Weekend Meal Prep! Pizza Stuffed Shells, Waldorf Farro Salad, Broccoli Cheese Soup, Maid Rites

Hey guys, I'm Jen, welcome back to my channel and welcome back to another weekly

meal

prep

video, so this week I'll be working on some things in the kitchen first. I'll start with some hard-boiled eggs that I always make. these in my Instant Pot, in my opinion, is the best and easiest way to peel hard-boiled eggs. I use the five five five method, so I put the eggs in a steamer basket with some high pressure water for five minutes. I release the pressure naturally for five minutes and then let them sit in a bowl of ice water for another five minutes.

Once they are completely cool, you can go ahead and peel them. You can see I'm just rolling them on the counter on a paper towel and the

shells

come off right away so with these eggs I'm going to make some deviled eggs to keep in the refrigerator for dinner and lunches during the week and then leave a couple of them whole so my kids can use them as snacks. Some of the other things I'll be making in this video are Instant Pot Broccoli Cheese Soup, Waldo Waldorf Farro Salad, sorry I can't talk and then I'll also be making some pancakes and some dinners for next week, so if you're new to my channel, I'm a full-time working mom, I have two kids, Kira is nine and Connor is six, and my husband and I work full-time. and I love posting videos about home life, work, long-term

meal

prep

, and grocery shopping, so if you're not already subscribed, I'd love to have you around.

I've shown how to make my deviled eggs on my channel before, but I'm just going to do it real quick. I usually don't measure anything just because I've done it so many times that I know what I need to add just by tasting it, so I'm just cracking those hard-boiled eggs. Halfway through I put the yolks in a bowl and mash them with a fork. I add a little mayonnaise and a little pickle juice. I also used pickle sauce but I didn't have any on hand today. I also add a splash of yellow mustard, a little Splenda or you could use sugar and then salt and pepper.

Now this batch turned out a little runny. I think maybe I added too many pickles, ooh, pickle juice or too much mayonnaise, but they tasted good. You can see there that I'm usually spooning this into the hard-boiled egg halves. If I'm making a big batch of these, I like to put the yolk mixture in a ziplock bag and then cut the corner off and just kind of squeeze them into the hard-boiled eggs, but since I wasn't making a lot, I'm just using a spoon, like this. So the next thing I'm going to start is to prepare some chicken breasts at my local supermarket.

Hyvee just sold chicken breasts for $98 a pound and when they have that deal I usually like to stock up on three or four packages, what I do is just trim off the fat and excess, like tendons or cartilage. that could be on the chicken breast and I cut them in half horizontally, you can see I'm just sliding my knife between the middle of the breast because that way when you cook them later they cook much more evenly and they cook faster that way because they're thinner too, so my plan for this chicken is to put some in a ziplock bag along with a little olive oil and a little seasoning and I'll use that for one more dinner later in the week that way.

The chicken is now seasoned and marinated and ready to use with the other chicken breasts. I'm going to put them in a few ziplock freezer bags, label them and put them in my freezer in the garage and then have them ready for meals throughout the month that way, it's easier to get them out of the refrigerator if you freeze them this way, you can definitely separate them much easier and defrost them, so for meal prep, chicken. I'm using some of this famous Dave's chicken marinade. I think I bought it at Walmart and I'm just drizzling the chicken breast with a little bit of olive oil and adding the dry seasoning and then I'm going to put them in a ziploc bag and these will be in the refrigerator for two or three days until I'm ready to prepare them for dinner.

I'll be making roasted chicken breasts for dinner one night this week, so for the other bags you just need to make sure to squeeze out the air. Scoop out the best you can and then I'll label them with a permanent marker and then I'll stick them in the freezer and they'll be ready for another meal in the future. Well next up I'm going to work on browning some ground beef for a couple of meals this week and in one of the meals I'll be making some ready made or at least beef sandwiches, let me know in the comments below if you know what they are , but I'll talk about them in a moment, but I'm also going to make some

pizza

-flavored

stuffed

pasta

shells

that I think I've made before on my channel.

I think I made these for a freezer meal prep video, so I'll try to find them. that video and like it below if you're interested in watching it, but since I was making ground beef for a couple different recipes, I decided to use my Instant Pot to brown it, so I'm setting it to sauté mode and then put the ground beef in there and I'm using this meat grinder from Pampers Chef to break up the ground meat as finely as I can while it cooks. I'm going to go ahead and start with the topping part of the

pizza

. shells, this is a great way to use up extra jars of marinara sauce or marinara sauce that you have in your freezer.

