(upbeat music)
- Hey munchies, welcome to the channel.
If you're new, I'm Alyssia.
If you're not new and you've been
tuning in every weekday this month,
we are doing an entire series on meal prep.
I'm showing slow cooker and sheet pan dinners
from my brand new e-book,
which, as you know, you get for free
if you purchase my Meal Prep Ignite course.
Guess what, enrollment opened yesterday on April 8th.
So as of now for only two weeks,
we have a limited enrollment window,
you can sign up for my Meal Prep Ignite course
where I teach you how to meal prep for your lifestyle.
This is not a meal plan.
You can apply this to any lifestyle that you follow.
But it's gonna teach you all of the tips and information
and education that you're gonna need
to make an efficient prep for you.
So today, I am going to take you
through my Meal Prep Ignite system,
which is all of these printables
that are included in the course,
and I'm gonna show you my menu for the week,
an example, and how I'm gonna prep it.
I'm gonna do the entire prep right here
for you today on YouTube,
and then if you want more, you can check out my course
at mealprepignite.com.
So before we started filming I got everything ready to film,
so pretty much this is the end of my planning.
I am at my prep day.
But before that, I filled out all of these tools.
Now it doesn't take that long.
It only takes me 30 to 45 minutes.
It might take you an hour if you're new to meal prep.
But the idea is these tools make it so that
you're gonna save time and money.
You're not gonna waste any ingredients that you already have
because you have your kitchen inventory.
I'm gonna show you how to plan out your week
so that you don't waste time making meals you don't need.
I have a work lunch on Wednesday,
so I know I won't need a meal on that day.
Then you're gonna plan out your full menu.
So my menu for the week,
for breakfast I have two breakfasts.
I've got fruit and yogurt parfaits
and apple cinnamon oat muffins.
Those are also gonna double as a snack if I have extras.
I also have an egg salad pita
with a chimichurri sauce for lunch,
and for dinner I've got a chicken pot roast
and barbecue drumsticks.
These are gonna touch on what we've been doing all month,
the sheet pan and the slow cooker meals.
And for snacks I've got oat muffins,
olives, radish and snap peas with salsa,
and some tangerines.
So that is the menu for the week.
Just to give you a little preview of the tools,
I was also able to write down all of my menu ingredients
so I made sure to not miss anything.
I have a whole system that I teach you
how to use in my course and then
a grocery list that you can easily compile everything,
take to the store with you,
and check it off so you make sure
you aren't missing anything on prep day.
So your prep day map is gonna help you use
your kitchen equipment and time most efficiently.
You're gonna see exactly what you need to do on prep day,
but it isn't until you get to the prep day game plan
that you plan out exactly the order
you're gonna do everything,
which is today.
I can come into the kitchen.
I know exactly what I need to do in what order,
how long it's gonna take me,
and I'm gonna make this a breeze.
My oven is preheated.
The first thing on my list are my apple cinnamon oat
blender muffins.
They are so easy.
The first thing I'm gonna do is
blend up my oats in the blender.
The beauty of this recipe is everything literally
goes into the blender and then my batter's done.
So first, let's make these oats into a flour.
Now I can just add all of the remaining ingredients
and blend it up.
(upbeat music)
Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes.
- [Alexa] 10 minutes, starting now.
(upbeat music)
- I'm gonna get started with my pot roast
since I have a lot of produce to prep for that.
So as I mentioned,
and as you've been seeing in this series this month,
everything in my slow cooker meals goes
straight into a big freezer bag,
and then that can just get refrigerated or frozen
until whenever I wanna cook it,
and I've got my slow cooker meal ready to go.
(relaxing music)
(upbeat music)
(timer beeping)
My slow cooker meal produce is prepped
as much as I need to for now.
My muffins are ready to come out of the oven
and then I can finish prepping the rest of my produce.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna prep the produce that I need
for my side salad at lunch,
which consists of mostly arugula, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
In my course, I share a best and worst tool.
It's a reference sheet that gives you an idea
of what are the items that will last for the longest
or the shortest amounts of time.
Cucumbers are not a great meal prep food,
especially once you cut them,
they'll only last one to three days.
So, what I like to do is store them in a produce saver,
and they'll last up to about four, sometimes five days.
If you're worried, you could always
prep one less day of salads.
But this way I extend the shelf life
just a little bit longer.
Now I'm going to prep my snack jars.
I am using snap peas,
and I have bought a washed and ready bag of them,
so I don't have to do anything with that.
And I have radishes which I'm going to just pick off,
wash, and then chop, and I will fill my jars for the week.
(upbeat music)
I've got green beans as my vegetable
with my sheet pan dinners.
Now the beauty of a sheet pan dinner,
in case you don't already know from our April series,
is everything gets prepped on prep day,
and then during the week everything goes onto a sheet pan
and into the oven at once.
So you're carb, your vegetable, and your protein
get cooked together for the easiest fresh weeknight meal.
The last piece of produce I need to prep
is shallot for my chimichurri sauce.
