Lindsay Baumgren shows how to prep a week of dinners using five recipes: coconut curry chicken, sheet-pan chicken and veggies, blackened salmon tacos, a veggie-egg skillet, and homemade pizza. She batches brown rice on Sunday, doubles recipes for the freezer, and uses pre-chopped vegetables to cut prep time.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Lindsay Baumgren of NourishMove Love and today I'm walking you through how I meal prep dinner for my family for an entire week. We're talking Sunday through Saturday. Five recipes, seven nights worth of meals. We're gonna be making coconut curry chicken, one pan chicken and veggie bake, salmon tacos, breakfast bowls for dinner and homemade pizzas. We're gonna start with coconut curry chicken. I make it in the crock pot and I do this on Sundays. Sundays are usually my most meal prep intensive day and I and a great day to bust out the crock pot, double batch recipes and bulk chop veggies. So that's why we're making this recipe first. I base this recipe off Fit Foodie Fine's coconut curry chicken recipe. I work off that recipe but what I do is I add zucchini to it. So I'm gonna chop up extra zucchini and I add extra peppers. I love adding veggies and more is better. I double batch this so I can throw some in the freezer as well. I use basic curry sauce, coconut milk and simple salt and chili pepper. It's the little things at the end like adding a squeeze of lime and some extra basil that really make the recipe complete. If you ask me, just put some rice in a bowl which I've batch cooked my rice. It's Sunday so I'm batch cooking a bunch of brown rice because we're gonna be making tacos later this week too. And that's dinner number one. Alright, we're on to meal number two. One pan chicken and veggie bake. I typically make this on Mondays for three reasons. One, Mondays are super busy and I like to keep it simple. One pan sheet meal. Way to go. Two, I buy pre chopped veggies when I can for Monday nights. Three, I make an extra sheet pan of the pre chopped veggies to set myself up for meal prep for myself and my son for the week. Chicken thighs on a sheet pan. My favorite seasoning is paleo powder and we mix it up. So I make this meal like I said on repeat on Mondays. How I make it different, I change up the seasonings and I change out the veggies and so this week we're using squash, green beans and carrots. Maybe next week I'd use yellow potatoes, broccoli and carrots again. Or I mix it up based on what I have on hand. But that's how I make this meal taste different and keep it a staple in our house. So it's as simple as that. Buy pre chopped veggies when you can to save yourself. If you're on a budget, use frozen veggies straight from the freezer and dump those on too. So I always roast an extra sheet pan for my son and I for lunches for the week. I drizzled oil on these ones because we're gonna eat those tonight. But I use spray AV oil when I'm meal prepping veggies for the week because they're not going to get as soggy as the ones that have drizzled oil on them. So I love this. Avocado oil from Primal Kitchen. Comes in a spray can and it keeps your veggies a little bit more fresh if you're going to save them and use them throughout the week. All right, we're on to meal number three. We're making blackened salmon tacos. They're amazing and usually the only way I get my boys in my house to eat salmon. I bulk chopped my peppers on Sunday and and stored them in this produce saver so I didn't have to do any chopping tonight. Woo hoo. Mom win. So I got my onions, my peppers, my zucchini all chopped and ready to go. We're gonna take the salmon, throw it in the pan, add some simple taco seasoning, same with the veggies and we have it all set up family style. I like to add a little bit more lime to both my peppers and to my salmon and I'll even throw some in my rice. Speaking of the rice, do you remember when we batch cooked the rice on Sunday for the coconut curry? Re enter didn't have to do it again. So let's build our taco. We have our avocado. I'm gonna mash it up to give a nice base. I do this for both Brody myself. My husband's not an avocado lover. Not sure what's wrong with him. Easy add ons. Corn and black beans. Super budget friendly. Great way to fill up the plate too. Grab some tortilla chips, cheese, whatever you want to top your tacos with. Taco Tuesday. Enjoy. All right, on to dinner number four. This night we're going. Leftovers, scrounge from the fridge, pull from the freezer or eat out. Now this doesn't have to be your Wednesday night. The goal of this meal plan is to make it work for you, so be flexible with it. We're taking a night off pulling from the freezer because you double batch that coconut curry chicken or something else. From a previous week. I get asked about how I save meals in the freezer. And so I love going with a glass bowl airtight container. And that's how I'd like to store it, ideally because I can pull it, I can reheat it, maybe pop it in the microwave if I need to. That said, I have a small freezer. So if I have a lot going in the freezer, I'll resort to massive ziploc bags. Dump the meal in here after it's cooled, of course. So let the meal cool, then dump it in here, zip it tight, stick it in the freezer and then just know that you need to pull it out and let it unthaw usually the night before. So you can use a Ziploc, you can use a Pyrex, and that's how I store stuff in the freezer. Enjoy your night off and we'll move on to dinner number two. Five breakfast for dinner. It's Thursday night. You're nearing the end of the week. It's all about cleaning out the fridge. Grab whatever veggies you have on hand. Today we're going with yellow potatoes. You could always sub squash or sweet potatoes, whatever you have on hand. We got zucchini peppers. Did you notice how we stuck with a pepper and zucchini scene this week? So if you're a bulk buyer, budget friendly, buy your peppers in bulk. Buy your zucchini in bulk. Also have some pre chopped brussels sprouts I could throw in there if I want. You can stick with eggs and do scrambled over easy. You can accommodate your whole family. I just scramb super simple for everybody or for in a real pinch, I even at the beginning of the week, bake eggs in a muffin tin for my breakfast. I have some chicken sausage here. Dice that up. We're gonna throw all this in a pan, saute it. If you've never cooked your eggs in ghee, it will change your life. My friends. Those buttery eggs makes all the difference. Breakfast for dinner. Done and done. By this time, it's Friday night. So we started the week with roasted veggies. We're ending the week with homemade pizza. Cause nothing better than family fun, movie night and pizza making, right? I'm gonna be real by the end of the week. Big mama just wants to sit on the couch with some wine and enjoy my pizza. So we're going pre made. I'm simply using sprouted grain whole grain pizza crust. You could do a cauliflower crust, you could do whatever your little heart desires. And I'M also gonna go with a pre made pizza sauce. I checked the ingredients. Goal low sugar ingredients. Just dice up some veggies. Whatever you have on hand, load it up. I like to throw on some frozen spinach as well. If you want to add sausage, add this sausage of your choice, load it with cheese. And there you have it. Five recipes spanning seven nights to get you through a full week of dinner meal prep. It's how we do it in my house. I hope it was simple for you to follow along. And most importantly, know that below you are going to find a grocery list, a meal prep list, a prep guide and recipes to all of this goodness. So it's all below. Dive in, check it out and let me know if you have questions, comments, or want to see more videos like this comment below.
