Category Archives: Life Looks Like

Meal Prep Week of October 27, 2019

I posted on my 2lifeinfocus Instagram account about this week’s food prep that I did to make meals for Mom and me for this week. I received a lot of comments from friends, family and podcast listeners so here’s a bit more information in case you’re curious.

Groceries: nearly all were purchased at Trader Joe’s, except the vanilla protein powder I use for my overnight oats which can be found on Amazon. When I subtracted out other fruits, nuts, and meat I purchased for Dan the total was around $50 and I made 25 meals (11 for Mom and 14 for me).

The Meals: Garden salads, two variations of rice bowls, overnight oats, and spicy egg/veggie salad for me (no photo). I’m not much of a recipe person but here’s the gist of what I do in case its helpful.

Garden Salads

arugula
shredded carrots
blueberries
strawberries
feta cheese
not pictured: dressing= olive oil, balsamic vinegar & herbs de provence seasoning from Trader Joe’s
not pictured: I also make my own “salad topper” kind of mix with sesame seeds, sesame sticks, almonds, dried cranberries, peanuts and cashews.

Cava Copy-Cat Bowl

Brown rice (Frozen from Trader Joe’s)- 1 bag serves 4+ bowls
arugula
roasted squashes (butternut, acorn & delicatessa), sweet potatoes and red peppers
feta cheese
dressing: plain yogurt with dill and lemon
Meant to be eaten cold. NOTE: This is my first time making this. We’ll see how it comes out.

2019-10-27 19.25.24-1

Warm Rice Bowls

Brown rice (Frozen from Trader Joe’s)- 1 bag serves 4+ bowls
roasted squashes (butternut, acorn & delicata), sweet potatoes and red peppers, zucchini. Brussels sprouts on mine. All veggies roasted with olive oil and herbs de provence seasoning from Trader Joe’s.
Brie bite or gruyere cheese
Heat in microwave and enjoy

Overnight Oats

1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
Cinnamon (I do 5-7 generous shakes and sometimes add more when eating but I LOVE cinnamon)
Mix with milk until sufficiently wet (leave a little extra milk in there to allow the oats to absorb it.
I add shredded coconut and blueberries to the top.
For mine, I also tend to mix in Benefiber (a supplement my doctor recommended for me) and I usually also add a teaspoon or two of MCT oil.

Spicy Egg/Veggie Salad

This is a recipe inspired by my best friend Kris’ famous potato salad- except I sub in the roasted veggies for the potatoes.

This week I made 4 servings using:

Hard boil 1 dozen eggs. Let cool then chop
Chop red onion and mix in with the eggs.
Add cayenne pepper and salt.
Mix in mayo and spicy brown mustard (use your judgement here)
Mix in roasted veggies.
This is something I usually have to taste each batch of to make sure I have enough cayenne pepper (but not too much). If it’s too spicy, I add more veggies!

Time to Prepare:

I chopped and roasted the veggies on Saturday. Working time- maybe 20 minutes and then checking and turning them for about 45 minutes. Let cool then put in glass containers in fridge. Not a lot of active time involved.
Sunday I spent about 2 hours on prep. That also included cutting 2 cantaloupes for Dan’s lunches and a few other small tasks.
I’d easily spend 20 minutes per night making dinner and another 15-20 minutes each morning preparing dinners and packing breakfast/lunch so this is a time saver for sure.

My thoughts on Meal Prep

Conserving Energy: Yes, it can feel like a big investment in time, but I don’t have the time or energy to do these tasks after work most days. If I do have energy to tackle something after work, I can do that but dinner has been figured out. It also saves me time in the morning because breakfast & lunch for work is ready to be packed.
Enjoyment: I enjoy the food I make even more than eating out most of the time.
Savings: Clearly these meals did not cost a lot of money to make and even if you added in meat, it would still be cheaper than eating out.
Efficiency: I’m all about efficiency and after realizing it takes me the same amount of time to make 4 salads as it does 1 (half the time is getting all the stuff out of the fridge), that sealed the deal for me.
Health: I eat better when I control the ingredients and the portion sizes. I also make better decisions at the beginning of the day, so I plan out what I’ll eat for the day and then that’s done. No need to muse or debate or argue. It also means I don’t just say “it will be quicker to grab pizza on the way home” because it won’t be. Even if I call in an order, it will still take more than max of 2 minutes it takes to heat up what I’ve prepped at home.
Extras: Typically I also end up with some extra roasted veggies after I prepare the meals on Sundays. Either I eat those some time during the week along with a frozen dinner (like Amy’s enchiladas) or bring them to work to eat with scrambled eggs (that I purchase from our cafeteria). By late week if I don’t have a plan to eat what’s in the fridge, I freeze extra veggies in snack size ziploc bags for future weeks when I don’t have time to prep.

Hope this was helpful! I don’t tend to branch out on my “recipes” very often except for maybe switching up some things seasonally but if you enjoyed this post, comment here or on Instagram and I’ll do my best to share.

Wood Chopping. Laughter. Tradition.

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For the past three years we’ve been hosting what we affectionately call Wood Chopping Weekend (never minding that it only really lasts one day).

It started because we needed help. Dan and I heat our home exclusively with our wood stove (in the living room) and the pellet stove (down cellar). We do have electric heat but haven’t used it since we moved in in 2008. We’re lucky that we have a lot of trees on our property, and those that fall are chopped and used for fire. It’s economical and efficient and it makes us very happy. But for the first few years of living in our home, Dan cut all of the wood for our wood stove alone. It took him weeks and while he would never once complain about it, I could see him wince at the aches and pains and I could see it wearing on him.

I can’t remember entirely how it came about, but I’m fairly certain it had something to do with my cousin Melissa’s then boyfriend (now husband) Daniel who remembered fondly his days of chopping wood with an ax back in his family home in Germany.

With an offer to help, we turned it into a party, a full-blown event and the rest as they say is history. This year was a little less enjoyable for me because I was sick but we made the best of it and I’m so thrilled that we went ahead with it because of the memories made.

The day usually starts with some splitting and stacking. This year Dan had split much of the wood in advance because he had the time.

We were all surprised when my 6 year old niece Riley got right in (without even being asked) and started helping out!

The wood is wheeled up onto the deck in the wheelbarrow and passed (assembly line style) over to the pallets where it is stacked and stored for each access. We have two sets of covered pallets- one outside the sliding door to the living room and one outside the back door.

Riley passes to Uncle Bob who passes to Joe who passes to Dan who passes to Dad. And Stacked!

Meanwhile, out in the woods, the boys are chopping wood just for fun.

My brother tries his hand at it.

Daniel is a pro! His first ax, affectionately known as Chuck Norris, has now been set aside (at least for most major log splitting) in favor of this beauty, Mr T.

There is still some more stacking to be done out in the clearing where more wood is kept (mostly smaller stuff, kindling etc). We had some little helpers in there early on, but the little guy bailed!

One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing the little boys imitate the big boys- using wood to “chop” other wood. They got the motion down that’s for sure.