My chimichurri sauce is gonna get made
in the food processor,
so rather than spending a bunch of time
meticulously dicing it,
I'm just gonna roughly cut what I need
and then I'll pulse it up in here.
All of the produce is done,
now I just need to finish prepping some basic protein.
So I have my boiled eggs for my chopped egg salad,
and I have my chicken for my pot roast.
Now, you can see I have two cutting boards
out this whole time
because I like to have stations,
and one of those I recommend being your raw food
or meat station, just so you avoid cross contamination.
Now, you can totally boil your own eggs.
To me, it's a pain.
I'm really bad at it,
so I buy them preboiled now,
and they're really affordable.
I just get these from Trader Joe's, not sponsored.
But, if you wanted to save the extra dollar.
I mean, they're really affordable,
but if you wanted to save the extra dollar
you could just boil them yourself on prep day.
So the last bit of cutting I have to do
is chopping up my chicken breast for my pot roast.
Now you guys haven't seen this recipe yet.
It's coming up alter this month,
but when you do see it you're gonna notice
that I use chicken thighs in that recipe.
Well, today I had chicken breast that
I had already frozen when it went on sale a few weeks ago,
so I'm just gonna use that.
And remember, in almost all of these recipes,
especially slow cooker meals,
you can use any protein that you prefer.
So don't worry if you don't have the exact ingredient.
On to my chimichurri sauce,
which is going to go into my egg salad.
Now, you saw me put the shallots into the food processor.
I am going to simply add a garlic clove now
and just pulse that to chop up the shallot
since I didn't chop it up myself because I was too lazy.
Whoa!
That is a strong shallot.
(upbeat music)
This chimichurri sauce is so good.
So what I'm gonna do is mix some of the chimichurri sauce
with yogurt and then I'm gonna toss
my chopped boiled eggs in that for a chimichurri-flavored
creamy egg salad.
As I'm mixing I realized I totally forgot
to veggie pack this egg salad.
I am just throwing in some raw cauliflower rice
because it's gonna add some,
I cut it upside down,
it's gonna add some crunch and texture and vegetables,
but you're not even gonna taste the flavor.
My egg salad is made and ready to be distributed
into my jars or whatever storage containers you prefer.
I have the rest of my chimichurri sauce
in a little jar here,
so I can use that later in the week if I want.
For instance, my sheet pan dinner right now
is barbecue flavored, but I can always add chimichurri
one of the nights if I wanted, why not?
(upbeat music)
So I'm about an hour into my prep,
and I'm probably a little more than halfway done.
But, on my prep day game plan I had anticipated
packaging up my side salad and salad dressing
before I took a cleaning break.
Now if you are in my Meal Prep Ignite course,
you know that I recommend cleaning breaks
as you go through your meal prep session
to make everything a little more efficient and effective.
But I'm gonna do my cleaning break now
because my sink is about full,
and then I can come back and finish up.
(upbeat music)
That cleaning literally took me less than five minutes,
but now I have a clean sink and kitchen,
and I'm ready to get back to it.
So I'm going to assemble my salads and my dressing.
Now for my salad, you saw me chop the cucumbers and tomatoes
and put them in the food saver.
I'm also going to portion out my greens,
and I'm gonna use arugula this week
into my salad containers,
just so they're ready to go.
What I do is the morning of or the night before
I will transfer some of those cucumber and tomatoes on top
as well as some avocado if desired,
I wouldn't recommend adding that until the day of,
but this cuts down on the amount of work that I have to do
in the morning or the night before.
I'm also making a lemon dijon salad dressing.
I did add a quarter of a lemon wedge to each salad
just for some extra fresh flavor on the day of.
But I love to make a homemade dressing.
You could, of course, use any salad dressing you prefer.
So I'm gonna combine some avocado oil,
you could also use light olive oil,
some freshly squeezed lemon juice,
some dijon mustard, and a pinch of salt and pepper.
And then I'm gonna take advantage of my mason jar,
put that lid on, and just shake to mix it up.
And then I have my dressing for the week,
but I can transfer it to a smaller container
for when I actually take my lunch with me to go.
(relaxing music)
So now it's just really a matter of assembly.
I'm gonna finish first with my slow cooker meal.
So I've got what we started earlier
with the produce and the chicken,
and now I can add in the remaining ingredients,
which does include a little bit of produce, baby carrots.
So I love a pot roast with carrots,
but why go through the trouble of cutting the big carrots
when I can just use these babies?
(upbeat music)
So for my sheet pan dinners,
I'm doing barbecue chicken drumsticks with sweet potatoes
and green beans.
So there's a little bit of a theme there.
We already packaged up the green beans,
so now I'm just gonna transfer some cut sweet potato cubes
into a portioned jar.
To save time on meal prep
I don't like to cut squash and sweet potatoes,
so I bought the precut kind,
but you can do what works for you.
For my drumsticks on my sheet pan dinner,
I am not going to season them now.
