Plan & Prep | March 20th - 26th

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This week's meal prep & plan is brought to you by sheet pan meals and lots and lots of green beans. Green beans are my favorite vegetable, so when I saw them on sale this week, I may or may not have brought home seven pounds worth. Green beans keep great for about two weeks in the fridge, so I'm sure we will get through them all.

Sheet pan meals are one of my favorite ways to prep meals, meal components, or easy hands-off dinners. I use the standard half-size pans from Sam's Club - they are inexpensive, sturdy, and clean up easily. Pro tip - use foil to divide the sheet pan into sections if you do not want flavors to meld - I did this when cooking both chicken and fish on the same pan.

This week's meal plan also leaned in heavily to the miscellaneous items in the fridge - some lingering sundried tomatoes in oil, pickled jalapenos, olives, parsley, pesto, etc. These items tend to get lost in the back of the fridge, so it's beneficial to pull all those items out every other week or so to see what you can add to your meal plan.

Meal Plan & Prep for the 4th Week of March 2021

Meal Plan (Monday - Friday)

Breakfasts for the Week
  • Breakfast Quesadillas (from the freezer)
  • Toast w/ Peanut Butter
  • Bagels w/ Cream Cheese or Bagel Egg Sandwich
  • Cereal w/ Milk
Lunches for the Week
  • Garlic Cheese Sausages, Roasted Cabbage, & Knorr Rice Sides 
  • Chicken with Lemon Herb Pasta & Green Beans
  • Rotisserie Chicken, Roasted Potatoes, & Green Beans
  • Steak, Mac & Cheese, & Green Beans
  • "Pickity Bits" (cheese, crackers, nuts, etc) and Misc. Leftovers from Dinners
Dinners for the Week 
  • Monday - Rotisserie Chicken, Roasted Potatoes, & Green Beans
  • Tuesday - Sheet Pan Nachos with Queso Dip
  • Wednesday - Garlic Butter Steak Tips w/ Sheet Pan Mac & Cheese, & Green Beans
  • Thursday - Various Leftovers
  • Friday - Unsure - I think we are helping my Dad that evening, so will eat dinner with him
Snacks for the Week
  • Blackberries, Strawberries, Grapes, Goldfish, Cocoa Almonds
  • Also Available: carrots, popcorn, cheese sticks, nuts, pretzels, etc

Meal Prep for Breakfasts

Breakfast this week involved zero prep! I pulled a few of the egg & scrapple quesadillas out of the freezer that I made a month or so ago. These we warm in a pan while getting ready, but they also heat well in the microwave. I also took bread for toast to work this week, since we have a toaster at work. On the day I worked from home, I made Ben a breakfast sandwich on a bagel, and I had my bagel with cream cheese.

Meal Prep for Lunches

Work lunches this week was all about the "planned-overs"! We rolled the garlic cheese sausage, chicken, steak, potatoes, Knorr Rice, green beans, and cabbage into a variety of work lunches. All of these components complimented each other nicely, meaning that we never got tired of "eating the same thing" because it was always a different combination of foods.


Ingredient Prep for Dinners

Dinners were very similar to our lunches this week, as we ate meals like the rotisserie chicken and potatoes "fresh" for dinner one night, and then rolled the "planned-overs" into lunches for the rest of the weeks lunches and some dinners. Tuesday night we turned to another quick and easy sheet pan meal, nachos. I had half a bag of tortilla chips that were a bit stale, so I toasted them off first - toasting stale tortilla chips in the oven will help bring them back to life. These nachos also helped us clean out multiple open jars of condiments in the fridge - olives, pickled jalapenos, and a sad orange pepper.

Sunday's dinner was baked chicken, tilapia with a sundried tomato sauce, roasted tomatoes, and lemon herb pasta.

Snack Prep

For snacks this week, I prepped strawberries and blackberries, gold fish, and cocoa almonds. I like to toss in an extra pre-portioned snack with lunches just in case lunch was not as filling as expected.

This week I also roasted a head of garlic and cooked some chickpeas from dry, but ended up not getting to the hummus I planned to make, so I stuck them in the freezer to use next week.



I hope you like the new format! What's on your menu for the week?

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