Some favorite meals of the week
Although I love cooking, after becoming a mother, my time, and let's be honest, patience for cooking significantly decreased. As much as I love spending hours in the kitchen experimenting with new recipes, the truth is that my life has completely changed. Between taking care of my family, the house, spending time in the car driving the kids to and from school and sports activities, the remaining time serves for very little, and it was necessary to make things more efficient - which has never been my strong suit - and one day I'll explain why.
I'll confess something, I've never loved doing "meal-prep," that is, prepping food for the week. I like fresh food, freshly made, and don't even mention freezing precooked food - I rarely do that. But the truth is, it's a concept that works very well and has a lot of advantages: it saves time, makes deciding what to eat easier, less decision fatigue right there....and if we cook healthy things, it becomes much easier to stick to the diet without major deviations - or at least without unexpected ones.
You already know that my priority in any meal is a good source of protein, and although some sources of protein taste much better when freshly made, the truth is that there are many others that are equally good when cooked beforehand.
The recipes above contain two examples that I literally make every single week and always have stored in the fridge. Lean ground beef or bison and shredded chicken breast. They are the two proteins that I consume the most throughout the week, they are easy to cook, and super versatile when it comes to recipes.
How to choose and cook ground beef?
I always choose extra lean (minimum 90% lean, but usually 93% or 97%) grass-fed beef or bison. I get mine at Walmart; Aldi and the bison is from Costco. A portion of 100g of this beef (90/10) has about 21g of protein.
I cook the ground beef in a drizzle of olive oil, or I use avocado oil spray, season with garlic powder and oregano. When I have more time, I sauté an onion to accompany it or cook it together with the meat. I add salt and pepper and it's done! Ready to eat plain, or add to salads; make a beautiful "burger bowl", eat it inside a taco. I love using mustard as a topping - it's one of my favorite sauces and has zero calories!
How to choose and cook chicken?
I always choose organic chicken breast - that I usually get from costco - it's the leanest cut of chicken and 100g contains 31g of protein!! It's super versatile, with a neutral flavor, which allows it to be incorporated into the most varied recipes.
I cook it in my slow cooker for 4 hours, but you can also cook it in a pressure cooker or even in a Thermomix. I season it with an organic chicken broth called "Better than bouillon" which makes the chicken super tasty.
In the photos above you can see:
Chicken salad (I made this salad for myself and Pedro, with some adaptations for me. I added burrata and sourdough bread for him, and for me, low fat cottage cheese to reduce the fat percentage and no bread. It includes various green leaves and turkey bacon) it was wonderful!
Images 2 and 4 are of the ground beef. One with roasted pumpkin and the other with avocado and mustard. Simple and delicious, I like this when I'm in a hurry and it leaves me feeling very satisfied.
In this example, I added tomato sauce, garlic, smoked paprika, and coriander to the shredded chicken and served it with konjac - an alternative to pasta, low in carbohydrates/calories and very rich in fiber! You can order this konjac at Prozis HERE Use my code SAMANTAMC to get 10% off your order!
Thank you for being here!
Sam
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