where they have the chicken soup and chicken salad and shrimp cocktail. Its like $12.99 for 2.5 pounds of meat! Its a TON of chicken!

@gingerbebe: Wow thanks for the tip on the rotisserie chicken! That is genius! I hate tearing it all up!

I usually just eat leftovers for lunch or salad. Nothing exciting. I need to be better about prepping on Sundays too.