Meal Prep One Month In

I’ve been sticking to the entire meal prep thing for breakfast and lunch for about a month now.

So far it’s going pretty well.

Breakfast is overnight oats most days. From time to time I will vary it if I stumble across an ingredient that really strikes me as being “worth it”.

I’ll also admit that I’ve found myself having the overnight oats as a snack as well. Probably not the best choice, but also probably better than some alternatives.

With the overnight oats I’ve been experimenting a bit with the recipe, both in terms of ingredients and method.

On a recent trip to the US I was able to pick up a few interesting freeze dried berries and other fruit (without any added sugar or other rubbish). So I’ve been trying different fruits in the overnight oats. I’ve also been playing around with different ways of putting them together and whether I mix them in advance or not. At this stage I think that mixing them all together when you’re assembling them in the jars works better. While just putting in each ingredient and letting the liquids work away naturally is mostly okay, things tend to get a better soak if you mix it all together.

I need to look into more variations on the recipe and change things up a bit. But so far I’m pretty happy with doing 4 or more days’ worth of overnight oats and just grabbing one in the morning.

Lunches are always salads.

I’ve been playing around a little with ingredients, but tend to use a lot of chicken and tuna (though not at the same time!) I like using Shine’s tuna, though I probably need to change how I’m buying it. Would larger family packs be better value? I need to look into this.

Doing a whole chicken in the Instant Pot is a game changer. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s really tasty. And did I mention that it basically falls apart?

A small chicken from any of the supermarkets will be just over 1kg. Once fully cooked and with all the bones and other stuff removed you’re probably looking at around 800g of meat. (I really must weigh it next time I do one!) That’s more than enough meat to do a full working week of lunches, so you’ll probably end up with more than enough for other things, like post lunch snacks or whatever takes your fancy.

I need to look into a wider range of salad options. While I do like the ones I’ve been doing I’d really like to add a bit more variety into the mix!

Also protein. It’d be nice to switch things around a bit more – there’s only so much chicken and tuna that you can eat!