I had a bag of frozen meat sauce that I'm adding to my bowl along with some leftover pizza sauce and some leftover bruschetta from Trader Joe's is a great way to use up so I like to freeze bits of things so I don't waste a lot of food, which makes me feel better about my food purchases if I don't waste things. So I'm just taking out about a pound of ground beef that I browned and mixing it with the tomato sauce and then I'm going to add a little bit of Italian seasoning. In fact, I don't have Italian seasoning on hand, so I'm just using oregano, a little thyme, and a little rosemary, just sprinkling it to taste and stirring well for this original recipe.

I'll go ahead and leave a link below so you can print it out if you're interested. To make it, the next thing I'm going to do is just boil my pasta shells, so I'm going to put 18 of these in the boiling water and I like to put them in separately to make sure they don't stick together. together and then simply boil them according to the package instructions. Once they are ready, you can rinse them in a colander with very cold water. This will help stop the cooking and make sure they don't stick, which is why I love them.

This recipe is because it is a great make ahead meal, if you want to make it as a freezer meal you totally can; Otherwise, you can make it three or four days in advance and just leave it in the refrigerator and take it out when you're ready to bake it during the week, so to fill them, what I'm going to do is just put some sauce on pasta in the bottom of my 13 by 9 pan and then just Taking the shells one by one and filling them with the meat mixture, I'm going to line them up in my pan and make sure they're far enough apart so they don't stick together.

I also wanted to mention if you guys don't follow. Me on Instagram, please head over there and do it. I always have a link in my description box below to my Instagram page and I'll display the name on the screen right here. Jen is recording. I post a lot more there and I usually post things we were eating or things we're doing so if you want more real time updates that's the place to get them so once I'm done filling all the shells I'm just going to serve a little bit of the extra. tomato sauce over the shells to make sure they don't dry out and then I'll sprinkle some mozzarella

cheese

on top.

I went ahead and used the whole bag which was 2 cups and then I'll also sprinkle it with a little bit of pepperoni and that's what's going to give it the pizza flavor. You can also sprinkle this with other pizza toppings like mushrooms, green peppers, or black olives. I didn't have black olives on hand or I probably would have added them, this is what it looks like when it's all baked I just wanted to show you a photo of it, it's really good and I served it with some garlic sticks for dinner later that week ok , the next thing I'm going to do is prepare the food for this.

The week is some loose meat sandwiches or

maid

a rights as we call them here in Iowa. If you are not familiar with this recipe, a made right is actually like a sloppy joe, but without this sauce, so sometimes it is He calls them loose meat. sandwiches and the original well done was actually founded in the city I live in, so that's a little trivial for you, but there are tons of copycat recipes and I haven't made one in quite a while. I found one on Pinterest and I'll go ahead and leave a link to that recipe below if you want to try it.

The original recipe was not an Instant Pot recipe, but I decided to use my Instant Pot because I thought it would be quicker and easier to make. in front of the crock pot, so 2 2 pounds of cooked ground beef, you'll add a little bit of dried chopped onion, a little bit of beef bullion, a little bit of chicken bullion, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, sauce soy, Worcestershire sauce and that's it, and a cup of water and then I just went ahead and cooked this on high pressure in the Instant Pot and you can see after it was done it was perfectly tender and I went ahead and tasted it and seasoned it. very good to prepare it, all you have to do is just put.

Place it on a plate and put it in the refrigerator; You don't want to get rid of the juice you cooked it in, otherwise the meat will become very dry and when you reheat it, be sure to use it. the juice to reheat it, so I'm just going to put this in a glass dish and keep it in the refrigerator and it's very easy to reheat on a weeknight. You can see here that I gave Adam some

cheese

scriptures. and then I made mine with French fries with a little bit of cheese sauce, which is called properly made mash and it's delicious, so next I'm going to start preparing my produce, this is something I always do every

weekend

regardless of If I'm doing a lot of meal prep, it's preparing all my produce.

I just find that we are much more likely to use them during the week and they are less likely to go to waste if everything is washed, trimmed and cut, so Ivy actually had some pineapples on sale this week 2 for $5, so I went ahead and I bought one because I thought it was a great price. You can see here that I cut off both ends of the pineapple and cut each side to remove the skin. and then I just cut it into quarters and use my knife to cut the heart on a diagonal so I know they're like fancy pineapple peelers and cutters and all that, but I've always used a knife and this is the method I use.

