Cooking for the weekend 5

We hope you are able to gather some ideas from this “cooking for the weekend” series. I cook ahead on Friday for the weekend since I am a stay at home mom so I can take a little break on the weekend. But this process works the same if you did it on the Sunday for the upcoming week, or on Wednesday to finish you week out strong. I spend less than 2 hours in the kitchen and usually have at least 3 meals, prepared, along with snacks, and I usually try to have ideas for breakfast ready to go also.

For me a big part of being prepared is having my veggies and fruit ready to go if at all possible, other than having a pineapple cut up or grapes or cherries washed fruit is hard to have ready a head of time. . Every week these look a little different just depending what I have on hand (I normally shop of Thursday so I am usually pretty stocked up), what is on sale that week, and what is good and fresh when I shop.

If I prep it all at one it saves SO MUCH TIME and if it is washed and cut we are more likely to grab the veggies to eat over something else that is not as healthful. The bowl on the far left is full of veggies cut to be eaten raw with hummus or Ranch Dressing. The other two bowls are cut for cooking I can throw them on Grill, or in the oven in Parchment Bags, a stir fry or just stem the on the the stove. They are ready for anything. The bowl on the far right is just cabbage. I grill a lot of cabbage in the summer so it is ready to go. Then they all stack nice and neat in the fridge till I need them.

While I was cutting all those veggies I also cut some up and started some fried rice for dinner for Friday night. We also enjoy it warmed up so it can be used throughout the weekend as well.

As soon as I wake up I throw a Whole Chicken in the slow cooker and make Broth to freeze. This takes more than my normal 2 hours to get ready for the weekend but it takes about 5 minutes to get the chicken started and once it is cooked about that long to get the broth going. So still very very fast. So if I am going to be home during the day this is a great way to have lots of chicken ready to go.

With my chicken I cut large pieces for one meal. I normally warm it in a pan with a little olive oil and what ever seasoning we are in the mood for. Then the chicken on the left went to make chicken salad, for sandwiches, to eat with crackers or chips, or to enjoy on a salad.

Once the chicken is ready I made the Chicken Salad.

This week I also went ahead and threw everything for our smoothies in freezer bags and threw them back in the freezer to save a few minutes over the weekend as well.

I also made sure my son’s snacks were stocked up here is the box ready to go in the fridge. Apple sauce, grapes, pistachio nuts, ham, pumpkin seeds, raisins and dried fruit. I also popped some popcorn and bagged up for this bowl but it did not make it in the picture for some reason.

I also try to check our fruit and veggies and see if there is anything that is needing to be juiced. This week I had lots and lots of oranges since they were on crazy sale. So we juiced a few with a couple carrots and made Popsicles for the weekend. Notice the Whole Chicken in the slow cooker in the background cooking away.