Free Inquiry Post 3 – Meal Prep #3

Hi everyone! I have a big post to make today for my meal prep. I made a new lunch bowl that I had never tried to make before and for dinner I made Greek style chicken meatballs with potatoes and veggies on the side. I have to admit that this week was not my best in terms of time efficiency. For both meals there were multiple small components so it caused there to be more dishes at the end and more prep involved beforehand. In terms of taster, the dinner worked out very well and I am super happy with it! The lunch is pretty good but it was definitely not my best meal prep this semester.

I will start by discussing the dinner I made. It was chicken meatballs with baked lemon potatoes, homemade tzatziki, and three types of roasted vegetables. This week I was really wanting to include a lot of vegetables so I chose carrots, zucchini, and broccoli. All the components of this meal were very easy and really tasty but because there are so many individual things on the plate, it just involved a lot of prep which took me awhile. The lemon potatoes also had to cook for a decent amount of time which also decreased the overall efficiency of this meal. I would give this meal a 9/10 for the taste and how easy everything was to make! But I would give it probably a 6/10 for the timing (but that could also just be because I was being slow!). I would definitely recommend this tzatziki recipe because it was so good! It just uses Greek yogurt, cucumber, dill, garlic, olive oil, and salt so it is super easy and I think it was technically cheaper than buying a small tub at the store. Down below I have included a video of how I lay out my veggies to roast. I typically cook them on a baking sheet with tin foil and for these I added olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, thyme, and oregano.

Now to discuss the lunch meal prep. As I said before this lunch bowl did not work out exactly how I wanted it to but it was still decent. I attempted two new things for myself which was soy marinated eggs and cooking some flank steak with a simple gochujang sauce. I have linked the approximate recipe that I used for the beef but I adjusted it slightly. I added soy sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, and some mirin to the recipe; and then I used honey instead of maple syrup because it was just what I had on hand at the time. Although the meal prep overall was not exactly how I wanted it to turn out, the beef and sauce itself actually worked quite well. The other new component that I tried today was the soy marinated eggs. They are supposed to have a jam like yolk (quite similar to the type of eggs you get on ramen which I LOVE) and they are marinated for a couple hours to really soak in the flavor. The flavor of the eggs was very tasty but they took a bit of time for me because I had to peel all of the eggs and wait for them to marinate. The main reason that they did not work out exactly how I wanted to was because I definitely overcooked them and they were more of a hard boiled egg. The other components I made to go with these was some rice with lentils and quinoa (as per usual to get some extra protein and fiber), some caramelized onion, and some sautéed cabbage and shredded carrots. I just cut up the cabbage and shredded the carrots and then sautéed it in some soy sauce and sesame oil. The cabbage was not my best cooking but it worked out fine in the bowl.

I would give these bowls a 7/10 overall because they are not exactly what I envisioned and I would give them another 6/10 for timing because again, there were many small components that took me a little bit longer. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and that is okay! Hopefully next week will be more efficient and turn out a little bit better!