Healthy Meal Prep: My "Kitchen Sink" Approach to Packing Meals

You were a good consumer this past weekend.  Not only did you grocery shop, you bought healthy and wholesome food to last you this week (since you are too busy throughout the week to go back to the store). 

Now, Wednesday and Thursday have rolled around.  Now, you've come home after a long day of work and school, and you open the fridge to only find a random assortment of what's left of your grocery list.  A few carrots, a handful of spinach, some hummus, a piece of chicken left over from dinner last night, a few berries, etc.  You have no idea what to do for the meals you need to pack the rest of the week.  You don't want to undo your healthy eating with fast food nor do you want to resort to the cafeteria during your break.  Plus, you spent a decent amount of money at the store and planned for a week of good eating.  Also, these handfuls of random food would be wasteful to throw away, even though none of them alone would constitute as a meal.

...So. What do you do?

This is the time to get creative.  I love calling this the "kitchen sink" approach.  Basically, you throw together the leftovers of what you bought at the store to create things like salads or breakfast bowls.  Here is where your kitchen staples, like dressing, lemon juice, and protein powder/oatmeal come in.  Here are a few examples of what I did on a Thursday when I had only a few random ingredients left over from my grocery run.

Breakfast:

Protein Oatmeal with Toppings

 What I had to work with:

• oats (staple)
• protein powder (staple)
• a few berries 
• some sunflower seed cocoa cookies (2)

I cooked the oats, mixed in some powder with water, then topped with the rest of the berries I had in my fridge.  I wanted some crunch, so I found some small whole grain, cocoa flavored sunflower seed cookies that I crumbled on top.  That's it!

 Lunch:

"Kitchen sink" salad

What I had to work with:

• a handful of broccoli slaw
• 1/4 of a cucumber
• 5 carrots
• a few leaves of lettuce
• a chicken patty leftover from dinner the other night
• hummus (staple)
• lemon juice (staple)

All I did was put the veggies (some needed to be chopped) and protein (chopped up the chicken as well) into a salad container, put hummus on the top, then squeezed lemon juice all over the ingredients.  The lemon juice helps break up the hummus (which is what I used as a dressing, per se) while adding flavor and preserving freshness of the veggies.  When I ate this, all I had to do was salt and pepper.  You could do that ahead of time, too.

What are some creative on-the-go meals you have come up with?  Comment below!

Also, if you have some ingredients you want to get rid of and need ideas on how to use them, comment on this post!  I could give you some help(: