Sunday Food Prep

One of the keys to eating well is planning your meals and doing a little prep on Sunday.

Every Sunday I prep food for the week to come.  At some point I will detail for you exactly how I plan for the week,  for now I’ll give you the details of what I do each week on Sunday. No matter how busy I am I take some time on Sunday to do a few things.  With this prep done, filling my body with healthy foods falls into place more easily.  My meal plan is to have 70% of my meals vegetables, 30% protein, healthy fats and low glycemic grains (or starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes). To make this happen easily, this is what I do on Sunday:

• Prep greens.  This time of year I am picking greens from my garden so I get salad greens wash and put them into containers.  I will use these for my lunches.  I also prep some, romaine, kale and swiss chard, washed and bagged. I will use these in my morning smoothies and for my dinner vegetable sauté. I wait until I am ready to cook to cut them up..
• Prep 2 salad dressings.  This week I am making Tahini Dressing and Asian Sunflower Seed Dressing.  I like dressings made from seeds to provide more protein and healthy fats in my salad.  I find them more satisfying that way.
• Prep one large soup.  I freeze half for later on in the week.  Today I am making Red Lentil Dhal one of my favorites.
• Prep vegetables for roast vegetables.  I usually make a sautéed vegetable dish and a roast or grilled vegetable dish for dinner.  When there is a variety of flavors and textures of vegetables on my dinner plate, I eat more of them.  I like to have the vegetables prepped.  Today will cut up cauliflower for Roasted Cauliflower with Cumin and wash some zucchini so they are ready to go for the evening meals.  I plan to cut up the zucchini and grill them, later on in the week. I will wait until I am ready to cook them to cut them up.  Sometimes I will prep some sweet potatoes also which I love to roast.

When I cook vegetables I make enough for 2 meals.  I will have the leftovers for either breakfast with some eggs or for lunch.

• Roast an organic chicken.  I can then eat this for dinner when I get home late.  You can also put some chicken on your salad for lunch.  ( I generally only eat animal protein at dinner but you may want to have some for lunch too.)
• Prep a pot of quinoa.  When the quinoa is already cooked,  all I have to do for dinner is make a few vegetables which I have washed in advance.
• Make almond milk for my morning beverage.  These days I am drinking Dandy Blend, instead of coffee.  Here is a recipe for making almond milk.  I don’t do this every week, it depends on how much time I have.

Once you have everything ready like this on Sunday you can feel confident you will be eating delicious nutritious foods the week.