a day of meal prepping

The more busy I get in life, the more I've become aware of some emotional needs of mine. I need time alone. I need time to decompress. On Casey's days off, you'll rarely find him inside the house. He does well in his off time doing things outdoors or playing basketball at the gym for hours at a time. In my off days, I need at least one day a week to be in the house. Some of that time will be spent on the couch or in my bed doing NOTHING. I need that. I need time to not feel busy. One of my things I've become accustomed to as a way of therapy is cooking. I think I've always felt that way about it but have become more aware of what it does for my mind in becoming a wife and having someone else to cook with. I think one of the reasons my summer spent at Crooked Creek Ranch is so memorable is because I was cooking! It's such a comfort for so many reasons. It's mindless and instinctual to me. I rarely use measuring units and instead rely on taste. It's why I'm not a very good baker. I also just REALLY love good food and love the comfort of having good food available to me.

I've had alot of people asking about what I've done to help myself succeed in completing 3 rounds of whole 30, how I deal with the massive amount of cooking involved, etc. One of the most important things I've done is planning ahead! At the beginning of each week I use the "Numbers" app on my phone to create a spreadsheet of everything I will eat that week. Seriously, everything. The app has an already made template that even includes a blank grocery shopping list on the second page that makes it easy to flip back and forth and create my lists. The menu spreadsheet has slots for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as 2 spots for snacks (though I usually try not to snack and just eat bigger meals).

Yesterday was a prep day for me and I made the following:

• 1 quart sized mason jar of cooked sweet potato hash  (about 8 breakfasts worth)-- ready to be heated up
• 1 quart sized mason jar of caulirice (about 10 servings) -- it's not cooked but this will save me tons of time on dinners!
• 4 salads in mason jars -- this usually includes a shredded chicken breast on bottom (to keep the spinach from getting soggy) spinach, tomatoes or fruit such apples or berries, and some sort of nut
• 1 small mason jar of homemade salad dressing --that I'll pour into idividual tuboware as needed
• 1 GIANT batch of minestrone soup -- 2-3 servings in the fridge and the rest in the freezer for lunches
• 12 hard boiled eggs -- for snacks or to pair with meals for more protein
• all vegetables for meals cut and cleaned and stored into zip locks -- huge time saver!
• Aideli's chicken and apple sausage sliced for breakfast and divided into single servings into ziplocks
• chicken cut into individual servings and put into a snack sized ziplock to be frozen -- this makes it so easy to pull to be thawed. I used to put 3 chicken breasts in a ziplock to be frozen since I usually cook for just the 3 of us but have found that it's even easier to just divide them individually for when more people come for dinner or for when Casey and I eat fish and just Marcel eats chicken (because he hates fish)

All of this prep took around 2 hours and gives me the ability to have a ready (or almost ready) to go breakfast and lunch every day so that I don't have to add time to my mornings in order to eat well. No need to be tempted to eat food at camp when I already have lunch made. Spending just a couple hours once a week doing all of this gives me the freedom to slow down when I get home from work and take my time making dinner and relaxing.

Casey has built our new bed frame and we're working on staining it now. We also bought supplies to make these copper wall sconces for above our bed so stay tuned for pictures of our bedroom transformation!

Happy cooking!