Busy Mom Meal Prep

I am so not the pinteresty, instagrammy meal prepper. 1) My ish ain’t pretty. and 2) I actually didn’t consider what I do “meal prep” until someone told me it counts since I’m “prepping” stuff for the week ahead of time. So I still don’t call it that lol, but I do process foods for the week to make life easier.

A few things to note:

• I follow a generally low carb, clean lifestyle
• John eats low carb but not necessarily clean
• Kids follow not exactly clean diet with healthy carbs (whole grains etc)
• I’m home with the kids during the day and am a serious grazer
• John works outside the home and takes lunch most days

So how I do things:

I call it “processing” food. Which…is probably the worst word to use when you’re a clean eater, but this is how I process stuff.

I grocery shop every 7-9 days. My hauls tend to look like:

I buy eggs, fruits for smoothies and kid snacks, a variety of veggies but always zucchini for spaghetti, onions/green peppers / tomato, bagged greens for smoothies and sauteeing as a side dish, bagged salads to make lunch easy, a variety of meats going by what’s on sale but always ground turkey, ground beef, spicy Italian sausage, and chicken breasts (often pork loins and roasts as well but again that’s by sale price).

Then I also purchase the things I like to graze on during the day: almonds, peanut butter, kimchi, cheese, deli meat (not clean, but low carb)

Immediately after I get home I:

• throw away whatever’s gross in the fridge.
• divide the ground beef (i buy the 4.5 lb pack) into 3 even portions and pop in freezer
• divide the big pack of chicken breasts, cut them in half lengthwise and bag them up for seasoning or freezing
• peel, halve and bag up bananas and pop in freezer (I also bag up whatever fruit will be for my shakes)

Each week I make a few staples:

• a big batch of chili (John takes this to work for lunches)
• a batch (or 2) of turkey muffins (I eat these during my random grazing thru the week)
• bake all the chicken breasts (2-3 batches because I flavor the different bags differently)
• (sometimes) a big batch of pasta sauce (for zucchini noodles)

We eat a lot of the same foods each week, but I (try to) season them differently so it doesn’t get boring.

Our dinner is often just meat, salad and veggies in some random combination…

Sweets are zero carb frozen treats, and I make these sugar free “cheesecakes” fairly often.

I make a lot of “catch all” dishes, throwing every random veggie we have left over into either an egg bake, a “meatloaf” a soup or something…

*Note: I DO make separate food for the kids. We let them try what we’re eating…(knowing they’re gunna most likely throw a fit) and then I’ll give them a pasta dish of some sort, or when they ask for it, oatmeal or mac n cheese or whatever. They don’t get any “sugar free” anything…  (And I sneak veggies & protein into everything they get #trickymommy)

What I am trying to get better at: 

• pre-planning the new meals and recipes that I experiment with
• enforcing that the kids eat more of the “family” meal

I’m no good with rigid stuff, so my loosey goosey meal prep/planning works for our house.

Do you do any form of meal “prep”?