I use it and it works well, so sometimes I also get questions about the knife I use. This is like a high quality chef's knife. I think the brand is like Zwilling henckles or something like that. I'll find it on Amazon and link to it. I will warn you below that it is quite expensive, but if you buy a knife like this, take good care of it and keep it sharp, it will be the last chef's knife you will ever have to buy and I honestly think it is one of the best. most important tools you can have in your kitchen if you like to cook, so know that I love cutting and washing my own lettuce.

I just think it tastes so much better and I actually enjoyed making it for some strange reason, but this is actually romaine lettuce that I bought the week before. I actually don't usually wash every single lettuce I buy when I buy it because I think it will last four or five days, but if I leave it unwashed, it will actually last longer than that, so what I'm doing is just Peel any of the brown parts and then cut them up and put them in my

salad

spinner. I love this oXXO

salad

spinner, you know if you've seen my videos.

I'll link it below. I wash all my products in it. I'm squeezing a lemon over that to help prevent the lettuce from browning and then soaking it in cold water in the sink for about 10 minutes, this also helps rehydrate the lettuce if it's been in the fridge for a while, so It has two purposes, but once I'm done soaking it, I'll drain it and then just use the salad spinner. To spin the disc, okay, so for the lettuce I'm just going to put this in a ziploc bag with a paper towel to absorb the moisture and yes, I want to acknowledge that yes, I'm using a lot of ziplock bags this week. and it's only because I was in a hurry and had limited space in my refrigerator.

I really try not to use the plug bags all the time, but sometimes I do and I'm sorry, I'm a human being. I know I'll probably get it. A few comments on that, but I'm just trying to make it in this world today as a busy mom. I'm trying to prepare food for my family, so for the parsley I did the same: I simply soaked it in cold water withlemon and I centrifuged it. Let it dry and then I'll wrap it in paper towels and put it in the refrigerator. This is how I like to store most of my herbs and if you do this, they will keep well in the refrigerator most of the week.

I'm also going to wash some green onions or scallions whatever you want to call them and I'm also going to put them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator, so I'm going to start washing my apples. I would also like to soak them in my salad spinner and cold water with a little bit of vinegar to make sure they are clean, once they have soaked for about ten or fifteen minutes I just rinsed them and put them on a towel and dried them very good and then I will place them in the fruit bowl. that if I wash them and put them in a fruit bowl on the counter, my kids are more likely to snack on them during the week.

One of the other things I was planning to make for dinner this week was a Cheesy Cauliflower Bake. and I can link that recipe below when I make it. I like to prep my cauliflower on the

weekend

so it's much easier to prep during the week, so I'm just quartering the head of cauliflower and cutting it into quarters. I core it and then cut it into large pieces and put it in my salad spinner. I like to soak it in cold water and then rinse it to make sure it's clean and then it'll just go in a ziploc bag and it keeps pretty well in the refrigerator for about five to six days.

I've given it up, so it's a great tip if you're going to use vegetables during the week in cooking, go ahead and prepare them, watch them cut them up and put them in the refrigerator to use later. I'm going to work washing my grapes. I have some red grapes here that I bought at the supermarket. In fact, I'm going to use some of these for the Waldorf

farro

salad I'm making, but then I'll leave the rest in the refrigerator so the kids can eat them for snacks, breakfast, and lunch. Actually, one of my least favorite jobs in the kitchen is removing all these grapes from the stems, so what I do. what I want to do is just put them in my salad spinner and then I soak them in very cold water in the sink with a healthy dose of vinegar for about 15 minutes just to loosen any gunk that I may have on them and then I make sure to rinse them really well and I store them in a container with a paper towel or in a black bag with a paper towel in the refrigerator.

I am sometimes asked why I use vinegar and I encourage you to do your own research on how to wash produce. but there is evidence to suggest that lemon juice and vinegar help kill bacteria in produce and that's how I prefer to look at it and it's also safe to ingest so that's a plus too okay so next thing I think What I'm going to work on to meal prep is this Waldorf Farro Salad. This recipe actually came from the Food Network magazine that I receive monthly, but I found it online, so I'll link that recipe below so you can print it.

If you want to make it, it's really good, it actually ended up turning out a lot better than I thought and everyone loved it so the first thing you saw me doing there was just putting in some

farro

, if you've never used it before it's actually one grain and it's pretty good, it's really good and I like cold salads like this, but I put it in a pot of salted water and brought it to a boil, you just want to cook it according to the instructions on the package and then for the dressing of For this salad, I'll need a little mayonnaise, a little sour cream, buttermilk, apple cider vinegar and then it will be flavored with chopped green onion and dried dill, salt and pepper.

