Hello everybody! Yay to pretty rainbows in a jar!!!For this week’s mealprep I’m trying to include more raw fruits and veggies in my diet! Raw fruits and veggies have the highest concentration of nutrients and my diet has had a dearth of nutrition recently (been eating out a lot the past few weeks) So I decided to make supplementary nutrient packed salad jars to go along with whatever else I might find for lunch! 🙂
Here’s my grocery haul for this week- it’s cost me about $30 and it’s for 20 meals and 5 snacks! 🙂
Baby spinach leaves, romaine lettuce, granola (gift from a friend- thank you Connie! 🙂 ), lemons, apples, purple cabbage, mangoes, carrots, broccoli, avocado, papaya and unsweetened almond milk!
This, together with leftover meat (salmon, chicken & thin slices of beef (for last week’s shabu shabu dinner) ) will form the basis of my meals for this week! I also have leftover rice and curry veggies etc courtesy of my dear mother and her fabulous cooking. Haha. (Free food!)
Anyway! I’m really excited as well because I purchased 6 of these mason jars from Howard’s Storage World! It cost $24.95 iirc and they are 500ml each!
I’ve been wanting to explore the world of canning and making my own jams etc but for this week, I thought they were perfect for salads in a jar!
Meal prep time! I took a picture at 8:55pm because I wanted to se how much time I took to prep food in a week!
Shredding/ dicing 1kg of carrots!
Drying the romaine lettuce so they don’t get soggy when you store them. I really should invest in a salad spinner!
Cutting and soaking ALL my veggies for the week.
AND HERE WE GO!!!
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I use cocos coconut oil to cook. It’s a Singapore based company and uses the cold pressed method to extract the oils. I highly recommend coconut oil to cook because it has one of the highest smoke points of most oils and therefore doesn’t turn carcinogenic so fast. However, oil is oil so just because it’s ‘healthier’ doesn’t mean you can pour half a bottle into your food and call it a day! Everything in moderation!
For this week, I’m freezing broccoli and carrot soups to use as a base for the week ahead. So whenthe weekday rolls around, I merely reheat the soup base and add in chicken or fish or toufu etc, pack it into my thermal jar and bring it to work!
While the soup is boiling away I wash and dry the new mason jar!
NOTE: if you are disinfecting the mason jars for the first time, I highly recommend not using extremely hot water. I poured very hot water (close to boiling) into a glass jar to disinfect it and the glass base TOTALLY shattered through. I washed all of the in 1 part cold water, 2 parts hot water and dishwashing soap.
Yeah, so now I only have 5 -.- #storyofmylife
Making hummus! 🙂 I adapted the recipe from here!
This was the only canned chickpeas I could find at cold storage that was just stored in water. Everything else had a lot of preservatives or salt so please check carefully before you buy!
Cypressa tahini (roasted sesame paste) is one of my favourite brands! It has nothing at all inside except roasted white sesame seeds ground into a paste! 🙂
Do you remember my garlic grinder from my Tokyo shopping haul?? Used it for the first time today and it’s so cute! Like a toy in the kitchen! I like! Haha
No more chopping garlic!!!
Look how smoothhhhh and gorgeous the hummus is ! 🙂
I forgot to buy corn (wanted to roast them) so had to make do with this that I found in the cupboard. This packaged corn is actually brined in a sugar and salt solution (see ingredients list) so be careful with eating too much! Always try to choose unpackaged food as much as possible!
Just layer everything in the jar. Isn’t it gorgeous? 🙂 ALWAYS place your liquids at the bottom and your hard veggies over and the lightest veggies like lettuce right on top to prevent them from getting soggy!
From the bottom:
layer 1: hummus
layer 2: purple cabbage (hard veggie to soak up liquid)
layer 3: chickpeas and corn (for crunchy texture!)
layer 4: super sweet ripe mango chunks! (I love fruit in my salads)/ grapes
layer 5: more purple cabbge to soak up moisture from the mango
layer 6: romaine lettuce
layer 7: assorted nuts for added crunch!
here’s a really helpful infographic on how to layer and store your salads!
I made 5 for the week ahead!
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And to end off with some not so pretty pictures- This is how they look stored in my fridge with my soup jar all ready to go for tmr 🙂
Cutting washing, cooking and CLEANING UP (I think cleaning up takes up half the time because I mop the kitchen floor and every thing as well) takes about 2 hours! 2 hours in exchange for highly nutritious breakfast and lunch and snacks for the week ahead sounds like a pretty good deal to me! 🙂
and here’s how part of my freezer section looks like! Soup for the week, frozen precut veggies/ veggies for my morning smoothies etc!
Have a great week ahead everyone! Stay healthy and happy! For any questions, leave a comment below or email me at vegsmoothiebunny@gmail.com! 🙂
it really inspire me to make my own salad!!
Yay!!! Go go go! 🙂 let me know how it goes!! 🙂
Super pretty!!! I love the jar ideas. Was it difficult to dig everything out though?
Nope it wasn't! 😀 You tilt the jar before opening so all the dressing at the bottom coats everything on top! then you just EAT! Super yummy and I realised hummus is mega filling. haha
Hi, I am trying to do the meal prep. But for the salads in a jar, how long can this keep in the fridge?
Won't they go bad?
I don't know whether they can keep longer than 5 days because I usually make 5 and eat one each day. But even on the fifth day the salad leaves were still crisp and green and super yummy. The most important thing is to make sure the leaves on top don't touch any wet dressings. Dry your leaves before putting it in and separate it from the dressing with hard veggies or soft fruit that can keep like papaya or mango.