Meal Plan #19

New Year, Same Me, Different Meal Prep #19

Jan 05, 2025

Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed the holiday. I spent my New Year watching Cohen and Anderson’s New Year special while also shopping for everything that I wanted before 2025 started, so I could stop overspending and overshopping. Technically, I bought everything I needed this month, but I haven’t bought anything since January started, so technically, I’m still following my New Year’s resolution, right? Everyone has to start somewhere!

This week, I did quite a lot of cooking. I’m excited to share not just the usual meal prep recipes but also some dinner recipes. I want to try new things this month, like meal planning, and experimenting with different ideas. So, this month is my trial run for a few things. By February, I hope to have a more concrete plan for this newsletter. Bear with me as I figure it all out this month!

I will say, though, my meal planning will never include “dieting” or “healthy” foods. I always try to create a safe space for eating. I suffered from an eating disorder from 18 to 21—so severe that I now have a collapsed bladder from it— so it’s important to me that I promote a healthy relationship with food. Eating something just because it’s “healthy” doesn’t make it truly healthy if you don’t actually enjoy it. My meal plans will also never include calories, because I used to count them, and it completely ruined my relationship with food. With that said, I hope this space and my meal plans help you enjoy the physical and emotional connection we have with food.

Anyway, back to meal prep. For breakfast, I made the usual chia pudding and also a meal kit! The meal kit was a sweet potato hash with avocado spread, prosciutto, and an egg. It was fun to make and allowed my parents to have a fresh breakfast in the morning instead of microwaving something. I enjoyed this meal kit because sometimes I want sweet potato hash but won’t make it—shredding sweet potato in the morning feels like too much work. This way, my parents had everything prepped and could just throw it on the pan to cook.

For the chia pudding recipe, I made blueberry chia pudding. It was good for one day, but then I dropped all of them out of the fridge, so there’s that. At least we got one day out of them before they ended up on the floor!

For lunch, I made a Mediterranean-inspired dish and a classic Americana dish. First, we’re starting with a Mediterranean hummus dipper meal prep. I love this one because I need different things to dip into. It included Mediterranean-baked chicken thighs, a Mediterranean salad, and mini pita bread. I dipped everything in hummus and tzatziki sauce. This meal prep doesn’t require a microwave and can be eaten cold. It was my favorite meal prep of the week and a winner with my parents too. I even reused the chicken thighs and Mediterranean salad for dinner that night and made a wrap with big pita bread. More on that later!

Next, we have a lupus-approved dish. My mom has lupus and always ate this when her lupus flared up. It’s a classic tuna salad salad. As a kid, I wasn’t a fan of salad, but this one’s the best, especially with a dash of homemade honey mustard. It’s a simple recipe, takes about 20 minutes, and is my go-to when I want to get my vegetable intake while still enjoying my food.

And now for something new, but not really. I made three dinners this week because last week was New Year’s, and we ate out to end the year. The first dinner was the Mediterranean wrap. I liked this one because it was easy and minimal prep. I reused almost everything I’d prepped for lunch, which made dinner take about 10 minutes.

Next was my favorite dinner (and my mom’s favorite too): chicken lettuce wrap bento. It was the perfect meal to start the New Year! It had the contrast of hot minced chicken and cold, crispy butter lettuce. I added some microgreens and a quick cucumber salad. The secret star of the dish was the hoisin sauce for dipping. If you try any recipe from this week, try this one.

Lastly, I made a cod bento, which was both a failure and a success. The first fillet I made was oversalted (so easy to oversalt cod!), but I rinsed the next fillet and it came out perfectly. This bento was a classic homage to a Japanese dinner. It included fish, miso soup, lightly marinated cucumber salad, and steamed rice. It was rejuvenating and didn’t leave our stomachs feeling too heavy.

With that said, let’s take a closer look at this week’s menu!