Running a bit behind

This past weekend put me a little behind on the food prep thing which in turn has kind of made life a little harder. This weekend I ran one of those Hot Chocolate races and it wasn’t a good experience. I’ll put that in a separate post for the interested parties later. But that meant we weren’t home to do our Sunday morning grocery shopping. Well, in this case we did do it, just in another city. I guess that speaks to how hardcore we actually are about our shopping. But when we returned, I had a staff meeting at the gym which basically killed all kinds of food prepping when we returned. It was all kinds of horrible.

Right now I’m just running behind during a very busy week. I will never take for granted the need to meal prep again. I didn’t get a chance to finish the meal prep yesterday because I was at the gym later than normal. Yesterday, 4AM came too soon so I decided to sleep in and do some stuff around the house instead of sticking with the routine. I HAVE to get up on Tuesdays to teach my class, so I choose to be refreshed for this morning instead of working out yesterday morning. So that ended up messing me up too.

Hopefully today, I’ll get a chance to get things back on track. We’ve been assembling the meals on the fly which is still good but we wouldn’t be able to do that unless we have some stuff together. But this doesn’t always leave time to prep my snacks which is where I’m SERIOUSLY failing this week.

What are we eating this week?

Willie made some fancy cooking technique for this chicken. Whole chicken is a LOT cheaper than buying the chicken breast. He roasts it, breaks it down and we pull the skin off. It’s soo good. We’ll probably have that the entire week for dinner.

Seated #ahituna is what's for #lunch. What are u eating? #healthyeating #goodeats #fitfluential #fitfam #tiuteam

For lunch, I guess we’re eating a lot of fish. We grilled up some tuna steaks for lunch and I put it in a salad. It was really good. And last night we baked up some cod. I woke up yesterday morning to make a big pot of beans: black beans, white beans and kidney beans and I made a big pot of lentils.

I thought I would take the time AGAIN to share some things we always have in our house to help make a quick meal work:

Beans: black beans, white beans, kidney beans, black eyed peas, garbanzo beans
We use the GOYA low sodium beans when we have too. All the beans don’t come in low sodium varieties though. Beans are easy to keep on hand and really the only canned food I consistently eat.

Brown rice and quinoa.
I keep different varieties of rice around because it helps with a quick meal. I have the long grain rice that I slow cook, but if I’m in a hurry I also have the boil in the bag variety. Quinoa is always there for the extra protein punch but just like the brown rice, you need some time to cook it. When I know I’m going to have a busy week, I will cook a big pot of rice or quinoa and use that as a base for most take away meals. Rice/quinoa is easy because you can go meatless with it if you need to and just make a veggie rice dish.

Cucumbers, carrots, celery (or some type of dip-able veggie)
Cut them up and portion them out, pair it with your favorite dip and you have a low carb snack. My favorite combo? Carrots and peanut butter! But I love cucumbers and tzaziki.

Ziploc bags.
You have to have something to put all this stuff in perfect portions in.

Luna bars.
Because it’s a great pre-workout snack for me. It’s perfect. It’s low sugar and comes in some great flavors. It’s just easy and I need a grab and go solution.

Hard boiled eggs.
This is something new for us. Willie has moved off of the bars and has been doing hard boiled eggs instead. He makes them at the beginning of the week and takes them when he needs them. It’s actually a pretty perfect snack.

Lettuce.
Lettuce is BIG in our house because any meal can be turned into a salad to add volume. Feeling extra hungry? Add lettuce!

Tyson grilled chicken.
I a HUGE fan of this stuff because I can eat it and not feel really bad about it. It’s quick. I don’t do the lightly breaded products, but that’s just me. I am a huge fan of the diced grilled chicken breast and the pulled chicken. Willie really likes the pulled pork. This is a better option convenience food which we sometimes need, especially when busy!

What foods do you keep on hand every week?  We can all learn from each other.