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Starting 2018 off with a healthy and economical challenge, Lucie does five days of meal prep with the help of personal chef Alyssa Gagarin.
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00:00I'm Lucy Fink and this is five days of meal prep. Hey guys, it's me. Happy 2018!
00:10It's 2018 and I know that a new year always seems to bring that urge to start
00:15taking control of your life and in my case to start really being an adult
00:20because I am one so I need to be one. And for me a major New Year's resolution was
00:25to start meal prepping. Before this week meal prep looked kind of like this.
00:32I love pizza. So this weekend I spent a ton of time planning and organizing and
00:36then I went out to buy the ingredients for five days of five servings of food.
00:41So for each of the days this week I've made breakfast, lunch, a snack, dinner, and
00:46dessert. Yesterday on Sunday was my full meal prep day so I spent three hours
00:51right there in my kitchen preparing everything for the week ahead and here
00:55is what I made. Chia seed pudding for breakfast, burrito bowls with a ton of
00:59fresh veggies for lunch. Roasted and seasoned sweet potato fries and chickpeas
01:04as a snack. Vegetable noodles with basil pesto, cherry tomatoes, and shrimp for
01:08dinner. And chocolate chip, peanut butter, chickpea bars for dessert. Yes chickpea.
01:14Don't worry because each day in this video as I go through five days of eating the
01:19meal prep foods I'm gonna focus on one of the meals. So either breakfast, lunch, the
01:23snack, dinner, or dessert so that I can break down the full recipe for you and
01:27then also break down my strategy behind everything. I got all of my meal ideas this
01:31week from chef and cooking instructor Alyssa Gagarin who is a meal prepping
01:35goddess. Through my experience I've learned all the do's and don'ts of meal prep and
01:40have gathered my top tips for Lucy's meal prep. Woohoo! So tip number one is it's all
01:46about strategy. The total cost of meal prep to cook for one person for a week's
01:52worth of food is approximately $100 depending on what you choose. I spent
01:57$107 total on all of the ingredients yesterday which if you divide by five
02:01days and five servings of food a day comes to $4.28 per dish. Pretty good.
02:09Overall my first day of eating the meal prep foods went quite swimmingly if I do say
02:15so myself. I ate my first breakfast chia seed pudding this morning which was
02:19delicious. I brought all of my lunch bowls to the office and I stored them in the
02:23Refinery29 fridge. Dinner was so easy to compile because all of the individual
02:27pieces were in their own containers and dessert was obviously delicious because
02:32it's dessert. So as I said because I'm focusing on one meal a day today on Monday
02:37I'm focusing on my breakfast. Here is how I made that chia seed pudding. I mixed four
02:42cups of coconut milk with one cup of chia seeds, added a teaspoon of vanilla extract
02:47and a drizzle of maple syrup, and then I cut up different types of fruits to make
02:53different toppings so that each day would have a bit of a different flavor. Then I
02:57poured them into individual mason jars, sealed them, and lined them up in my
03:01fridge for the week. Andrew, my cameraman, gave the pudding his final stamp of
03:05approval by actually licking the remainders of it from the bowl.
03:09Stand of approval.
03:10It was good. Today I'm sharing the recipe for my lunch burrito bowls. If you've chosen
03:16any recipes with avocados here's a pro tip for you. Buy avocados of different
03:22ripeness. One that's ripe to use now, one that will ripen in a couple days, and one
03:27that has the entire week to be ripe so that by Friday or Saturday it's perfect for a bowl of
03:32guac.
03:33Following Alyssa's recipe, I made a giant pot of rice, seasoned up the raw chicken with salt,
03:38pepper, paprika, and other spices, chopped up some vegetables like romaine, purple
03:44cabbage, and fresh tomatoes, and then popped open a can of black beans and corn. Once
03:49everything was done cooking, I assembled the burrito bowls into five separate
03:53lunch boxes with rice on the bottom and then the vegetables lined up on top in
03:57rainbow order. I know that what's most important is the way that it tastes but the
04:02fact that it was so beautiful and looked like a rainbow on my plate didn't hurt at
04:06all. I am loving these little boxes that I got for lunch this week because they
04:10seal really tight to lock in the freshness, they're microwavable, they're reusable,
04:14and it's only day two but I'm already starting to notice how meal prep is
04:18drastically reducing the amount of waste that I'm creating throughout the day.
04:22And to make this week even more zero waste friendly, I'm using a set of bamboo
04:26kitchen utensils that I got from Lauren Singer's package-free shop in Brooklyn.
04:30Hashtag trash is for tossers.
