In the spirit of yesterday's post I did some Googling on better ways to prepare food for later and save time. Currently, I eat a salad every single day for lunch (during the work week, weekends I don't usually eat lunch). I am the kind of person that has no problem eating the same thing every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Here's my normal, healthy, vegan-eating day:
- Breakfast:
- 1/2 English muffin with 1 tbsp. all natural extra crunchy peanut butter
- Green smoothie
- Lunch:
- 2 Fruits (apple, grapes, grapefruit, bananas, watermelon, or strawberries)
- Vegetable (snap peas or baby carrots)
- Salad (tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, and fat free Italian dressing)
- Dinner:
- Carb (1 cup of brown rice or pasta)
- Shrimp
- Vegetable (broccoli, asparagus, green beans, or squash)
No lie, I eat this almost every single day. Except now, because I'm eating like shit right now. Generally I grocery shop on the weekend then, on Sundays, I cut, peel, and put everything away. Every night before work I make my salad, put my fruit in containers, and veggies in bags. You would think this would only take a sec but it's surprisingly time consuming especially when I would rather be asleep, or in the shower, or the gym, or on the couch... you get the picture. Plus, I'm a pretty frugal gal (or trying to be... more on that later) and I'm big into making my food last as long as possible. When you eat a plant-based diet pretty much everything is plant-based... no way, right? Well, foods that come from the earth do not last forever, except when you freeze them but you can't freeze everything (apples for one. yes I've tried it. never again). Plus I have an incredibly small freezer (probably 5 inches tall, 1 foot deep, and 1 foot across) so freezing all of my meals at the beginning of the week is not going to happen in mi casa. So I needed some ideas on how to make lettuce or salads last as long as possible, if I had a dollar for every time I've had to throw lettuce away that's wilted I could probably have salad every day for 6 months at least. So through the magic of the internet I have a new plan for getting my meals ready for the week on Sunday.
Part One: Salad in a Jar
Yup I am going to be a trendy salad in a jar person. The only downside to this is that I'll have to bring a bowl or something to eat the salad out of because eating it out of a jar would be very difficult. Checking out a bunch of websites on making salads in a jar gave me some great new salad ideas! I'm not a very picky eater at all but the vegetables that I don't like, I strongly I don't like. Those being: onions, bell peppers, or mushrooms. I also don't like fruits or any kind of seeds or nuts on my salad. That being said there is obviously a reason I only eat boring salads but now I have new ideas!
I'm still going to stick with my same plain boring dressing because I don't like most other vegan salad dressings except for vegan ranch but that's because it's ranch and ranch is delicious. Regardless, you are definitely going to be seeing some salads featuring quinoa or brown rice, sprouts, chickpeas, peas, green beans, black beans, and sprouts! I'm also going to start using Romaine lettuce again. I love romaine but I stopped buying it is because I feel like it wilted really quickly and I didn't need to add to my lettuce pile that was already decomposing in my landlords trash can. So this Sunday I'm going to pick up a few more mason jars, some exciting additions to my salads and call it good!Part Two: Divide food into separate containers for each day
This part of my plan involves buying more Tupperware containers which as long been on my to-buy list so that's a bonus. When I bring fruit to work I always chop it up or slice to make it easier to eat. I find that tricking my brain into making me do less work while eating (bear with me here) makes it easier to eat healthy. Right now most of my Tupperware is large and bulky and I divide food in plastic baggies before I go to bed. I plan to divide my food up for each lunch at the beginning of the week so that in the morning I'll just grab a couple of fruit containers and a veggie container. I also won't be wasting plastic baggies! This still leaves me with one problem. I love grapefruit and I like it cut in half and sliced, not peeled. So, how do I bring this to work without making a huge mess? A little Google search allowed me to discover that someone has already discovered a solution to this problem! All for $3.99 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond! Yay! I'm so excited! A little too excited but hey! it's the little things in life. Part Three: Dinners for Days
As I mentioned earlier I basically eat the same thing everyday. I always eat a starch at dinner plus protein and a vegetable. I already buy my vegetables frozen but still it would be much easier to cook them on Sunday and then all I would have to do is heat them up during the week. Cooked shrimp lasts 3 days in the fridge, so if I cook it Sunday I've got meals for Monday and Tuesday. Toss a little pasta into the mix, refrigerate it and I've got a whole mean in one container (see pic above)! I'm hoping to cut down on my shrimp intake and slow weed out all animal products so that makes pre-cooking dinners even easier! I also purchased something that I have found makes my life much easier and that's Minute brand Ready to Serve brown rice. You take the top of and microwave it for a minute and voila! 1 cup or perfectly cooked rice! It's also really inexpensive. Cooking batches of brown rice and refrigerating isn't the best idea because it is just a breeding ground for bacteria and I find it very difficult to cook only one serving of rice so this is a great solution for moi. I need to do a little more research on whether or not the health benefits of this type of brown rice is different from just cooking it yourself but I hope not!
That's basically most of my plan. The rest is just to figure it out as I go, which is pretty much my plan for most things...
I do have been finding some more ideas on cutting out calories in certain places but still eating the same foods. I've been hearing about PB2 for a while but I have yet to try it. I know that it is only 1 WW point per tbsp which is great compared to the 3 points per 1 tbsp for regular peanut butter plus you can add to smoothies easily! I'm sure that it's not nearly as good as extra crunchy peanut butter (probably because it's not crunchy) but I'm willing to try it! Supposedly you can find it at Walmart but I have yet to be able to do so. I've mentioned this before but I'm also planning on picking up some vegan coffee creamer this weekend, 0 points for 1 tbsp and vegan and tastes great (supposedly), sign me up!
*Side note: I'm working on some aesthetic changes on the blog so please excuse the current theme, it's a work in progress.
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