Adventures in Meal Prep
I lived in China from 2008 to 2011. From 1981 until 2008, I was convinced that I did not like Chinese food and would pass on any opportunity to have any food labeled as Chinese. What I wouldn’t know until I arrived in China was the sampling I’d had in my youth was nowhere near an adequate representation of the country’s offerings. But I entered China still firmly believing that I did not like its food. I lived in a smaller city, with restaurants along every road. I walked a lot, exploring the city, smelling the smells, seeing the sights. One of the first foods I stumbled upon was Lanzhou Lamian (pulled noodles). A simple dish, it consists of hand-pulled noodles and shaved beef in a rich stock, topped with cilantro and optional chili oil. I usually choose the foods I eat based on exclusion rather than inclusion, and Lanzhou Lamian was without any of my avoidance foods. I wasn’t super keen on the cilantro, but I could pick it off and put it to the side. Eventually, I did learn how to ask for it without cilantro. There were plenty of restaurants serving this dish, but I would always go to the same one—safety in consistency. The shop owner sat at my table once, after I’d fished all the cilantro out and placed it neatly onto a napkin on the table. He used a combination of body language and very clear enunciation to teach me that cilantro was “Xiangcai,” and “don’t want” was “Buyao.” He communicated this by shaking his head and waving his hands. It was the first Chinese I learned by immersion.
I ate Lanzhou Lamian every day for months. Sometimes twice in one day. The restaurant had around 40 different dishes, but I stuck to the one I knew. In three years, I never tried anything else at that restaurant.
I did begin to explore other foods. Someone took me out to have “Dapanji,” which was chicken and potato with thick rice noodles in a spicy broth. The first time I had it, the spice got me, but I learned that I really liked to eat spicy foods. Again, my exposure to spicy in Canada had been buffalo wings and Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, neither of which I enjoyed. But the use of chilis was something else. Unfortunately, Dapanji had one of my no-no foods: bone-in chicken. But after the first time, I realized I could use my word “Buyao” to ask them for a bowl with no chicken. I had already learned the word for chicken was “Jirou,” so I tried it and it worked—I got a bit of a strange look from the server, but I got my bowl of potato and noodle soup in a spicy chicken broth. Perfection. I ate Dapanji every day for the next year.
So what does this have to do with Meal Prep?
475 words to get to the point. When I was diagnosed with autism, I had to make some changes, and one of those was my weight. I looked at my food journey and realized that in my adult life, it was only when I lived in China that I had a positive relationship with food. Portions were reasonable and I got used to eating the same thing every day. I took this information and built a meal prep plan at home—something I had wanted to do for months, but lacked the motivation to actually do it.
This weekend, I meal prepped 14 bowls of butter chicken and 26 sausage & egg breakfast wraps. I’ve been meal prepping since March—it’s now October—and I’ve lost nearly 45 pounds. At a cost of about $4 per meal, these are significantly cheaper than eating out or buying packaged meals. With my two-hour commute, I had begun to rely on the foods I shouldn’t be eating every day—but this allows me to eat healthy food at a fraction of the cost of fast food.
In addition to meal prep, I adopted calorie counting as a way to measure my success and control my food intake. I bought a kitchen scale and weigh every portion so I can measure the calories as precisely as possible. There are a lot of people—mostly thin people—who chastise calorie counting, but what people don’t understand is I can channel my autistic obsessive nature into calorie counting and gamify it. The reward is not dying from obesity-related diseases.
My next goal is to figure out how to work more protein into my dishes—I’m thinking Greek yogurt in my butter chicken is the first experiment I’ll make. I did try one recipe from TikTok for a high-protein chicken Alfredo pasta and it was.. well it was heinous. I enjoy eating, and when food makes me sad, it can’t fit into my plan. So maybe I won’t be having a 100g protein sandwich, but I’ll be able to pull off more protein than I’ve eaten before, and for now I’m taking every win I can get.
Please note—I have included links to products I’ve used below, but there are no affiliate links. sameday.costco.ca partners with Instacart, and I’ve included the links for easy access to my ingredients—not as an endorsement of the service or company.
Butter Chicken
Currently, I’m using the KFI butter chicken sauce from Costco. Eventually, I’ll make it from scratch—but I need to stay realistic and make sure the plan is sustainable before I complicate it. Butter chicken is also so versatile with add-ins.. this weekend I did green beans and corn, but I love to do cauliflower and spinach as well. Chopped kale works really well too—you can’t taste the bitterness of the kale if it’s drenched in butter chicken sauce. I use chicken breast, as thigh is a no-no food (weird texture).