I'm just going to portion them out
so I have them easily accessible for my weeknight meal.
I'm gonna add the barbecue sauce the day that I cook it.
For snacks, sometimes I like to portion things out
like olives or nuts,
one so that I have a little bit of portion control down,
but two, if I have the healthy food accessible,
then I will eat it, but if it's not accessible,
if this is like sitting in the fridge
and it's more of a pain for me to portion them out
at the time I want to eat them
I probably won't eat them.
For my breakfast parfaits I'm doing fruit and yogurt.
Now I have a whole episode on
crazy flavored yogurts that you could check out
with a cool hack on how to store your toppings
separate from your yogurt.
But with fruit and yogurt,
you can actually store it together,
and the fruit juices sort of soak into the yogurt
and actually becomes really delicious.
Now it usually lasts three to four days.
It doesn't always make it to the fifth day.
So you may want to store your fruit separately.
I'm actually using frozen fruit
because it's gonna thaw out in the fridge,
it's cheaper, and it's just as nutritious.
So I simply add my Greek yogurt,
you could use any yogurt that you prefer,
it could be soy or coconut, to about half of the jar.
And then I'm gonna put on a little bit of
honey and cinnamon,
and I don't even need to really mix it in now
because I'm gonna stir this whole thing together later
with my fruit on top.
Then I can add the lids and store the jars in the fridge,
and over time, like I said, those fruit juices soak up
into that yogurt and it becomes really tasty.
To go with my vegetable snack packs
I'm also going to pack a little jar of salsa for dipping.
So, for my breakfasts for the week on my menu,
I have fruit and yogurt parfaits
and my apple cinnamon oat muffins.
I know that my fruit and yogurt parfaits
needed to serve six,
and my muffins needed to serve four
with the additional serving as snacks.
For lunch for the week I know from my weekly meal calendar
that I only needed four lunches,
and I decided to just make one because I'm pretty fine
with having the same lunch every day
if I have some variety in my other meals.
For lunch, on my menu, I have a chimichurri egg salad pita
with a lemon garlic and dijon side salad.
So when we made the egg salad you didn't see the pita,
but I'm keeping the pita on the side
so I can pack my lunch with a pita,
a serving of egg salad, and a side salad,
and then I can assemble it at the time of eating.
Now I developed this egg salad recipe
using my mix and match method,
which I share in my Meal Prep Ignite course.
It's one of the systems that I provide
to help people who want more sustainable meal prep
and don't wanna have to depend on specific recipes.
So what it pretty much is is you're mixing a protein,
a vegetable, a carb, and a flavor.
So I used eggs as my protein and chimichurri as my flavor
and came up with that chimichurri egg salad.
I have two dinners on my menu this week,
my chicken pot roast and my barbecue drumsticks.
Now, the chicken pot roast you are gonna see
later in this series.
I know you didn't get to see it made today,
but you know how it goes.
It all gets dumped into the slow cooker
on the day that I want to cook it.
So tomorrow, Monday, before I leave for the day,
I'm gonna throw that in the slow cooker,
let it cook low and slow all day long,
and I'll come back to a fresh cooked meal.
Then I can use the leftovers the rest of the week,
not only does this make my meal prep day, today, shorter,
I mean I spent less than two hours doing all of this,
but it also means I get an extra fresh meal during the week.
Same goes for my sheet pan dinner.
So this sheet pan dinner is not being shown this month.
I just threw this idea together.
So the beauty of the sheet pan meals is
when I'm ready to cook,
which will be Tuesday and Thursday night
on my menu this week,
I can add everything to the pan.
The green beans are gonna take less time,
so I'm starting with my drumsticks,
which I can coat with a low-sugar barbecue sauce,
as well as my sweet potato that I'm gonna toss with oil
and whatever seasonings.
Sometimes I just like to keep it simple
with salt, pepper, garlic powder, whatever.
That goes into the oven,
and then halfway through I can add my seasoned green beans
as well to the oven,
and then my entire meal is ready to go at the same time.
I get two more fresh-cooked meals this week.
And for snacks this week,
I have those leftover apple cinnamon oat muffins
as well as some veggie jars with snap peas and radishes
and salsa for dipping,
some portioned out Kalamata olives,
as well as some mandarines.
And that is my super easy meal prep for the week,
customized to my needs and my lifestyle.
So in under two hours I have all of this food ready.
I have breakfasts and dinners for two people
and all of my lunches.
All I really have to do is a few dishes in the sink,
organize this in my fridge, and I'm good to go.
You can learn this easy system with all of these tools
in my Meal Prep Ignite course.
I walk you through how to use every single tool,
so by the end of it you can actually plan
your very own meal prep session.
And the beauty is, you can continue to use the tools
over and over and over again every single week
to keep it easy, sustainable, efficient, and effective.
And that is it for today.
I will see you back here tomorrow with another recipe
from my brand new sheet pan
and slow cooker meal prep recipes e-book.
And remember, it's all a matter of mind over munch.