Sunday Prep and Triceps Workout

As promised, here are the photos I meant to post yesterday:

Marshall's first peanut butter cookie (I think he likes fruit better, so I'm not sure if he's truly my child)

The glorious silicone muffin cups arrived. I'm so excited that I can't even think what I should do first with them.

Individual banana cream pies with a crust to die for and a filling that needs some tweaking.  (I told Jenn about them and later I got a text from her that said, "Not dropping too strong of hints, but I bought you the graham crackers for my banana cream pie already." This text explains why we're friends.)

Lots of Sunday prep for the week! See below for more on that.

Dinner last night: crock pot chicken, stir-fry vegetables, and brown rice.

Terry and I are on a quest to try as many different pumpkin beers as possible this season. These two were okay but not amazing. My favorite ever (so far) is actually BJ's pumpkin beer, which wasn't out yet when we went to BJ's last month, so we'll see if it holds up!

Sunday Prep 

Yesterday we put a lot of time and effort into prepping our meals for the week. We stopped at the grocery store on our walk (huge mistake, because we bought way more groceries than we could fit under the stroller, so Terry ended up carrying Marshall all the way home and the grocery bags got a cozy seat!), wrote out our meal plan, and started in on prepping a few things. Here's our meal plan (lunches and dinners):

Sunday: 

- smoothies

- crock pot chicken, stir fry veggies, and rice

Monday:

- leftover stir fry with chicken and/or a fried egg

- chicken enchiladas with black beans, spinach, cheese, and our favorite salsa (Whole Foods 365 Roasted Verde salsa)

Tuesday: 

- Chicken salad pitas

- leftover enchiladas

Wednesday:

- Chicken salad pitas

- Ina's Winter Minestrone Soup

Thursday: 

- Leftovers (enchiladas, or use any leftover veggies to make quesadillas)

- Leftover soup

Friday: 

- Pita pizzas (my recent favorite: spread ricotta cheese on a pita, then top with vegetables like frozen spinach or onions and peppers, then sprinkle shredded mozzarella on top and bake at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes) 

- Maybe eat out? 

So for our prep on Sunday, here's what we did:

- got the chicken cooking in the crock pot (I also measured out the spices for a second chicken for the future and stored those spices ready to go in a plastic bag so next time will be even easier)

- chopped veggies for and cooked up the stir fry

- made rice (in the rice cooker) for the stir fry

- packed up lunches for the next few days

- after dinner, Terry finished cutting up the chicken and threw the bones back in to the crock pot, filled it up with water, and set it to cook on low overnight for broth (we end up with more than 20 cups of chicken stock this way because our crock pot is huge, so it's about $14 for a full chicken--at least three meals for us--and tons of stock for soups!)

- cleared out the fridge of old/expired/unused food--we're getting a little better about not wasting stuff!

- washed all the dishes (Terry did tons of dishes yesterday!), tidied the kitchen, put dishes away

We managed to get most of that done while Marshall was napping, but some of it was just popping into the kitchen throughout the day. We haven't really done a ton of big prep days like this since I've been off work, but this week I know we have two intensive meals: enchiladas and minestrone. They're two of our favorite meals, but they do require more work, so now I can work on those during naps instead of the other daily stuff I normally would have done.

So anyway, that's just a look at how we handle prepping for a full week of eating meals at home. It's definitely rewarding to open my fridge and see all our meals either ready or started!

Today I made enchiladas, and I tried a new process: instead of separating out the ingredients (bowl for black beans, bowl for chicken, bowl for cheese, etc.) and scooping a little of each into each tortilla, I threw all the stuffing together in one bowl, mixed it up, and then scooped out a little for each enchilada. WHY HAVE I NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE?! Um, hello, it tastes the same and it is SO much easier; plus I use fewer dishes. And I use a spoon instead of my fingers for the scooping, so it's all a little cleaner. Have people been doing this for years and never told me?

The enchiladas turned out deliciously, and we topped it all off with a crazy upper body workout tonight:

- 30 seconds skullcrushers, 30 seconds crunches of choice (repeat for minutes 0-5)
- 30 seconds DB chest press, 30 seconds reverse plank (repeat for minutes 5-10)
- 30 seconds overhead triceps extension, 30 seconds crunches of choice (repeat for minutes 10-15)
- 30 seconds wide-arm push ups, 30 seconds Supermans (repeat for minutes 15-20)

I won't lie: my triceps are already dying. Just typing this post is making my arms ache. So now I'm going to bed. Good night, friends!