Meal Planning or Meal Prep (Snack Boxes)
We all have good intentions of eating healthy and the latest “craze” is Meal Planning or Meal Prep. My husband, Scott, and I have tried several ways of doing this. So I thought I would share with you some of the ways we have planned our meals.
Snack boxes
Snack boxes are a great way to eat healthy during the day when you have the “munchies”. I will create snack boxes in advance and take them to work or eat them when I get home from work. They really are not difficult to create but they do require some advance planning.
FIRST – define what you like. Make that list of healthy foods that you like and buy a variety of them for the week.
SECOND – make your boxes in advance. I usually make my boxes Sunday night OR first thing in the morning before I go to work.
Walmart has a great selection of snack boxes (if you click on the Walmart link it will take you direct to their selection of “meal prep” containers) . I chose the 2 section meal prep containers because I usually like to include cottage cheese or yogurt in my snack box and they deserve their own section.
I like to include several small quantity items so I have a variety to chose from when I snack. With this said I don’t want my food all running together so I will include small Dixie cups to hold any nuts or olives I may add to my snack box. Here is an example of a snack box that I created.
Meal Planning/Meal Prep
Scott and I used to eat pretty healthy but the food selection got boring. We found ourselves eating the same things over and over again. This forced us to look for other recipes BUT that can take time…..it’s like you have to do a “test run” on all of these recipes. SO…we did that “test run” and came up with a few of our favorites.
I am probably wrong in assuming that everyone is like us in that your refrigerator is “your information hub”, “your home base”, “your touch point for day-to-day activities”…it is where we have our calendar and notes to try to keep our busy life on track. One side of our refrigerator is dedicated to our Meal Planning/Meal Prep. We have written on index cards some of our favorite meals and categorized them by Breakfast, Lunch, Side, Snack, and Dinner. These are used to plan our weekly meals.
If there is ever an evening we do not want to cook we will go out to eat. Notice the bronze colored storage bin at the top (yes, I went crazy with my bronze spray paint). That is where we store our restaurant gift cards and coupons. We can opt for a meal on the refrigerator OR opt to “eat out” using a restaurant gift card or coupon from the storage bin. Our meal “test runs” are still in place so we will add to this list and take away when we get tired of something. Notice I re-purposed wine corks by creating a magnetic card holder (thanks to a neighbor for the wine corks!!)
