Speaker 1: When I think of the words meal prepping, this is what I picture. A bunch of separate containers of individually packaged meals that usually contain rice, some sort of vegetable like broccoli, some sort of protein like usually chicken, and also most likely a guy with a ridiculously chiseled abdominal region. And listen, if that works for you, I'm not here to take that away from you. I'm glad it does. But in my opinion, this method of making food in advance for the whole week is just not very sustainable in the long run. It just gets super boring to eat roughly the same type of food every day. And everything tends to get really dry and not very appetizing, to be honest, towards the midpoint of the week, making you more likely to just order takeout and then you end up just wasting money and food. Not only that, but it takes away from the joy of cooking and eating, which I think is pretty important. So today I want to present you guys with an alternative. First, let's establish some goals with a student lifestyle in mind. Number one, I want to be able to enjoy my food. I think that's very important. And four day old bland chicken and broccoli just isn't going to cut it for me. Secondly, I need convenience. I cannot spend hours on cooking. I have more important things to do. Thirdly, I also want to prioritize nutrition. I want complete meals that are going to be able to healthily sustain my body. And fourth, obviously, I need affordability. And already by choosing to cook at home 90% of the time, I'm saving a ton of cash. But obviously, affordable ingredients are always a top priority. OK, let me explain essentially what we're going to do here. First, we're going to make sure we have all the necessary, you know, essential ingredients stored in our fridge and in our pantries. Then we're going to prepare some essential sort of building blocks that we're going to use throughout the week to build up our meals. And then we're going to make sure we have everything else set up for success so that we can have some exciting meals at any time and do it fast and good. Let's just get into it. You'll understand. OK, first, let's pick up some groceries. And this is a massively underrated part of eating through the week because we want to make sure we have access to everything we need at all times in our pantry and in our fridge. These are some grocery essentials that are going to set you up for success. In my opinion, we got some grains like rice or maybe quinoa, some fresh vegetables, some fresh fruit or some frozen vegetables. This time I only have frozen peas, aromatics like onions, garlic or maybe ginger. Of course, we got some protein, chicken, fish or maybe tofu, canned legumes, very important like chickpeas and beans. Of course, our starchy carbs like bread, pasta and my favorite tortillas, eggs, yogurt, fresh herbs, some leafy greens. How can I forget about oats and some of my favorite sauces? Obviously, you can adjust that to your own needs. This is just a list of essentials for me that I pretty much use every single week. Next, let's talk about some things that are very convenient to have virtually at all times. They serve multiple purposes and they're going to make everything much easier and much more fun. The first thing is to stack up on spices of all kinds. You can make an endless combination of flavors that go on your protein, on your veggies, in your salads, on pretty much everything. So make sure you slowly build up your spice arsenal. A really cool thing that I like to do is to mix up some of my favorite spices and make that my go-to spice mix for the week. For example, this time I started with salt, some dried thyme for an herby kick, chili flakes for that heat, some smoked paprika and some garlic powder. And I just mix this up and now I have this little jar of my own custom-made spice mix that I can use for everything. Similarly, the next thing is an all-purpose sauce. This is something you can pour over anything and you have ultimate control over its taste. My go-to sauce is this garlic tahini thing. I start with some yogurt, a few cloves of garlic, a lot of fresh cilantro, including the stalks, some freshly squeezed lemon juice, some tahini paste, a drizzle of olive oil for the emulsification and just salt and pepper. And I love that I can just always adjust the taste. For example, here I needed a bit more acidity and a touch of salt. And then I can just store this in a separate container and just use it for pretty much everything from protein to salad dressings. I also like to freeze some fresh fruit so I can have smoothies and desserts over the week. I'm doing some leftover ripe bananas here because they were quickly going bad and this way I save them and also put them to good use. The last thing I'll talk about are pickles and it's actually way easier to make them from scratch than you might think. I personally think pickled onions are extremely versatile and delicious. So here's how to make them. You're