04:34I'm one of those people who cannot go between lunch and dinner without munching on
04:38something, so I decided to make a really healthy snack idea this week but to turn
04:42it very delicious by adding spices and seasoning to it. I got pre-cut sweet potato
04:47fries and a couple of cans of chickpeas and I seasoned them both up with olive oil,
04:52salt, garlic powder, paprika, and more. I put them onto separate trays because they
04:56needed to cook for different amounts of time at different temperatures. That was
05:00really tough for me and it was difficult for me to balance the different
05:03temperatures with the different cook times so at some point I just put them
05:06both into the oven together and decided to eyeball it. Now this is a very
05:10important thing to know about meal prep. From the footage that you've seen so far it
05:14probably looks like first I whipped up my chia seed pudding and then I made all of
05:19the ingredients for my lunch and then I moved on to seasoning my snack. You get
05:23the drill. But the truth is that is not how I did this at all. Sunday in my kitchen
05:29was a complete and utter whirlwind of chaos.
05:32I feel like I'm unchopped. How do we want to cook the chicken?
05:35How's my rice doing? Ah! These chickpeas are roasting. Ah! I don't have space racing against the clock.
05:43I was running around doing six things at once. I had the rice on the stove while I
05:47seasoned the chicken and the shrimp. I was roasting up my snacks while I put my
05:51chickpea and peanut butter brownies into the food processor. A lot of things, a lot
05:55of moving parts. Tip number three. When you are choosing your recipes for the week
06:00think of using multiple cooking methods that utilize various different tools so
06:07that you make the most of your time. As I was planning my meals for this week
06:10actually, I took Alyssa's advice to heart and I realized how silly it would be if
06:14I chose meals that all use the oven or all needed the stovetop because that
06:19would just not be strategic with my time and with my kitchen space. My proteins for
06:23lunch and dinner were cooked on the stovetop. The snacks were roasted in the
06:26oven. The vegetables didn't need to be cooked at all. And my dessert was the only
06:31thing that needed a food processor. So you see what I did there. Very smart.
06:37Just had my fourth chia seed pudding cup of the week and they never get old. They're
06:42so good but I was a little bit extra hungry this morning so I woke up and I
06:47popped in a waffle. It was tough picking a dinner recipe for this week because if I
06:54know anything about myself it's that I really like diversifying the meals I'm
06:58having from one day to the next. And the only exception to this rule is pizza
07:02because I could literally eat pizza every meal, every day, forever.
07:08But sadly I wasn't making pizza this week so that was tough. I needed a dinner idea that
07:13allowed me to pick and choose different pieces so I could make it differently each
07:17night. I got a vegetable noodle medley made of sweet potato noodles, squash
07:22noodles, zoodles, and more. I kept them raw so they didn't get soggy. I cooked the shrimp with salt, pepper,
07:28and olive oil.
07:28I made a basil pesto and I halved the cherry tomatoes. The first night I made this I
07:34just tossed all of the ingredients into a pan with olive oil, salt, and pepper and I
07:38sauteed it up. On the second night I changed up the flavor a bit by trying out
07:42some different seasoning and spices on top. And tonight I was really not in the mood
07:46for a hot noodle dish. Instead I wanted something cold and refreshing like a salad.
07:51So I kept the noodles raw and crunchy and then instead of the basil pesto I just
07:55squeezed some lemon juice on top. And it's not just my dinner that I'm doing this
07:58with. Actually yesterday at lunch I wanted to spice up the burrito bowl a
08:02little bit so I bought a tortilla and I turned the burrito bowl into an actual
08:06burrito. And if I learned anything about myself from the experience it's that I
08:10cannot roll a burrito for the life of me. But I do have to say that turning the
08:15bowl into a burrito made the lunch look, feel, and taste completely different. So
08:20that was good. Happy Friday everyone! Today I'm sharing the recipe for these
08:26incredible chocolate chip peanut butter chickpea bars. Y'all ready for this?
08:34If you're one of those people who looks at a dessert made of chickpeas and
08:38seriously judges it for what it is, don't. And don't even try to imagine what this
08:44tastes like because you just can't until you try it. And when you do try it you'll
08:48see that it tastes like dessert not chickpeas. This is Alyssa's recipe and oh
08:53man, oh man, it was epic. I preheat the oven to 350 and then I mixed half a cup of
09:00natural peanut butter with one 15 ounce can of drained and rinsed chickpeas. I
09:05added two tablespoons of maple syrup, two tablespoons of honey, one tablespoon of
09:09vanilla extract, half a teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of baking soda, and a
09:14quarter teaspoon of baking powder. I blended this all up in a food processor
09:18until it was smooth and shiny and delicious looking. And then I spread it
09:23into a baking dish and added chocolate chips on top.
09:30They baked for 18 minutes exactly and came out perfectly. I put them in a
09:37Tupperware and I had two rows with a piece of parchment paper in between and
09:41then I stored them in the fridge to give them a fudge-like consistency. And in a
09:45few hours I'm gonna have my final serving of dinner and dessert and after
09:48that I will have officially eaten all of the meal prep foods that I bought and
09:53made this weekend. Actually taking the plunge and doing this challenge calmed my
09:57fears about A, how long it would take to meal prep everything and B, how
10:01expensive this would be. I actually think I saved money this week. Go Lucy, go Lucy,
10:06woo! If you're looking for more meal prep recipes, inspiration, or tips, find me on
10:12Instagram, subscribe on YouTube, all at Alyssa Gagarin or my website at AlyssaGagarin.com