I'll mix it up here in a moment, when the farro is ready, you'll just rinse. with cold water and you can put it in a colander and rinse it very well with cold water until it's cold to the touch, then the other ingredients that go in this salad are two chopped apples, so I like to cut them like that. I just quarter them and then I core them and then I cut them into small pieces and I add them to the dressing and since this dressing has buttermilk and apple cider vinegar, you can keep this salad in the refrigerator for up to four or five days and the apples don't brown too much due to the acidity of the dressing, so that's a good thing about this and it also tastes great.

In fact, I think it would be good to pair it with some grilled chicken. I added a little bit to it, but I took some to work and shared it with my coworkers, they really liked it and then Adam took a container to work too and had it for lunch with some

soup

during the week. Another ingredient included here is grapes and so you're going to need about a cup of halved grapes, so I'm going to pick them up and put them in the bowl with the rest of the salad. Then I'll cut up some celery and put it in my salad. how I like to store my celery in a glass jar with water in the refrigerator, it will keep for several weeks like this in very cold water, so that's a tip if you don't use the celery very quickly like we don't.

It's nice to have on hand like this and then I'm going to put some chopped flat leaf parsley in the salad. I also wanted to mention that my mom gave me these stainless steel bowls with handles for Christmas. I really like them. many and I will find them on Amazon and link them below if you are interested. I love that they are large and stainless steel, so they are super easy to clean, but I also like that they have a handle and a spout. well so you can see me they're just throwing them into my cooled farro along with some dried dill and then I'm also going to add some walnuts some walnuts and what else I added oak raisins the original recipe called for raisins but instead , I had raisins on hand, so there's the finished salad.

I went ahead and tried it and thought it needed a little bit of salt and a little bit of honey, so I went ahead and added that, stirred it again and then packed it into containers to use for the week. I sometimes have questions about the glass containers I use and I have a variety of them so I will try to find some online and link them below. I love using glass so much more than plastic because it doesn't stain so the next thing I'm going to make is some

broccoli

cheese

soup

and we'll use it for dinner one night and then also for lunches throughout the week .

Link this original recipe below. I made a few changes to it, but it basically followed it for the most part, so in the instant pot I put half a stick of butter along with a little bit of olive oil so you know if you don't I don't know, add olive oil to butter when you sauté stuff makes the cooking temperature of the butter higher so it's less likely to burn so I'll also add some garlic to the incident pot and then I'll go ahead and put it in Then place the insert in the instant pot and put it on sauté mode.

Then I'm going to chop up some carrots and add them to the onions and garlic as well. Now the inspiration for why I wanted to do this is because I had two bags. of frozen

broccoli

and cauliflower that I had stored in my refrigerator about a month ago, they were actually in my refrigerator and were about to go bad or spoil, so I wanted to make sure I didn't waste them, so this was kind. From an experiment I actually took the broccoli in cauliflower raw and threw it in the freezer with the intention of making this soup at a later date and I'm happy to report that it worked well so just a tip for you if you have veggies in your freezer and in your refrigerator that are about to go bad, put them in the freezer and make soup with them.

It worked great, especially for soups like this. I always like to grate my own cheese, I think it melts a lot. better and has much better flavor than the pre-graded stuff, so I upped some sharp cheddar cheese. I'm also adding some chicken broth to my Instant Pot, so I added about 4 cups. I have homemade chicken broth that I make in my Instant Pot. and I'll link that recipe or I'll link that video below I made the meal with that and I love keeping it in the freezer because it's great for recipes like this so I'm going to go ahead and set my Instant Pot to the ceiling and put it on high pressure for 15 minutes .

Oh wait, I forgot to add my nutmeg. The recipe called for a little nutmeg and I forgot to add it so again sear at high pressure for 15 minutes and that will allow the broccoli and cauliflower. cook in that chicken broth, so once it's ready you can decide if you want to puree it or not, usually when I make this type of soup in the incident pot, it cooks so well that once you stir it, the vegetables break up and You don't have to use an immersion blender but you can if you want and also the original recipe didn't call for cream cheese but since I had some of that on hand in the fridge and didn't have it or wanted to make sure I used it before it went bad.

I went ahead and tossed it into the soup along with a little bit of salt and pepper and then I also added my shredded cheddar cheese and a little bit of hot sauce just for a little something special, so that's nice. from the base recipe, you can obviously add to this if you'd like to add a little extra protein. It would be really nice if you added chicken breasts or shredded chicken or maybe something cooked chopped like kielbasa or Polish sausage, that would be really good. I tried it and thought it needed a little more cheese, so I'm actually adding a few slices of American cheese.