gonna thinly slice some onions, put them in a jar and just top them with a solution of equal parts water and vinegar plus some salt. In about two hours in the fridge, you're gonna have some vibrant pink pickled onions that you can put on pretty much anything. They're cheap, way better than the store-bought version and you can just keep these in the fridge for a long time like they're pickles. Okay, the next step is to prepare the things that would take a little bit longer or would just be pretty inconvenient to prepare during a busy weekday. For this, I recommend taking a day where you have just a little bit more time on your hands but you know you definitely don't need a ridiculous amount of superhuman effort and time put into this. Here I'm talking about the basic building blocks of your meals. For example, rice. Rice is an excellent base for any meal and very convenient to always have on hand. You can use the pot method but I just bought this cute little rice cooker and I want to put it to the test. Of course, before we do anything, we're gonna wash the rice under cold water and then just add it to the rice cooker with equal parts water and just let it cook the rice. That's what it's supposed to do. You don't need to do anything to it. Just, you know, let it do its thing. And look at that. You just got a bunch of fluffy rice with virtually no effort that you can use during the week. Another thing I like to do is prep some baked potatoes and a super convenient way to do this is by just poking some holes in them, wrapping them up in aluminum foil, maybe add some olive oil and some salt and just throw them in the oven for about an hour. I like to do this with a bunch of potatoes and then I can just store them in the fridge like this and boom, potatoes for days. If you have an oven, you're gonna need to take advantage of it. I like to use it to just roast a bunch of vegetables. This time I used cauliflower and broccoli but you can pretty much use anything. After washing them, I just chopped them up into bite-sized pieces and in a bowl, I lightly coated them with some olive oil and just blasted them with the spice mix we made earlier. And then all I gotta do is bake them at 180 Celsius for about 45 minutes and now I got some delicious veggies. Simple as that. Another thing you can prep, although it's not necessary, is your protein. You can pretty much do anything you want. Today, for the sake of example, I'm going for some classic chicken breast. I'm gonna cut it into thin pieces, going in with my spice mix and really mixing it using my hands. And make sure to wash your hands unless you're a fan of salmonella. And you know, just cook the chicken in a hot pan. No need to get fancy. Of course, I shouldn't have cooked them in one batch because I super overcrowded the pan but again, I'm trying to think like a student here and most of us would be too lazy to do this in two batches. And guess what? It worked. And also, very underrated, I like to hard boil some eggs. Since it's super easy and these guys last for up to a week in the fridge, making for a great addition to any meal or even a great snack on their own. Simply drop them in some boiling water, making sure not to crack them and you know, just let them cook for eight minutes or so. After that, I like to take them out and dunk them in some very, very cold water. In my experience, this makes them a little bit easier to peel. Now you got eggs. Congratulations. And notice how a lot of these things take a little bit longer to make but actually they're pretty low effort if you think about it. Like you just gotta set them and kind of forget about them. There's no active effort in that span of time. Now this may look like classic meal prepping for now but don't think of what we just did as meals. Think of them as the building blocks of your future meals. Store them in separate containers and now you have access to each of these ingredients individually whenever you need them. Also, for most of these things, I definitely wouldn't keep them in the fridge for more than three, four days because honestly, it doesn't take that much effort to like replace them or refresh them. For example, instead of rice, I may just cook up some quinoa which is even easier to make. It takes like 10 minutes. Or instead of chicken, I'll go for some fish or maybe some tofu. The whole point is not to get bored of it. Okay, this is where the beauty of this method shines. During the week, I want to show you exactly how I would use everything that we prepared in a normal weekday of cooking and eating. But before that, a quick word from our sponsor, Jimmy Joy. This video is brought to you by Jimmy Joy. Jimmy Joy make complete, easy, and affordable meals that contain a perfectly balanced mix of plant-based protein, healthy fats, slow carbohydrates, fiber, and 26 essential micronutrients. These meals are perfect for saving time and money and not sacrificing nutritional value. They have four different