Listen, meal prepping is one of the most difficult parts of living a healthy lifestyle. It’s not necessarily that cooking is difficult, it’s figuring out what to cook that is. I mean I cannot tell you how many times people have told me since starting this blog that they just don’t know what to cook, and that they are tired of stale standards like grilled chicken and broccoli.

I get it, me too. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be miserable and boring. Make designing your food part of the fun. We all have our own unique needs and pitfalls, and you need to tailor your menu to address those.

For example, I’m very guilty of falling prey to fast food, so meal prepping is an excellent solution for me. Having pre-made meals in my fridge keep me from justifying a drive thru, because in 3 minutes I can have a healthy home made meal that I can feel good about and feel good after eating, unlike the bloated after effects of a baconator.

However, some people don’t like reheated leftovers or eating the same thing several times in a row, I get that, so you need to coordinate recipes throughout your week that are different but use some of the same ingredients to cut down on waste. Veggies are great for this because depending on seasoning it can totally recreate the vibe they are putting off. Squash and zuchinni can be Greek, Chinese, or Mexican depending on what you top them with or how you cook them.

I tend to crave categories of food, so if I’m in the mood for Italian that’ll be my meal prep theme, but once again that’s just me.

Additionally, when I am creating recipes or looking for recipes online, which by the way has become a fun hobby in itself, I love to take my favorite foods and try to reinvent the healthy version. It is my intent to start trying to do a weekly “recipe” that will hopefully provide you with a little inspiration for your own healthy menus.

Now, keep in mind I call them “recipes” because they are not exact, I am a dash of this, shot of this along the way cook. I very rarely use exact measurements, so I encourage you to adjust and taste along the way to make these recipes your own!

Cooking is an opportunity to be creative and if you have fun with it, it will be something you look forward to rather than dread, except for the part where you have to do the dishes after, that’s not fun, but I digress.

Ok, this week’s “recipe” are chicken sausage and roasted veggie quinoa/cauliflower risotto bowls. Each week I try and create a menu based on what I’m doing and what my body needs. This week I joined a gym and being conscious of starting a fitness journey I knew I would need protein, extra vitamins, and good carbs to power me through as I introduce an additional expenditure of energy to my week. Quinoa bowls are an excellent base recipe that you can switch up and change based on veggies, protein, or seasoning you use. This is a Mediterranean/Italian version.

Here are some of the main things I used in the dish:

In addition to these things I used:

– 2 zucchinis

– 1 yellow squash

– Publix pre-sliced onion

– broccoli

– Brussels sprouts

– carrots

– extra virgin olive oil

– spinach

– balsamic vinegar

Directions:

– roasting the veggies does take the longest so this is where to start, I do frozen or pre sliced veggies because I’m lazy, but do what makes the most sense for your budget

– once everything was unboxed, unbagged, and sliced I tossed it in evoo (extra virgin olive oil) and the seasonings pictured above plus salt and pepper (do not shy away from seasoning, it is legitimately the spice of a healthy life)

– once tossed and seasoned, spread the veggies out on two foil lined (hello easy clean up) sheet pans, give them some space so they roast not steam, and place in a preheated 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes depending on how tender you like your veggies, make sure to give them a stir and flip over the early crispers half way through the roasting process

– keep in mind when roasting those little brown bits on the veggie give them that yummy carmalized flavor so don’t panic, in roasting crispy bits are good things!

– next I threw my chicken and kale sausages on the grill for roughly 15-20 minutes per the package instructions

– side note: these sausages are awesome and I use them all the time!

– once I threw those on the grill I ran back inside and started boiling the water for the quinoa and once again I cooked this per the package instructions

– once the sausages and quinoa were done, roughly around the same time, I popped the Birdseye cauliflower risotto into the microwave and while that nuked away I sautéed spinach with a splash of evoo and the seasonings pictured above in a pan

– combine the quinoa, cauliflower risotto, and spinach together

– remove veggies once they are to your preference of cooked-throughness (a technical term) and throw on top of the quinoa/”risotto”/spinach mixture in a bowl

– top veggies and q/r/s mixture with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar

– slice 1-2 of the sausages and place on top of veggies and q/r/s mixture

The finished product should look something like this:

– Finally, enjoy!

Keep in mind this recipe makes a pretty good amount, I will be eating on this for days, and for this yields about 7 servings, so once input into the recipe creator portion of the MyFitnessPal app, it came out to 352 calories/18 grams of protein/43 carbs. Feel free to reach out with any questions, and like I said make it your own. Quinoa bowls are similar to salads, by changing a few variables you can totally change up the flavor of the entire dish, but the goal is just to have fun and make something healthy and delicious that is going to fuel your body with whole rather than processed foods!