Easy Meal Prep Hacks

Hope: [00:00:00] Do you want to wake up feeling like you are stepping into who you are meant to be? Into the best possible version of you? What if I told you that the key to your best life, health, and happiness are all around you? You just have to find what works for you. I’m Hope Pedraza, and I believe that there isn’t just one way to live a healthy and meaningful life.

And that all you need is a little inspiration to make changes that last from the inside out. Each week, I’ll be sharing tangible tips and inspirational interviews to help you on your journey. These are the steps to take to improve your life

Hey guys, welcome back to Hopeful and Wholesome. So I have a quick episode here with some really helpful tips popping in for your meal prep hacks today. So just a few things I wanted to toss in here to help you out with meal prep. I get a lot of questions about this because, you know, people want to eat healthy.

And usually, I feel like the number one thing people tell me is they just, they don’t have the time. It really is, they just don’t know how to make the time, right? They have the [00:01:00] time, but they think it’s going to take more time than it really does because they don’t have strategies and ways to do it the most efficient way.

So, I’m going to say this, everybody has time to eat healthy. It’s just, first of all, it’s making the time. And then two, it’s just using the right strategies to save yourself from doing it the long way. So Healthy life can be a lot of work. I will say that again. If you’re not using the right strategies to do it efficiently.

So it’s, you know, it’s the planning, the prepping, the cooking, not to mention trying to please everyone in the family while you’re the one trying to eat healthy. And for some people, that can be the biggest challenge of all. So, The truth is, there are really a lot of time saving hacks that can make your life, your healthy lifestyle easier.

It can save you time, it can save you money, and you can still please the whole family. So I’ve got a few here to give to you today. If you’ve got more, do share because I love to hear some more tips as well. So first is when you’re cooking, and I’m going to say this, not just for the plant based eaters, because I know not everybody listening to this is plant based, but I’ll kind of give it to you two ways.

So my [00:02:00] first tip is seasoning your protein three ways just using one pan. So your protein, whether you’re plant based or not, it can be turkey, chicken, beef, tofu, tempeh, whatever you’re cooking. But you don’t want to be eating the same thing all week, right? And I know some people can get used to that, but typically we get burnt out.

So we want to use different seasonings and different marinades and different, different flavors. But you can use the same protein and just make it more than one way. So you can put it all in one pan. You have more than one pan, you can use more than one pan. But if you could, you could put it all in one pan, kind of separate the pan with tinfoil and then season it three ways.

You could do. You can do a dry rub on one, you can do a sauce, like a barbecue sauce on another, or garlic, or whatever, but having three different seasonings, three different marinades, three different flavors all in one pan, put it in the oven, and there you just made three, the base of three different meals all in one pan.

Quick and easy. Second, if you are someone who likes to eat eggs, cooking eggs in the oven is super [00:03:00] easy, super quick. You can, um, Really, you can only fit like maybe five or six eggs in one pot depending on how big your pot is, right? So if you want to make a dozen all in one batch, grab your muffin tin, toss them in, cook them for 30 minutes in the oven and then you’re going to get a perfectly hard boiled egg.

Another thing you can do with the eggs that’s quick and easy if you want to make, I know some of you have probably done this before, We do this at our house sometimes for the little guy. He likes eating but making little frittata muffins. So scrambling a few eggs in a bowl, toss in some seasoning, some veggies, put them in a muffin tin, and then you have some little frittata muffins.

Quick and easy and you can keep them in the fridge for the week and then you have your breakfast for the week. Another quick tip is it’s overnight oats or just oatmeal in a jar, right? So pre packaged oatmeal, if that’s something that you like, it really has a ton of unnecessary stuff in it. So for the most part now, yes, there are some healthy brands, but for the most part, it’s a lot of added sugar and artificial flavors and really and truly, I mean, in my opinion, it’s overpriced because you could just buy [00:04:00] regular oatmeal and make it yourself and flavor it yourself for much cheaper.

So you can do this yourself in little glass jars, little mason jars, and you really can control exactly what’s in there and how much you’re eating in proportion to how you want. So just putting plain oats. You can put some nuts, some seeds, fruits or berries, some cinnamon, maybe your favorite non dairy milk, put them in a mason jars, put them in the oven or not in the oven, put them in the refrigerator overnight.

It’s going to save you a ton of time and you can mix and match your flavor so you don’t have to have all the same flavor and you can do it all in one batch, right? So you can Make all your jars separately, put your favorite flavorings in each, and then you have a really quick and portable breakfast or snack or whenever you eat your oatmeal, right?

So, um, another great option too, just throwing this in here since we’re talking about jarred food, you can also do this with your salads. So you can, now I would recommend getting the bigger size mason jars or glass jars, but putting your salads in a bowl, if you just Google, you Like salad in a jar there, [00:05:00] there’s cookbooks, there’s tons of ideas there, but another great quick meal prep idea, right?

Last one here I’m going to give you is leftovers. And really it’s more about repurposing. I know a lot of people are anti leftovers and I’ve got friends who’s, you know, their kids and their husbands just refuse to eat leftovers. Like it’s, if they have stuff leftover, it’s just going to get tossed. Cause nobody wants to eat it.

And I get it. It gets old, right? So instead of throwing it out or wasting it, repurpose it. So two options here, first option, you make it, you know, you’re not going to eat all of it. Immediately put it in. A little freezer proof container and freeze it. So in a couple of weeks, when you need something, you can just pull it out of the freezer and there it’s done.

Another thing you can do is just repurpose the main course items, right? Like protein. So make it into something new. So for example, Chili, if you make chili one night, it can be turned into tacos the next night, or it can be put, put spaghetti sauce in it and made into some sort of spaghetti or pasta. You can put it with, you know, rice or grain to make a whole [00:06:00] nother dish.

You can make like taco bowls or burrito bowls. So you can repurpose that protein to something else. You’re not just eating the same thing. You can also make, you know, you can make pestos and different tomato sauces and dressings and vinaigrettes, all kinds of sauces and repurpose it that way. So really it’s, it’s all about changing up the flavors.

So if you have, you know, a dressing or a sauce or vinaigrette that you make, you can repurpose your proteins, your chicken or your turkey or your tofu or whatever you’ve made. repurpose it by just putting a different flavor on it with your dressing or your seasoning or your vinaigrette, right? So you can turn it into a totally new meal and keep you from getting bored and it really makes you look like the expert because it makes you look like you made a whole new recipe but you really didn’t.

Those are my meal prep tips for you. My meal prep hacks for you today. I hope you find these helpful and I’ll see y’all next time. Thanks for listening to Hopeful and Wholesome y’all. If you found value in this week’s episode, please subscribe on iTunes wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you thought.[00:07:00] 

I love to know what you find useful in these episodes so I know how I can provide the most value I can to my listeners. And if you have topics that you want to know more about, I’d love to hear those as well. So shoot me a message on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. It’s at TheHopePedraza. or visit my website, hopefulandwholesome.com. Thanks y’all.