Work Week Staple Needed!

Sooooo I used to make a pot of soup every weekend to take with me to work all week for dinner.

It's getting hotter now, though, and I need something else that I can make on the weekend and have it last me all week.

Here's my criteria: hot weather food, needs to be able to last all week, and needs to fit into a fairly miniscule budget. I also don't have any time in the morning to assemble something, which often makes salads difficult.

I'm pretty stumped, honestly. I was thinking about making a big a** turkey meatloaf and just taking slices of that all week, but that's about as far as my imagination has taken me.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Bean salads can be made ahead and keep for the 5 days you need.  They are also versitile.  When I was working I'd add something different to each of my 5 containers - a few olives in one, some halved cherry tomatoes or extra shredded carrots in another, etc.  My dressing of choice was a homemade vinaigrette, but recently I've been using a diet dressing.  A little sweetness in the dressing gives it some zip.

One of my favorite combos is black beans, chickpeas, red kidney beans, and crunchy celery, onion and carrot, in a vidalia onion diet dressing. 

Salads do work.  You have to buy fresh produce(not precut and pre bagged).  I chop up all my ingredients and store in daily tupperware.  I get a large tupperware for my lettuce and each topping I put into a separate, really small tupperware that will all fit into the large one containing the lettuce.  Keeping each ingredient separate will keep the salad fresh all week.  Cut up tomatoes are a bit risky for keeping all week, so I would avoid them or use whole cherry tomatoes.  I do this for my lunch all week.

Healthy tv dinners also work well, but they can be a bit pricey.

 

 

Thank you for the suggestions!

Clairelaine- Do you use canned beans, or some other form? Also, could you give me an idea of portion size?

Thanks so much!

A trick for the salads - the lettuce will stay fresh longer if you put a paper towel in with the lettuce in the container! It works! Works for pre-bagged stuff too. Trust me! :)

I have a veggie salad that I made for fourth of July, and am still munching on. 

8 oz green beans, blanched (I cheat and buy frozen and then thaw them)

8 oz wax beans (yellow, same substitution as the green beans if necessary), I can't always find these so sometimes I blanch or grill aspargas and use that instead

2 cups edamame beans, protein to help fill you up

2 ears (2 cups) grilled corn on the cob, cut from cob (again you can use thawed frozen, or canned, I like canned corn better than frozen corn for some reason)

as many grape tomatoes cut in half.

Then I just mix them with Newman's own lighten up balamic vineagrette.

The recipe is pretty versatile, you can mix and match almost any veggies you want, but as long as you keep the edamame then the salad will be more fillng 

Good question!  I need some new ideas too.

This salad is always a hit (see link). I have a friend that calls me up and says, "don't you want to make that bean salad?." I made it a few weeks ago and was looking forward to bringing some to work but it was gone before the weekend was over thanks to my husband. 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mexican-Bean-Sal ad/Detail.aspx

You can use less oil and vinegar to make it less caloric than the nutrition info says.

how about a southwestern chicken wrap?

low carb la banderita tortilla wrap  81 cal

1/4 cup streamed yellow corn with pepper and TINY bit of salt  85 cal

1/4 cup medium grain brown rice  55 cal

2 tblsp. honey bbq sauce  50 cal

1/2 cup perdue ALREADY grilled packaged chicken breast already cut  90 cal

 

you can make this the night before or you can replace the rice with 1.5 cups of salad mix for about 15 cals instead of 55 cals.

ENJOY!