One thing I have learned this year about being a teacher is the importance of having a stocked fridge and pantry. Within my weekly routine, I leave about 3 hours of my weekend to shopping and meal prep for the following 7-10 days! Welcome to my last week of February, teacher meal prep 🙂

How I Plan It Out

First, I start by sitting down with a notepad and pen to plan out my meals and shopping list. A majority of my meal ideas come from instagram and what other people have made. When I am planning my shopping, I write out what I need for breakfast, lunch, and one dinner.

As a teacher, I am waking up before the sun to get ready. Having a breakfast already prepared that I just have to heat up makes mornings easy!

Same thing goes for lunch! Having a lunch that is set out for the entire week that I can put together the night before is KEY to my mornings. I try to plan one lunch that will last me 4-5 days depending on the length of my school week.

Finally, dinner. I usually plan for one dinner a week that will give me enough leftovers for 2-3 days. To me, this works perfectly and is just as nourishing and filling as having a new meal ready everyday.

What I Needed For The Week

This week, I decided to make breakfast biscuits, Mediterranean inspired bowls, energy balls, and the viral chicken caesar pizza! All of these meals focus on protein, color variety, gluten free, and easy prep. I find these meals make me feel best, while also tasting great!

With ingredients I already had in my pantry or fridge, I spent 100$ at the store. The list was: Greek yogurt, tortillas (sweet potato gluten free), peppers, cherry tomatoes, hummus, ground turkey and chicken, Italian seasoning, parmesan cheese, peanut butter, avocado, and Peet’s coffee pods.

Breakfast

Recently, I have been loving breakfasts including eggs. For a while I was making egg bakes. Mix 8 eggs and a cup of cottage cheese together and bake in a 8×8 pan for 20 minutes. You can add cheese, spinach, peppers, or anything to want. It’s super easy to just cut a piece (one pan lasts me 8 days) and heat it up with some hot sauce!

This week, however, I tried egg biscuits. I used this recipe from @jennaeatsgood on instagram. She has amazing meal preps and grocery lists for a week full of recipes! They are super easy to make and also get you to 20-30 grams of protein at the start of your day!

Energy Bites

In third grade, we have snack midway through our morning. I am not always hungry for snack but do have one of these packed incase I ever am! I used to buy granola bars or protein bars from the store, but that got too expensive with ingredients that were not making me feel great. The last two weeks I have made these, and LOVED them! Easy to adjust with ingredients you like and one ball is the perfect snack size.

Lunch

As my breakfast biscuits were baking, I started prepping lunch. This week I was inspired by Mediterranean food, tzatziki in particular, and decided to make bowls! There were chicken meatballs from trader joes in my freezer, so I thawed those and cooked them on the stove top.

I also made high protein tzatziki sauce. Mix a cup of greek yogurt, the juice of one lemon, finely chopped cucumber and some dill. I put all of this in a bowl to use throughout the week.

To finish it out, I chopped up some peppers and rinsed cherry tomatoes to have some veggies on the side.

Dinner

This chicken caesar salad pizza has been on my ‘To Make’ list for a while now, so I felt it was finally time to try it out. Now, I decided since I already am getting greek yogurt, I was going to make caesar dressing, but you can just as easily use store bought dressing.

This recipe is super easy to follow, minimal ingredients, and SO GOOD! I can easily see why so many people have made this! With some roasted sweet potato on my plate for color, it was filling. I also did not purchase anchovies for the dressing, and used kale instead of lettuce for the salad because I already had a bag in my fridge.