Sometimes I look at blogs and diy videos and I chuckle to myself. Surely these people must be kidding. Or aliens. Or have nothing better to do. I mean, sure. I'd love to grow my own food and organically create a healthy vegan mecca whilst minimizing my carbon footprint and meditating at the same time.
But who am I kidding? I am a human. With a job. Sure, I may look like I have it all together, but there are dishes in my sink, and my living room is a constant war zone of dog toy casualties, and every once in a while, I clear off my rocking chair in the bedroom by hanging up my clean clothes. I'd much rather read than sweep. I prefer to go for a run with my dogs than take out the recycling.
Here's the thing. Mondays are the one day of the week that I have afternoon/evening time that I'm willing to devote to meal prep for the week. That doesn't mean that by Monday night I have a week's worth of meals in my fridge. I'm not that cool. One of my coworkers was telling me that when her husband, who is the primary cook in the house, went away for a week, he prepped a week's worth of meals for the family in the freezer. I don't have that kind of freezer space! With just Rob & I at home, we can't eat breads fast enough, so they live in the freezer now. And the bottom shelf of the fridge is Rob's beer shelf, so I have to work around that, too.
To be honest, even if I had freezer or refigerator space I wouldn't do anything different. Because this works for me.
Anyway, I thought it might be helpful to see what I do on Mondays to make my week go a little smoother. First of all, I do my grocery shopping on Monday afternoons. I think any non-weekend time is a good time to shop. I make careful lists, and only walk down aisles that I need to. I find that I generally hit the produce section, the bean aisle, and occasionally the bread or freezer aisles.
When I get home, I preheat the oven. I've been using a lot of sweet potatoes lately, so I prebake them all at once so I only have to turn my oven on one time. Any other baking will also happen on Monday. Yesterday, I also baked a butternut squash for some soup I'm going to make tonight.
The recipe I was making for dinner called for 1/3 c diced onions, and I knew I'd need other chopped onions since I had 3 on my list, so I chopped the whole thing and stored the rest in a container in the fridge for easy use later.
Since I already had the oven on, I baked my pumpkin falafels that I'll be eating for lunches Tuesday and Thursday.
I know you've seen this on pintrest, so why aren't you doing it already? Salads in a jar are a great way to bring your greens to work. I mixed a salad dressing in the bottom of sunflower butter, soy sauce and lemon juice in the bottom, then layered in cukes, onions, tomatoes, and spinach. These I will take to work and eat with my pumpkin falafels on Tuesday and Thursday.
With just a little effort, I pre made lunches for Tuesday and Thursday, prepped veggies for Tuesday dinner (which will also be Wednesday lunch), and the sweet potatoes will be used in a dessert Tuesday night, and meals on Friday and Sunday.
By the time Rob gets home from work on Mondays, I've got dinner going, and feel pretty damn productive. That way, I don't have to stress too much about other meals through the week.
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