Marks of Motherhood

Hello everyone!

We have been on break for the past month with a couple of vacations inbetween. With weather especially our fridge and pantry has become a little barren so it was time to restock!

I do most all of my meal prep, list wise, from my phone.

I start off by writing out all of the dinners I plan to make on my phone’s memo pad(only a section shown). By doing 2 weeks at a time I’m able to use lots of similar ingredients, especially produce. 

I simply put what the dinners are and all their ingredients. I include links if I havent made it before and then send it to my email.

After I have them all written out I take out the ingredients I already have on hand; spices, canned or frozen items. Then I categorize them into a list I can check off from my phone.

Note: The “snacks” section has fruits, veggies, and non perishables that I don’t seperate into their category so I know that I can pick and choose or change things out.

So the most time consuming part, other than grocery shopping, is chopping all the veggies for salads and snacks.

When I get home I usually start by boiling eggs so they can boil, sit covered for 12min and then sit in cold water while I chop the veggies. I only make about 20 every 2 weeks. There is 4 of us but we dont eat them every day. 

My husband doesn’t normally eat the boiled eggs anyways since he often has eggs for breakfast. I also don’t peel them until I’m ready to eat one. They keep much better in the fridge that way!

A snack he usually has for school though is yogurt, granola and berries. My kids prefer eating their granola with almond milk and frozen berries.

While the eggs are being done I start with salads in a jar. These next 2 weeks I decided to only make 7. I shared the recipe for a few of these here. The main idea is to put all the wet ingredients by the dressing and stuff it full. The less gaps in the jar there are the better 🙂 A 32oz bag of chopped romaine or mixed greens is the perfect amount for 7 of them.

It is so nice being able to quickly throw together a salad for dinner with no prep! Just dump in a bowl and stir 🙂

Next are the veggie snack bags! These 2 weeks I did 3 varieties.

1. Bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and sugar snap peas.
2. Cucumbers, carrots and sugar snap peas.
3. Sugar snap peas.

My kids will always eat the #1 variety so we usually leave those for them. My son will eat #2 and my daughter will too, minus the carrots(too hard). Before I’ve mixed cucumbers in with theirs but didn’t this time.

The time consuming part is cutting the bell peppers in half, peeling and dicing the cucumbers and then bagging them all.

Note:We did use mostly containers for our kids veggies before but have lost many of them. Now we use snack bags and just put them in a bowl,when they’re empty, so we can reuse them a few times.

There is a drawer in the fridge dedicated to snacks! I usually put a couple small containers of berries, half the oranges and apples (other half on top of fridge) and all the veggies.

Another small drawer is for the meat and cheese! Lunches for my kids are usually luncheon meat or turkey pepperoni, cheese string or slices, and veggies or fruit. If we will be gone during lunch I will often just throw enough for everyone in a fuel cell. My husband does the same for his lunches.

These are the snacks we usually always have on  hand:

• Gogo squeeze
• Fruit cups (I drain and rinse before I give them to my kids, less messy)
• Popcorn
• Granola bars
• Granola
• Yogurt
• Nuts
• Boiles eggs
• Cheese string
• Veggie snack bag
• Fruit
• Turkey pepporoni

Note:Veggies and fruit change with the seasons.

For breakfast I usually just try to keep stuff on hand for the following:

• Oatmeal
• Yogurt
• Granola
• Pancakes
• Muffins
• Burritos

Lastly, I write out all the dinners I plan to make so I remember what everything in the pantry and fridge are for before they go bad. It hangs on our fridge, bought it from Walmart. My son of course has drawn on it too 😉

It usually takes 2-3hrs, depending on my kids, but it is so worth it! Gives us tons of grab and go options so we consume less junk food 🙂 We spend $75-100 per week depending what we have on hand.

Just remember everything in moderation! Because let’s be real I have Ben and Jerry’s in my freezer and enjoy baking…
Hope this gives you some ideas or a staring point! Feel free to comment or message me with any questions!

You can watch the video version here.

Happy planning,