A while back I wrote an article about what I eat in a day, and in it I talked about how I meal prep lunches for the week. Here’s the gist: on Saturday or Sunday, I’ll either slow cook or grill a bunch of chicken breasts, or grill a big pork loin or some lean hamburger patties, or just cook some lean ground beef in a skillet. Then I’ll boil up a big pot of either sweet potatoes or regular potatoes (I’ll roast them occasionally, too), or I’ll make a big batch of rice, or I’ll make a big pot of beans.
Then I microwave some frozen vegetables for micronutrients. I put all this stuff in Pyrex dishes, put them in the fridge, and then dole myself out a lunch each day. It doesn’t take much time, and it’s pretty dang cheap.
But some weeks I don’t have time to meal prep on Saturday or Sunday. Things just get busy with work or kids, or I’ve been traveling and I don’t have time to grocery shop and cook. I still want to eat well during these busy stretches.
I don’t want to eat fast food or QT taquitos. So when my schedule is crammed, I’ll basically do meal prep without meal prepping. There are two ways I do it.
Prep time: A quick trip to Walmart or the grocery store, ten or so minutes microwaving frozen veggies Cost: $3.50–$6 per lunch, depending on the protein My go-to option when I’m busy is to stop by Walmart on the way home from dropping the kids off at school to pick up some prepared foods for lunch. There are a lot of great options out there now. You just get an already-cooked protein of some sort, a starch, and some frozen vegetables, and then you microwave it up and you’re ready to go.
There are a lot of precooked proteins at Walmart now. These are the ones I’ve used. Kevin’s Natural Foods makes sous-vide chicken and beef that’s fully cooked.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
