There’s something to be said for a chef prepared meal.

I tried. For months, I really tried to create a system for feeding my family in the evenings when we would all be together and sit down at the table. That’s the only time that we can converge during the day, since we are all in separate locations throughout the rest of the day. We had to , be a family and talk about our days and things we want to do. It’s really a time to connect, and the food is the reason we are all coming together.

I always end with the people who would write blogs about their meal plans and show you with these very neat containers, how they had cooked and prepped their food in advance and then cooked it.

That has now become a reality for me with my new meal, planning service, Fresh n Lean. I am pretty happy that I don’t even have to lift a finger to start chopping or prepping meal containers to contain food that I would have to cook later in the day.

It would be super nice to have a live-in chef that could cook anything we wanted on a whim. But that’s not a reality for me. What do I think I want to have somebody else in my house all the time just waiting for me to be hungry. Might be kind of creepy.
How it works is that I choose a meal plan for myself, I chose a separate one for my husband, since he is not against eating carbs and rice. I want to stick to a more low carb diet where I can lose fat and build muscle.
The big packages come on a Friday afternoon all sealed up with freezer packs and a big paper. Insert that keeps it all tight inside during shipping. It comes by FedEx.
These boxes stay in the garage until I go over to it with a box cutter, break them open, and throw the meals into my doorway. From there, they will go into a carrying bag to go up my stairs. I wish there was an easier way, but I can’t exactly carry things easily with two crutches.

The next step in my process is to move these heavy boxes with my crutches, and push them towards the garage door where the freezer packs we’ll go in the garbage for the next day. My garbage collection is on Saturday, so this works out perfectly.

Then I go upstairs and separate out the different meals, having meet you earlier in the day that there was room for them. I stack them sideways so they don’t crush each other and my husband has his pro Tien on the right and my keto on the left. Next week I am switching it to a vegetarian plan where I am getting a lot of vegetables to load up on that are already cooked. Just waiting to be heated up. I can add on my own precooked chicken or just have my mom help me throw it in the pan.

I have been preferring to cook these meals in the air fryer for 360° for 9 to 10 minutes. My husband prefers to put his in the microwave for two minutes. I just prefer not to irradiate my food. That’s a personal choice the meals taste good. Either way, I just am taking care of myself because I have a chronic illness and have heard that it’s best to leave the molecular structure of the food as it is for me. That’s the only reason. I don’t judge.

Last night I had a salmon dish with chopped kale and tomatoes. It had a little piece of goat cheese that melted nicely over the salmon. My son went crazy over the salmon, but he prefers his vegetables raw, so we just put a lot of greens for him and snoop. He shoots. I’m not complaining. He’s seven years old. That’s a pretty good start to be off too early in life.
I just need to make sure that I order on Wednesdays. The new meal list comes out for the following week. Last week I didn’t, and they were two items that I wanted that they were sold out of.

I just set it and forget it when it comes to the ordering. I just set it and forget it when it comes to cooking the food. It is already done for me. My legs have not hurt like they were hurting when I was prepping my food. I was so not looking forward to my mornings and the time that I would have to spend in my kitchen cutting up vegetables and subbing out ingredients for a dairy allergy that my husband has. Truthfully, we didn’t even need to add any dairy to it. The dishes would have a fancy, Crema, mixing sour cream with some kind of Jam Put on top of the meal. It didn’t need it in the first place, and then I was having to say about dairy freeze sour cream for it. In retrospect, I can see that very clearly now.
Having my meals prepped, has given me back the ability to stand in my kitchen, and do things without being in pain, because I would be standing in one place for so long, or even rolling on a chair, going back-and-forth to get containers for the little pieces that I would chop and prep The food, tasted good, but the prep was god awful. It even affected my mom adversely I truly hated it.

It also has given me back the ability to see exactly what kind of meals I have wind up for the week so that I can prepare. For example, if I would be having a chicken dinner, I certainly wouldn’t put chicken on my salad in the afternoon. I also like that the meals are stacked vertically rather than horizontally. This is because they are vacuum, sealed, and will not be spending any time. The breakfast that I ordered for my husband I put on the top shelf so he can easily grab it with ice have open in the morning. He usually makes oatmeal in the morning, so they save some time if he’s late for the morning meeting. He works from home in the back office, so it’s just a quick trip to the kitchen to get fed well. They also have snacks like almonds and granola that I just add onto the order because he likes the snack too. He doesn’t it?

The thing about the vacuum packed is that it’s not going to win a beauty contest when getting on a plate. That takes a little work on your part, because you need to spread it out on the baking tray or whatever you’re heating it up on, and remember it was squished all the way on its trip coming to you. I’m not saying it’s ugly, I just don’t expect you to think you’re going to get a meal that looks like it came out of a bon appétit magazine.

I used to dread coming home from the gym, not just because I lost my Zen part of the day, but because I would have to go to the garage refrigerator in front of my now parked SUV to get to meals that I would have to prep for the evenings dinner. That just sucked.

Now, my meals are upstairs where they belong in my refrigerator that I use every day. Not one that I just go to to get meals stored. The unbearable pain in my legs has also stopped. I don’t really complain, but I can tell you this. It was a pain right down to the bone. As much as I exercise, and as much as I strengthen my legs, three days a week, and every day on cardio equipment, that pain was ridiculous. Down to the core, making me rush to a seat where I could just get the pressure off my legs. I hate having people see me when I am incapacitated, especially my son. I want him to always think of me as a strong mom who can tackle anything. And to think that feeding him has the cause me such a pain. I don’t ever want him to associate that with eating right.
Note: I have been working on getting my sleep fixed, and last night I blew it out of the water from only 16% the day before to a 70%. This is partially because today the gym opens two hours later. I also went to sleep an hour earlier. I was surprised to see how much deep sleep I got. It was practically none before. I love having this view right in front of me, and never realized how important sleep was. Let’s see at the gym, how refreshed I am!