Easy meal prep lunch ideas

When I first started doing weekly meal prep sessions they were pretty small. My goal was to make one savoury item and one sweet item for the kids’ lunch boxes. Once I had established this as a habit, I began to add prepping food for my lunches. Prepping food for my lunches:

  • Improves my nutrition – makes sure I have a balanced meal at lunch time.
  • Saves me time – I can have a healthy lunch ready in minutes.
  • Saves me money – I have food ready to take with me if I will be out and about.
  • I know exactly what I am eating – there are so many extras added to our food these days!

Most Sundays you will see photos on the Planning With Kids Facebook page of my weekly meal prep. I am often asked how I use the food I prep, so below I have included photos of food I have prepped and how I turn that into easy lunch ideas.

carbs and protein 2
This weekly food prep enabled me to get home from a half marathon, have a quick shower and then take one of the kids to their football game and pull together a big lunch to take with me to eat as they warmed up.

Post half marathon lunch
Post half marathon lunch of beef taco meat, chopped broccolini, sweet potato and fresh salsa.

veggies and protein
From this weekly prep, I made food packs for when I travelled to Mildura recently so I could fuel well for my road trip.

Lunch at Wycheproof
I stopped for a short jog at Wycheproof then had a lunch of chicken taco meat, sweet potato and grated zucchini. I at this cold and it still tasted great. I do usually heat my lunches up though.

carbs and protein

green veggies
From this prepped protein, starchy carbs and green veggies, I made the following lunches:

Roast potato, zucchini and chicken
Zucchini, roasted potato, taco chicken meat and kimchi (also homemade on the weekends too).

chicken, broccolini and sweet potato
Broccolini, roasted sweet potato, taco chicken meat and salsa.

veggies 2
For this weekly meal prep I made roasted veggies and a basic salad of shredded cabbage and grated carrot.

Bol sauce, sweet pot, cabbage
Lunch of cabbage salad with sweet potato and Bolognese sauce (left over from a midweek dinner) to have post meeting away from the home office.

I store all the food from weekly meal prep sessions in glass containers in the fridge and I then simply pick and pack foods to make my lunch for the day. Most veggies will stay fresh like this until I have eaten them. Most weeks I do a smaller prep session on Wednesday or Thursday to make more food for my lunches for the rest of the week.

Want some help starting a weekly meal prep habit?

Weekly meal prep isn’t rocket science, but it is a positive habit any one can introduce to their life! It really takes the stress out of what to feed the family and yourself during the weekdays. To help families kick start their weekly meal prep habit, I have created an online course called Meal Prep Primer! Meal Prep Primer shows you how to effectively plan your time in the kitchen over the weekend, and prep food that will make your week days easier.

To keep on top of feeding the family, many years ago I started spending some time on the weekend, prepping food for the week ahead. Even if it is was just one or two things, the difference this made during the week was huge.

As I was rewarded each week for my efforts in the kitchen on the weekend, I began increasing the food I prepped. And the more weekly meal prep sessions I did, the better I became at it. The better I became at it, the less time it took me to do the sessions and the better we ate – win-win all around!

In my Meal Prep Primer course I will teach you the process I have developed over these years. The course will:

  • save you time
  • save you money
  • save you stress through the week days
  • ensure your family eats well
  • allow you to enjoy meal time more with the family

For three weeks you will receive:

  • A plan –  the plan outlines what you will be cooking and when. You can tailor this plan to suit your family’s needs and the time you have available. The plan also has clickable links to all the recipes you need to cook for the weekend.
  • A shopping list –  as you may tailor the plan to suit your family’s needs, the shopping list is broken down into items per recipe. That way you can easily cross off items you don’t need to buy, but make sure you have all the ingredients for the recipes you do intend to cook.
  • The recipes – a PDF of all the recipes you will need to cook for the week.
  • Plus there is a detailed video and other resources on the course website and further support emails to keep the habit going after three weeks.

You can read more and sign up for the short course here.