life balance » britta//unfiltered

Weekly Meal Prep

Mar 242013

Posted by Britta on March 24, 2013 at 9:23 pm in Food 3 Responses »

Hello blog friends!

Over the last year, I have made it a habit to make a little meal plan for the week each Sunday. Sometimes that meal plan is as simple as an inventory of leftovers from the week before and a plan to order Domino’s, but I try to keep it a little classier when I have the time. I try to come up with a list of what we will be eating each day, then build my grocery list from there. Having a list at the grocery store is a must, especially if you go hungry like I ALWAYS seem to do!

Brandon prefers a more meat-centric diet while I tend to enjoy meatless dishes a little more. Our meals end up striking that balance with salads, roasted veggies, and a few vegetarian choices sprinkled in with lots of fish and poultry main dishes. I also lurve soups, casseroles and pasta dishes that are easy to stash and reheat at work for lunch (some vintage blog recipe links: vegetarian chili, spicy turkey chili, healthy turkey shepherd’s pie casserole, chicken parmesan casserole, veggie-packed whole wheat pasta and chicken bake, and stuffed peppers).

Here’s what is on the docket this week:

Dinners
Chicken pot pie casserole (recipe inspiration at Emily’s Bites) – we tested this out tonight and will be using leftovers for lunches!
White chicken chili – this one is an old standby. I always double the batch!
“Wing it” options for busy nights: Shrimp stir fry with frozen shrimp & veggies, burgers (frozen beef burgers for Brandon, black bean burgers for me) and sweet potato fries, or breakfast-for-dinner (usually an omelet!)

Lunches
Leftover casserole & soup should last us the week and through the weekend. I also love the idea of grain bowls a la PB Runner, and I will usually grab lunch at/around work at least 1x per week.

Breakfasts
Oatmeal with banana, walnuts and honey
Greek yogurt with fruit
PB toast + fruit
Eggs if we are up early enough (almost never – I should really bust out the egg cups again one of these days)
Usually grab bfast at work at least 1x per week

I showed Joe the Trader some love today and then rushed home to do some meal prep for the week. I have been working extra long hours lately due to a special project and it is so nice to have food pre-prepped with easy options to sub in when days get crazy. Before starting dinner, I got started on:

- Chopping veggies (for salads, egg scrambles, etc.)

- Pre-cooking grains (for lunches & stir fry options – jasmine brown rice this week)

- Poaching chicken, shredding, then freezing for later (I’ll use it if we end up making the white chicken chili during the week)

- Cooking & freezing black bean burgers (I used BTHR’s awesome recipe!)

I’ll also portion out the casserole leftovers into lunch containers for the week. It feels sooo good to go into Monday with a dinner plan. It makes it easier to head straight to the treadmill when I get home from work or work a little later without worrying what we will eat later on.

While I worked hard on meal prep for the week, Teto helped out with folding some laundry. So helpful.

Here are a few great posts from some of my favorite blogs on weekly meal planning & prep – I learn everything I know from Google:

Back to Her Roots – How I Prep Food for the Week

Beth’s Journey – Meal Planning Tools (she also frequently posts weekly meal plans that are weight-loss friendly, very informative!)

Fitnessista – Plan & Prep an Hour to Clean Eats

The Lean Green Bean – Sunday Food Prep Inspiration

Do you have a weekly meal prep routine? Do you have any favorite recipes that make great weekday leftovers? Tell me your best tips!

What I’ve Been Up To

Oct 172012

Posted by Britta on October 17, 2012 at 10:33 pm in Life 2 Responses »

Ah man. I suck at having a blog.

As much as I love word-vomiting TMI all over the interwebs, I just have not been feeling like updating on the blog the last month or so. Sometimes I think my distaste for facebook spills over into full hermit status, and I really think I need a clean slate (I’m a little sick of my collegegraduette URL, schtick, and embarrassing old posts).

Even with my laziness and weirdness over my blog lately, I can NOT believe I have not updated since July and I have actually missed it a little over the past couple weeks. Plus, I have had a few questions from friends and fam that miss my posts, which always makes me smile. SO, without further ado, here is a lil’ update on what I’ve been up to the last 2 months…

We packed in some final summertime fun before the chill hit these last couple weeks, including a fun weekend celebrating one of our best friend’s birthdays at a water park in the Wisconsin Dells (WATERSLIDES!!!), last few boat rides on the lake, and one last September camping trip to Willow River State Park in Wisconsin (WATERFALLS!!!!).

We have been to lots of fun events and delicious restaurants around the city.

The beautiful weather in the summer makes it so easy to get out and enjoy Minneapolis. A couple highlights included…

- Music & Movies in Loring Park (live music and old movies on blankets in the park. The night we went was Artists & Models and the music was a Zimbabwean band – a TOTALLY new experience!). We also attended #catvidfest…. I will let you judge that experience from the article, haha!!

- The County Fair in our hometown (August) and the Minnesota State Fair (Labor Day weekend)

- Bike ride around Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet

- Buying our Jack-o-lantern pumpkins at the Farmer’s Market this year

We have had great visits from both sets of parents. My parents came up for my birthday weekend (oh yeah, did I mention I’m 25 now? When did I grow up?) and Brandon’s parents came for the State Fair and Labor Day weekend. It was really fun to show our parents some of our favorite spots and it was special to be able to spend my birthday with my parents and a holiday weekend with Brandon’s parents in our “new” home.