varieties. They have drinks, instant hot pots, bars, and my personal favorite, the Plenny Shake. With the Plenny Shake, not only do you have a nutritious and affordable meal seconds away from you by just mixing it with water, but you can do so much more with it. For example, I made these pancakes by just mashing up a ripe banana, adding some coconut milk, and then two scoops of the Plenny Shake plus a touch of oat flour. And then you just use this as regular pancake batter. And it's so quick and convenient, not to mention delicious. Now, they gave me a super secret promo code that I can share with you. And you can use it at checkout and get 20% off your first order, which is pretty cool. The code is COOK20, K-W-O-O-W-K 20. So go get you some. Thank you to Jimmy Joy for supporting the channel. Now let's get back into the video. Okay, so let me take you through a regular day and show you how to use what we prepped. For example, let's start with breakfast. This is a meal you don't want to waste your time with. Ideally, a breakfast should be done within 10 minutes or maybe even five. A very easy option is a smoothie. Here we can use those frozen bananas, remember? Smoothies are super convenient and highly customizable, which is why I love them. If I'm feeling something on the savory side but have no time, remember we have those boiled eggs from earlier. So here they're going to come in handy. I'm just going to have two of those with some bread, maybe some cottage cheese, some fresh vegetables. I understand that this doesn't look incredible, but in my opinion, it's more valuable to show you realistic ways that you can sustainably eat every single day. If you really want zero effort in the morning, you can also use my baked oats recipe. You can make this in advance, refrigerate it, and in the morning, all you have to do is eat. I'm dropping a link in the description below for the recipe. Most of my lunches are pretty lazy, but they're still very satisfying and nutritious, and that's because I've spent some time prepping some essential ingredients beforehand. For example, look at this meal that pretty much required no effort. Two of my baked potatoes, some fresh vegetables, some chicken breast, and then just make it more exciting with my all-purpose sauce, some of my spice mix, and of course, some pickled onions. And there are many, many more options. For example, this easy wrap. Just take a whole wheat tortilla, add some of our sauce to it, some chicken, some black beans straight from the can, half of an avocado that, of course, I'm going to salt, and of course, some pickled onions. Wrap this boy up, and you got a five-minute lunch. And the possibilities are endless with these ingredients. Dinner is the meal that I like to spend a little bit more time for, but still make use of my staple ingredients. You guys know I love my fried rice, and the main reason I love it is because it elevates those leftovers. Leftover rice, leftover veggies, leftover protein, and it's really something bigger than the sum of its parts. I'm not going to dive too deep into the specific recipe because that's not the point, but for this, I use some frozen peas, some of my leftover veggies, some eggs, and some green onion. And that's pretty much it, a really inexpensive, delicious meal. I may also go for a salad, and most of the time, I just throw some random ingredients in a bowl, and with me, the name of the game is variety. For example, I may use my baked potatoes. I may use some boiled eggs, some cucumber, pickled onions, of course. And here's the cool part. To make a dressing, I'm just thinning out my sauce with a touch of water, and that, again, shows you the power of this all-purpose sauce that we made. I'm also going to take a quick moment to talk to you about my go-to snack these days. It's this yogurt parfait that I cannot live without. Essentially, I just throw some fresh fruit over some yogurt, something crunchy like these coconut flakes, and also top it with some honey, and that's a really satisfying, quick snack for me. But yeah, that's pretty much a day of really simple meals done with those basic ingredients that we prepared. I hope I demonstrated how it's super unnecessary to prepare these meals in advance. In conclusion, what I'm saying is that the only prepping that you need to do is really planning ahead and getting the right groceries for your needs, and taking care that you always have those building blocks that we talk about, and those things that you always use to create these easy, fast meals. This way, you're not going to lock yourself into the same boring meal all over again, but you're also not going to go through the effort of having to cook for yourself every single day for three times a day, or maybe just waste money on takeout. And thank you so much for watching this video. You are the best. And you can watch some more of my videos if you click through on one of these two. With that being said, I'll see you next time. Take care.