A Week of Healthy Meals Made in 2 Hours

After months of experimenting, I've settled on a cooking habit that's near perfect: food that's healthy, delicious, relatively affordable, and quick to make. Every Sunday I spend ~2 hours cooking, and have all of my meals for the week prepared. While there are two basic meals—mini-frittatas and salads— variations in ingredients and snacks fill it out and add variety.

Here I'll describe what you'll need to make these meals, from supplies to a shopping list, as well as some recommendations on weekly variations.

UPDATES with responses to comments:

1) As a few of you have asked, this is meant to serve one person. I haven't tried to scale it to feed a family, and doing so may take up a lot of space in your fridge.

2) While it can be all of your meals for the week, I generally supplement it with snacks and and ever week or so a meal out.

3) This is also a very low-calorie meal plan, and can easily be supplement with high-calorie ingredients if you're not trying to lose weight. A loaf of bread would be an easy addition.

4) The salads do keep fresh all week (I keep them in sealed containers).

Step 1: Equipment

Because these meals are all pre-made, you'll likely have some of these supplies already. That being said, I do have a few recommendations of things that have worked particularly well.

1. Silicone Cupcake Trays (2) Amazon
   
   • While you can bake these in metal trays, cleaning burt egg off of them is time consuming and gross. These will save you time and keep your mini-frittatas in good shape.
2. Rubbermaid storage containers, 5 cup (8-10) Amazon
   • Great for storing prep ingredients while cooking, salads over the week, and general storage otherwise.
3. Rubbermaid storage container, 14 cup (1) Amazon
   • Perfectly stores all 24 or your mini-frittatas
4. Large Mason Jars (3) Amazon
   • Store your coffee for the week
5. Giant bowl for mixing salads (1) Ikea

Step 2: Buy Your Groceries

I've narrowed down a neat shopping list for Trader Joe's, however substitute with whatever is locally available, affordable, and delicious.

Shopping List

• Salad
  • Romain Lettuce (1 bag)
  • Iceberg Lettuce (1 head)
  • Mushrooms (1 bag)
  • Broccoli Florets (1 bag)
  • Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Carrots mix(1 bag)
  • Almonds (1 bag, you'll use 1/3 per recipe)
  • Bell Peppers (3)

  • Salad Dressing

• Mini-Frittatas
  • Eggs (3 dozen)
  • Milk (1 gallon)
  • Feta Cheese
  • Sausages (3 packs, 12 sausages total)
  • Onion (1)
• Snacks
  • Strawberries (as many as you want)
  • Apples (as many as you want)
  • Pickles (1 jar)
  • Cottage Cheese (as much as you'll eat)

Step 3: Chop and Prep All Ingredient

Because there will be ingredient crossover between your salads and frittatas, chop everything immediately. This is the most time consuming part of the process, but rarely takes more than 30 minutes.

Step 4: Prepare the Frittatas for Baking

1. Set the oven to 350F.

2. Grease the silicon cupcake pans. I use a brush and olive oil, but you can have good results with butter as well. Set the silicon cupcake pans on top of metal baking sheets, as they'll bend and spill your eggs otherwise.

3. Fill each cup with bell-peppers, onion, sausage, and broccoli— ratios to your taste. Sprinkle feta on top.

4.Scramble 20 eggs in a bowl, add .25 cups milk, and slowly pour the egg mixture on top of your frittata ingredients.

5. Once each cup is filled, but both trays in the over. They generally take 30 minutes to bake, but I recommend checking after 20 min to be safe. Keep baking until they can be poked with a fork, leave no egg residue, and are clearly left together.

Step 5: Mix Salad, Separate Into Containers

Sprinkle feta on top when you're done!

Step 6: Store Coffee

Once your coffee has finished, pour it into your mason jars along with whatever mixture of cream and sugar you enjoy.

Step 7: Meals

From this base of ingredients, there are a few solid meals.

• Basic Breakfast, Cook time: 1 min
  • (3) mini-frittatas (1 min in microwave)
  • Coffee
• Fancy Breakfast, Cook time: 5 min
  • (1) salad
  • Dressing
  • (1) sausage
  • (3) eggs (over easy)
• Basic Lunch, Cook time: ~1 min
  • (1) Salad
  • (1) Sausage (1:15 microwave)
• Light Lunch
  • Cottage Cheese with
    • Strawberries
    • Almonds
  • (1) Apple
• Late night snacks
  • Pickles
  • Strawberries

Comments

[john.power.3511]

12 sausages, a gallon of milk, and three dozen eggs in a week! Healthy? I don't think so!!!

[clairewait]

I'm with you. Not sure how the dairy lobby is still so strong but I think it has been proven that cow's milk isn't a necessary aspect of our diet. That said, the concept is great and this was a fun read. Who doesn't love pretending to be this organized for a few minutes.

[CassandraM8]

Other than the sausages, a gallon of milk and three dozen eggs is probably fine. You can always use chicken sausage or cook your own chicken/turkey instead. You can eat 5 eggs a day easily and it is quite healthy and satiating. I asked my doctor if this is true, who graduated from Harvard Medical School. He approved.

[silm]

Good idea and healthy meal. Thanks for this quick recipe.

[SofiJasmin]

lovely idea , I will make it next week! thanks~

[CatherineG56]

I'm always on the look out for quick and easy meals.

[Diana Fritzson]

Perfect for my college son! Thanks for sharing.

[AndrzejR]

Seems this trend is rising these days. Weight lifters typically follow this type of meal structure. Although it tends to be a little more spartan than the above :)

Mine is compromised of boiled chicken breasts, carrots, radishes, and celery. I eat this every day at work, and split it into 4 meals throughout the work day.

Dinner is always the same; chicken, coleslaw, celery chopped (I pretend they're croutons), hot sauce, mustard.

Lunch I make for the week, the dinner I make each night.

[Bella-B]

A very good idea for people living alone like myself. I make just enough for when I come home and need something quick and light to eat. **double thumbs up**

[bonmom]

Sorry; too much meat and dairy; not healthy. Switch out to tofu, beans, brown rice, and other healthy choices and I'm in. Don't forget salads in a mason jar with the dressing at the bottom. Invert jar to your bowl and it dresses itself.

[jes.jonez]

same as recipe here???

http://cliffits.com/2015/04/7-days-of-healthy-food-made-in-only-2-hours/

[BooksbyjesseM]

I was just reading your blog and found so many interesting recipes that looks great. I have a book in Amazon which is a cookbook with healthy diet conscious recipes you can make in advance and then heat up for lunch or dinner. If you are interested in I can send a copy of the book. Further I would love to talk to you about an offer that would allow you to give something free to your community of users.You can reach me at [e-mail] or just go to either of the book sites: www.carbcycle.net and www.fitrecipe.net.

[cavan.biggs]

Came out really good, now I don't have to worry about lunch for a week :).

[sobeeya]

lovly recipies all food yummy appetiser

[asreall]

Would the mini-frittatas freeze well?

[TheBestio]

It's interesting, but...no dinner?

[bornozz]

thank you this is a great idea

[Naugas]

I will give this a try in a smaller scale... not for a full week. And definitely not making coffee in advance! That's just wrong and disgusting. ;)

[ghemeon]

It does sound like a great way to have some fast food in the house rather than going to rotten ronnies or somewhere else.

[john.power.3511]

....and a week old coffee! Yuck! Coffee needs to be drunk immediately it's brewed.