If I had Velveeta on hand I would have used it, but since I didn't, I'm using the Kraft placemats and it worked. It came out okay so basically you just want to cook this stir fry until all the cream cheese is melted and all the cheeses are melted and until it thickens a little bit. I didn't find this needed any more thickening, but if you wanted you could add a little milk mixed with cornstarch if you think it needs to be a little thicker, so here is the finished soup. I just removed it from the base of the Instant Pot and I'm going to leave it on our rack.

Let it cool before going ahead and packing it into some containers so we can take it to work during the week. I have never frozen this soup. I'm not sure how well it would freeze just because it's more of a cream base. soup than a broth based soup, if you froze a broccoli cheese soup and thought about it again, let me know in the comments below how it works. I'd like to see it, but I'm going to pack this into some containers anyway. I had one of those Systema brand soup cups. I'll try to find one of those online and link to it below.

That's my favorite mug to take soup to work with just because it's so easy to heat up and it's vented. on top but the rest I'm just going to use glass containers and I'm going to keep them in the refrigerator and we're going to use them this week okay so the last thing I'm going to work on making is some pancakes the reason why I decided mail in maybe some pancakes because I got this huge container of buttermilk in my high v grocery truck the week before. I actually only ordered a cup of buttermilk and I got this huge half gallon container and I didn't want it. waste it and I have a really good recipe for buttermilk pancakes and it's great to make ahead and freeze and it's super easy to microwave and your kids can have it for a quick breakfast during the week so This was originally a recipe that I pulled out from Food Network magazine years and years ago.

I'll try to find it online and link to it below; Otherwise, if I can't, I'll just write it in the description box. like it's 2011 so in this recipe there is flour, granulated sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, buttermilk, eggs and then melted butter and first you mix the wet ingredients and then you add the dry ingredients and It beats very well. Sometimes I have to add additional buttermilk if the batter is too thick, but use your judgment until you think it's the consistency you want, so to cook these pancakes, I'm actually going to use the griddle that came with my stove.

I actually didn't think I would use This is a lot, but what I use the most is for making breakfasts, like eggs and pancakes, and they are really nice to have, if you don't have one of these, just use a regular skillet and put it on medium to medium heat. medium-high. get it really hot and then spray it with cooking spray and then you can just pour the batter in, cook them until they're golden on one side and flip them over and cook them until they're golden on the other side so once they're done they're done , I'm just going to transfer them to a plate to cool.

I don't remember how many pancakes he made. I want to say between 12 and 15 pancakes, maybe this size is how much this batch made, but how? I like to keep them in the freezer. I'm going to label my ziplock bag and then I like to store them in a flat layer in Ziploc with parchment paper between the cake layers, so I'm going to go ahead and put four. pancakes here and then I'll add a square of parchment paper and then I'll just place the extra pancakes on top. The reason you want to do this is so they don't stick together when they freeze, that way you canremove them. one at a time and you can microwave them for about a minute.

I wrap them in a paper towel and cook them for 30 seconds on one side and then 30 seconds on the other side and they are ready. here's a look at everything i did today, all the meal prep i did. I actually did this over two days so I sometimes get questions about how long it takes and this probably took me about 3 to 3 and a half hours total. Within two days, I cut up my pineapple that will go in the refrigerator for snacks and lunches and then I also ate my washed cauliflower, my chopped and washed romaine lettuce.

I also chopped up some cucumber to use in salads and some parsley and green onions. Also, below I have the grapes that I washed and put in a ziplock bag that will last all week. We actually had the

stuffed

pizza peels for dinner tonight so I went ahead and packed the other two slices for lunch during the week here's the farroWaldorf salad, this ended up being a really good recipe again. I'll link it below so you can prepare it if you're interested. Here's the meat that I made for the right sandwiches and then my broccoli and cheese soup, so it's in several. different containers and will take them to work during the week for lunches.

Take a look at the pancakes that will go in the freezer for the kids to eat for breakfast. Here's the chicken I'm marinating in some of that famous Dave's chicken sauce. for BBQ chicken, double eggs and then just a few hard boiled eggs for breakfast or lunch. This weekend I also cooked some chili and some pasta so I packed it in a box so I would have four leftovers and then I froze the excess and then there's my chicken. frozen brisket to store in the freezer for later meals, so that's all I made today. If you have any questions or if I forgot to link something, please let me know in the comments below; otherwise thanks for watching and see you in my next video bye oh