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You are here: Home / Recipes and Cooking Tips / Easy Ways to Meal Prep Lunches

Easy Ways to Meal Prep Lunches

September 26, 2018 by Alea Milham Leave a Comment

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Use these easy ways to meal prep lunches to make your lunches for the week on Sunday evening. Making a week’s worth of lunches save you time on busy mornings and reduce your temptation to pick up fast food.

Meal prep lunch idea: turkey taco rice bowls with corn and black beans.

Turkey Taco Bowls from Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches

There are a lot of resources out there for meal prepping dinners. It seems that this is what most people focus on because we have such a busy schedule these days, it can be hard to get everyone around the table without a little extra prep-work. If you do find meal-prepping advice for lunch it often is geared towards the type of meal prep athletes do; bland chicken upon bland chicken with the same vegetables prepped for lunch 5 days a week. That isn’t what most of us are looking for. How do you make different and exciting meals for lunch with little time? Here are some easy ways to meal prep lunches that are flavorful and offer a lot of variety!

Easy Ways to Meal Prep Lunches

Make Sandwiches ahead of time 

 

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A post shared by Alea Milham | Foodie (@aleamilham) on Jun 20, 2018 at 3:37pm PDT

Jalapeño Chicken Pita Pockets from Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches

You can make sandwiches ahead of time that don’t get soggy with ease. It is all about picking the right bread, fillings and order you put the sandwich together. Here are tips for preventing soggy sandwiches. Additionally, pre-cooked sandwiches are heroes of lunch boxes. They can be made ahead and frozen for easy heating up later at your desk.

Chop vegetables for salads on the go

 

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A post shared by Alea Milham | Foodie (@aleamilham) on May 27, 2018 at 5:29pm PDT

Chimichurri Steak Salad from Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches

I love a fresh salad for lunch, but often by the time lunch rolls around, it is no longer so fresh and has turned soggy on me. There are several ways you can prevent this including keeping dressings to the side to storing salads in the right container. Another great way is to simply prep ahead your vegetables, store them separately in your fridge and assemble salads in a flash every morning. Doing this each week takes mere minutes, too! Here are more tips on how to meal prep salads for the week and keep them fresh.

Batch-cook what you can

If you are planning your dinners, batch cook for your lunches at the same time. For instance, I make big batches of rice and quinoa for salads and one bowl meals later in the week with my lunches as I am making my dinner batches. I also like to make large side portions of recipes for portioning out in my lunch as well. Here are more tips on batch cooking.

Plan for leftovers

If you are batch-cooking, you are probably the planning type of person. I plan to have leftovers by making larger portions than my family will eat for dinner so I can have leftovers for lunch. This cuts waste and it makes it super easy to plan lunches with leftovers a couple of times a week, cutting lunch prep even more.

Make one-bowl meals

 

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A post shared by Alea Milham | Foodie (@aleamilham) on May 14, 2018 at 5:24pm PDT

Salmon-Berry Quinoa Bowl from Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches

One-bowl meals are easy to put together even if you are really strapped for time. You can prepare both dinner and meal prep lunch for the week. You can make a large enough batch of them that you can serve them for both meals, too. A one-bowl meal is simply as it sounds; a meal that doesn’t require much work and cooks up nice in one bowl in the microwave for easy re-heating. Just add a grain such as rice, a protein like chicken or tofu and some veggies. I like to add the sauce on last. One-bowl meals are very customizable, so you can tailor them to individual family members.

Pack a soup, stew, or chili

 

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A post shared by Alea Milham | Foodie (@aleamilham) on Feb 23, 2018 at 6:47pm PST

Jalapeno Popper Turkey Chili Recipe

During the cooler months, I make huge batches of soups, stews, and chilis for dinner and they make great meals for lunch as well. They reheat nicely and are very filling, too. I pack my extras for chili toppings (such as sour cream, cheese, onions etc.) in a separate container and just add them after the chili is warmed up in the microwave.

Need some delicious make-ahead lunch recipes? Check out my latest cookbook Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches.

More Meal Prepping Tips:

How to Avoid Boredom in Meal Prepping

1 Simple Trick to Save Time with Meal-Prepping

How to Save Money with Prep-Ahead Meals

How to Save Time with Prep-Ahead Meals

Beginners Guide to Meal Prepping

Meal Prep Tips to Get Started Meal Prepping

How to Meal Prep on a Budget

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About Alea Milham

Alea Milham is the owner of Premeditated Leftovers and the author of Prep-Ahead Meals from Scatch. She shares her tips for saving money and time while reducing waste in her home. Her favorite hobby, gardening, is a frugal source of organic produce for her recipes. She believes it is possible to live fully and eat well while spending less.

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Welcome. I'm Alea!

On Premeditated Leftovers I share simple recipes made with whole foods, practical shopping tips, time saving techniques, and meal planning strategies. I also share tips for minimizing food waste, so more of the food that is purchased ends up on the table.

While volunteering as a budget counselor, I realized that food is the element of most people’s budgets where they have the greatest control. I set out to develop low-cost recipes from scratch to prove it’s possible to create delicious meals on a limited budget. Eating well while spending less is about more than just creating recipes using inexpensive ingredients; it’s about creatively combining ingredients so you don’t feel deprived and are inspired to stick to your budget.

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