My little sister started school in the cities and is halfway done with her first semester of college!! I love love love having her close to us. Her dorm is close enough to where I work that we have grabbed lunch together a few times, and the comfort of having some family close enough to have weeknight dinners or have impromptu hangouts is so nice. I am so excited for her to just be starting her journey through the college years… so much fun and so many life lessons ahead Smile

(pic from the State Fair!)

Teto has gotten very grown up and is 49% adorable angel and 51% insufferable asshole. In the past week alone he has urinated 4 times on personal belongings in the apartment. We are not on speaking terms, but Brandon has been continuing their morning ritual of watching Big Cat Diary together on the couch and I don’t think he’s being hard enough on the little shit.

Last but not least, I have spent lots and lots of time with my BFFAEAEAE (best friend forever and ever and ever and ever. Obviously) who has been staying with us for a few weeks before she moves away from the Cities. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Besides the obvious fact that I am going to miss her like crazy and she brings so much entertainment to my life, there are several selfish reasons this is a huge problem. 1) I’m going to need to fill the position of “only person in this city that wants to hang out with me besides my cat and boyfriend” and I don’t even know where to start. Any takers??? 2) Inga has been doing things like folding laundry and doing dishes when we are gone, and I don’t know if the apartment productivity and cleanliness is going to bounce back when she’s gone. 3) We almost had Brandon convinced this was a democracy in terms of things like watching Bravo and driving 10 minutes for frozen yogurt and WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITHOUT HER??!!??

Actual background of Brandon’s iPad – we convinced him to keep this as his background probably 4 or 5 months ago and he is so used to it, the pic has stayed:

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Love you bingtrain.

Pheewwwww! In between shenanigans, I have been bustin’ at work, done a few freelance projects, and kinda sorta started working out again after my looong hiatus from any regular exercise regimen after my half mar in MAY (lazy.). Not a whole lot of health food to be totally honest with you. I’m working on it.

That’s it! The usual mix of craziness with probably the usual amount of just a little too much detail. Congrats if you made it through that novel of a post, I hope you enjoyed since it might be awhile ‘til the next one… I’m hoping to do another post soon about fitness/food type stuff like I used to but we shall see. What you have fools been up to lately??

The New Normal

Jul 222012

Posted by Britta on July 22, 2012 at 9:32 pm in Life 5 Responses »

Hellooooo!? Is anybody out there???

If you are, hi! Jeez, look at the time… it’s been three full weeks since I shared anything on the blog. I can’t decide if my lack of desire and creativity to write up a post is due to the fact that it’s just summer, when everyone is crazy busy with a million things going on every week, or if my inner routine-loving control freak is finally forcing me to start from scratch and rebuild what “normal” looks like for me each week since starting my job 3 months ago. I’ll go with excuse #3 – a combination of the above with a dash of laziness.

Can I get a “hell yeah!” and “hallelujah!” to the following two points:
#1 – Summertime is so fun in the Midwest. If you live near here, you know how enticing the warm sunshine is and how easy it is to say YES! to every swimming/boating/day-drinking/dining on patios/camping/baseball game opportunity that comes your way because summer is WAY TOO SHORT.
(It’s way more fun to keep the party going or run your hands through the boat spray or eat another veggie burger than take pictures for your blog.)
#2 – Sometimes it gets exhausting trying to be good at everything. So it becomes easy to just pick one thing to be good at (i.e. don’t get lazy at your job. Ever.) and get a bit lax about everything else, oh say… laundry, or packing lunches for work instead of spending $5 every day, or following any semblance of a workout plan.
(and blogging. Super lazy about blogging.)

But today! Today. I did some yoga, the laundry is 100% done, my lunch for tomorrow is packed, and behold! A blog post!

Here are some things that I’ve been up to lately that didn’t make the blog –

Fireworks viewing on the night of the 4th overlooking Loring Park:
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Trips home to Wisconsin with lots of family love, swimming, boating, and golf:
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Cooking up meals that while delicious, aren’t really anything new or mindblowing:
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Protein french toast with half of a sliced pear. I’ve been trying coconut/almond milk blend in my coffee lately – not a fan

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Tonight’s feast – broiled salmon, roasted brussels sprouts, red potato wedges, Minnesota sweet corn and a fresh salad. Mmm.

Biggest change over the last few weeks? Brandon and I got a kitty!

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His name is Teto – short for Teton. Ya know, like the mountains. He is about 7 weeks old and we just picked him up from a farm on Thursday. I am 100% not a cat person but also 100% in love with this little guy. Pictures do not do justice to how cute he looks bounding around our apartment.

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I’ve also had many, many fun adventures with friends that fall into the aforementioned category of “having too much fun to take pictures, SORRY NOT SORRY.”

The past month of being mostly disconnected from the blog and social media has gone along with a shift in how I’m feeling about the state of my life overall. For awhile during my job transition, I was in that weird state of feeling like I needed a new challenge, finding something I really wanted, and then feeling a weird combination of the excited high of starting a new job while also having to start all over. I have also been transitioning from traveling often for work and having my travel schedule dictate the rest of my schedule to having more independence but also more interests pulling at my time and attention during the week. Brandon and I just started a new lease, too, which means I’ve officially lived in the Twin Cities for a full year. Time flies!

I feel like all the pieces are finally falling into place that will let me start feeling like Minneapolis is more my “home” and less “the place where I moved for my first job out of school”. I’m excited for another year in this amazing area and I promise to share as much of it as I can here, for anyone who is interested

Okay – your turn, what is the most fun thing that you have done over the last month?

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