Ingredients:
I do this in a crock pot, because it’s the only way to cook 2.2 kg of chicken at once, without batch cooking. I also prioritize simplicity. Put all of the chicken into a crock pot set to high, and add the four jars of butter chicken sauce immediately. I rinse the jars with some kind of cream—this is where maybe I could use greek yogurt + milk/water, then pour that in. It’s critical that you don’t use frozen chicken for this. Frozen chicken leaks a lot of weird chicken juice that doesn’t taste good.
Set the Crock Pot to high and let it run for three hours. After three hours, fish all the chicken out and put into a large bowl or pot, use a wooden spoon or two forks to shred the chicken. I like to leave a few large chunks—when we find those we call them treasures. But most of it should be shredded. If your chicken won’t shred easily, put it back in for another hour. Put the shredded chicken back into the sauce.
Add your vegetables of choice and let it go on high for another 2 hours.
You know how much chicken went in, you know how much sauce went in, and you know how much vegetable you used. So calculate the total calories in the crock pot and divide that by the number of portions you made—I weigh each bowl to the same weight as well. Some bowls will have more sauce, some will have more chicken, so the numbers won’t be perfect, but I find that they average out and usually I add 10% on top of whatever I’ve counted as a buffer for margin of error. This ensures I’m never accidentally 10% over on calories for the day.
Deposit into the freezer, and take out the night before you will eat it. I reheat the thawed butter chicken in the microwave for 2 minutes, stir, 2 more minutes. It helps if the bowls you use are both freezer and microwave safe. I serve mine with white rice, naan, or cubed and air fried potatoes. Potatoes is my favourite companion, but I don’t have an air fryer at work (yet).
Total cost: $4/bowl. Slightly more if you use store-bought naan.
Sausage Breakfast Wraps
I don’t think I could ever stop eating breakfast wraps. Everything a breakfast sandwich has, wrapped in a sturdy shell that freezes and transports well. I do sometimes use English Muffins in place of wraps, for the sandwich experience, but it’s harder to control the portions and there is a lot of leakage.
Again, I’m going with Costco here. I use Costco’s Greenfield Breakfast Pork Sausage Rounds as the meat in my wraps. I’m currently using basic wraps (170 calories each); eventually I’d like to experiment with keto wraps, but they are significantly more expensive. I buy eggs from Costco, since I’m already there, and any type of sauce you like—this weekend I used chipotle aioli from Costco, but in the past I’ve used Subway chipotle sauce, chipotle mayo, or even just sriracha. You could use ketchup, but I’ve never tried it.
Ingredients:
One box of Greenfield Breakfast Pork Sausage Rounds (link)
30-36 eggs (I use Extra Large from Costco) (link)
Dempster’s Original Tortillas (36 pack from Costco) (link)
Culinary Treasures Jalapeno Lime Aioli & Chipotle Aioli - I used the Chipotle, but I’ll try the Jalapeno next time (link)
Your favourite cheese—I like the sliced Marble cheese from Costco, though this time I used Kraft Singles (link)
Next time, I will probably add a handful of spinach for some colour and a vegetable component.
I cook the sausage rounds in the oven on a rack set on top of a baking sheet. 400 degrees, put the tray in when the oven is cold, and set a timer for 25 minutes. When the timer goes off, I set the oven to broil for another 3 minutes to get a bit of crispy tops to the sausage. I then cut each one in half, and use half a sausage in each wrap.
To cook the eggs, I mix them up well using a hand mixer or a whisk and add about a quarter cup of butter into the eggs directly. I have a large skillet that I cook the eggs on medium temperature, stirring frequently. The key here is to leave the eggs slightly undercooked. They’re going to finish cooking when you reheat.
For assembly, I set up an assembly station at my table and put on noise cancelling headphones with my favourite music. I put down a wrap (170 calories), add a slice of cheese (50 calories), half a sausage (80 calories), spoonful of egg (75 calories), and a squirt of sauce (50 calories). Total calories per wrap is, again, going to depend on how big of a scoop of egg, or how generous a squirt of sauce you use. Type of cheese too. But this comes in to 365 calories, and I round that up to 400. I still have some work to do on this, as I understand there isn’t enough protein in here, but it’s a work in progress and for now, it’s working. I have added potatoes to this in the past, and it works very well.
For me to be successful, I need to enjoy what I’m eating and making it needs to be reasonable in time. Crock pot is great for the butter chicken because it’s mostly set-and-forget. The wraps take a bit longer to make, so I allow them to be a little indulgent. I could use half a slice of cheese and a little more egg, or skip the sauce, but enjoying food is still important—otherwise I start to look at disordered eating again.
I’m always on the lookout for new meal prep recipes based on foods I already enjoy—as I explore, I’ll continue to share my findings.
