I messed up my meal prep this week. It started off well…
..but by Wednesday I saw that things were amiss.
My delicious slider recipe (linked above) left me with 24 mini burgers, or 8 servings, for just one of me.
My poblanos had gone mushy before I could roast them.
I ate at restaurants with friends a couple of times, which wasn’t in the plan at all for this week.
And lastly, my nutritional needs have changed a lot recently and I missed the mark a little on my planning for my current way of eating – I was stuck a little in the past with more protein than I’m eating right now.
So now I have a lot of meat.
I have extra burgers, extra chicken, and just lots of extra in general. It’s all tasty, but it’s more than I needed for this week.
How do I get out of meat overload?
- I’m shredding and freezing half the chicken that I already poached – it will hang out just fine in a zip top bag until I throw it into a pasta bake next week.
- I cheated and ate burgers a couple of times for breakfast (!?), crumbled in with eggs in a quesadilla. (And they were great.) I also made one serving into a topping for a homemade Chipotle-style bowl, with rice, sour cream, avocado, and veggies. I’m a little sick of sliders, but I’m finally down to the last serving.
The green minestrone is SO GOOD that I plan to share it with a friend for lunch today. The extra fruits and vegetables can be worked into this week, and they will save me money on my groceries as long as I plan to use them (and don’t buy new ones on autopilot). And extra yogurt never hurt anyone – it will be just fine as part of breakfast this week (and the kind I don’t like after all is replacing the butter/oil in a batch of brownies that will follow the minestrone lunch date).
Meal plan goofs HAPPEN.
All the time. All. The. Time. Especially when you’re making tweaks to your routine, or when you have eyes that are bigger than your stomach for beautiful summer produce. I’ve been planning my food ahead for more than 10 years, but when I make big changes, I still go through several weeks of less-than-perfect cooking.
Maybe you prepped too much or not enough, or maybe you don’t like what you cooked. It’s okay! Just learn from it and try to get a little better next week. Things can go in the freezer or survive an extra day or two in the fridge; recipe excess and mistakes can get transformed into new dishes (casseroles hide many sins). You might even be able to commiserate with a few friends and throw a meal prep mess-up potluck – or gift your extras to a friend who might enjoy having a home-cooked meal ready to go..
What’s your biggest hurdle with getting food set up for yourself? If you’re not setting up anything at all yet, I’ve got another post coming up very soon to help you get started. (It’s worth it!)
