Over the last couple of years my travel schedule has changed quite a bit. Yes, I do still travel quite a bit, but I’ve started being both more selective about which work related events I attend while also spending more time attending events for my own pleasure. What that means is that I can easily be at home for several weeks at a time.
When I’m not travelling I tend to go to the office 5 days a week. So my Monday to Friday is relatively stable and predictable in terms of meals. Sure, there is the odd event that will involve a lunch or an evening “out” somewhere, but mostly I have breakfast at home, lunch in the office and dinner at home.
I’ve been seeing a lot of “those” videos on Youtube and Tik Tok where these very attractive people talk up the advantages of meal prepping to:
- save money – never a bad thing. If you can eat well AND spend less I’d see that as a win
- lose weight – obviously this would be a benefit and is, in many ways, a goal
- eat well – this is key for me. “Well” for me also means more than just nutrition – I have to actually like the food or I simply won’t eat it
- save time – breakfast and lunch in the week are always time restricted. Some of the breakfast recipes I see floating around out there are only suited to people who have live in personal chefs!
You know the type of video. They always seem to have immaculate kitchens with oodles of space. Anyway even if the videos themselves can be a little annoying, the underlying messaging is still valid. There is definitely a space for meal prepping. Over the years I’ve mostly rejected it, though I have been known to prep 3 or 4 days’ worth of overnight oats or something else from time to time. What was the decider for me, however, was some of the videos I saw of layered salads. And it got me thinking. Why can’t I do this? It’s not particularly hard and I live in a country that has ample fresh produce (mostly).
So in order to give this a proper try I knew I’d need to do a few things:
- get some equipment that would help achieve my goals (see below)
- change how I shopped for vegetables
- collect suitable recipes and inspiration (I’ve no intention of following all recipes to the letter, but I definitely want some inspiration – especially around flavour and ingredient combinations that I might not have considered)
I got a set of meal prep containers from Igluu. What’s nice about them is that they come in multiple sizes and they have really tight seals, so you don’t have to worry about liquids escaping between my kitchen and the office. They also stack neatly in the fridge, so make a great option for shoving ingredients into rather than messing about with clingfilm and ill fitting plastic containers. Glass is a great material as it doesn’t pick up on the flavours of what’s been stored in it. Sadly the same cannot be said for plastic. Once you’ve used that lovely Sistema Klip container for coffee, then you’re stuck using it for coffee! You will never get rid of the smell!
So the “plan” is to do (mostly) salads for lunch in the office. I should be able to prep a few days of those in advance. I’m not 100% sure how many days in advance works before the salads start go get a bit iffy, but I’ve done 3 or 4 in the past without any issues.
The idea behind a layered salad isn’t that complicated. You simply pack in ingredients in layers, starting with a bed of greens and going from there. As you’re doing meal prep, you’re obviously doing either a big batch or multiple containers of salad at once.
Let’s see how well this works out and how long I last!
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