I’ve never been a big meal prep person, but Clay was out of town last week and sometimes when I am solo I lose motivation to cook and just revert to eating crap like cereal or pasta with red sauce (HELLO carb overload), so I thought I’d give meal prepping a whirl. I was so happy with the result, it took all of 30 minutes to prepare three meals and they were DELICIOUS. The kale salad was amazing, as kale salad is the one salad that tastes better the longer it sits in the dressing (you don’t ever have to worry about it getting soggy), so the salad actually became even yummier as the days went on. It was such a treat not to have to grocery shop, cook and clean each day – I felt like I had sooooooo much more free time. Based on this experience, I think there may be a whole lot more meal prepping in my future.
These are the meal prep containers I used
Meal Prep – Baked Lemon Herb Chicken with Kale and Brown Rice Salad
- Yield: 3 meals
Ingredients
- 2 – 6 ounce boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I used the black pepper pre-marinated chicken breasts from Whole Foods)
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1 lemon
- Olive oil
- Salt + pepper
- 1 head Dino kale, thinly chopped
- 1 cup uncooked brown rice, this will yield about 2 cups cooked
- Champagne vinaigrette, about ¼ cup
- ½ cup dried cranberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees
- If you are not using pre-marinated chicken breasts, wash and dry chicken well and then rub olive oil (about 1 teaspoon) onto each piece, sprinkle with salt, pepper, thyme, oregano (use your hands to massage these spices into the chicken
- Cut the lemon in half. Squeeze juice form ½ the lemon onto the chicken breasts, slice the other half in thin slices and place on top of each piece of chicken
Even though I started with pre-marinated chicken breasts, I still added the oregano, thyme and lemon
- Place the chicken breasts in an oven-safe casserole dish and bake for about 30 minutes., until a thermometer reads 165 degrees
- While the chicken is cooking, prepare the brown rice according to the directions on the package
- Combine the brown rice, shredded kale and dried cranberries in a large bowl. Toss with the champagne vinaigrette. Massage the dressing into the kale with your hands
- Once chicken is done, slice and divide it along with the kale/rice salad between your meal prep containers
