As a Mom working full time, balancing the gym and household duties…meal prep is super important to me! I love cooking a bunch of meals on the weekends so It is effortless during the week. No one has time to cook an elaborate meal after a long day of work, especially when you have a newborn like me! (which…by the way…this is why my reviews were a bit sporadic. You can imagine having a baby would take up some of your free time..hah!)
I was send this cook book to try – Easy Meal Prep by Erin Romeo, the “Food Prep Princess”.
Upon reviewing the book, I noted a few things
PROS:
-I like that she gives grams for baking as I find that easier than using measuring cups – have you tried to measure peanut butter before in a measuring cup? Disaster lol
-The book is easy to read, colorful, professional done pictures and has a wide variety of recipes to choose from
CONS:
-It has some obscure ingredients you likely won’t have on hand – (hemp hearts, tahini…).
-only one lonely beef dish! Sorry for those who are big beef eaters!
-no nutritional information- I realize this isn’t mandatory but I prefer knowing carbs and fat, etc. before making a dish
-some recipes are really lack luster and I did not have a desire to try…for example a wrap with basic ingredients such as turkey and bacon, or vegetables with dip
Here’s just a few I tried
PEANUT BUTTER BROWNIES:
-okay well, I wouldn’t say these are brownies per se, more like peanut butter fudge
-these are far too oily for me, I would reduce the amount of coconut oil It requires as you can literally taste the coconut oil. It feels like a large mouthful of fat
-I did like the sesame seed addition, which added a nice hint of flavor
-I cut It into 24 bars instead of 8 – 8 seems like a huge portion as they are very rich
-NOT shelf stable which is a shame because It is made with coconut oil! But kept It fridge they hold shape just fine
-3.5/5 stars
PROTEIN PANCAKES
-So for this recipe, I am curious why the order of the ingredients matter if you’re blending It???
-I used almond flour, banana flavored whey
-the flavor is VERY bland and pretty much tasted like oatmeal.
-these look like pancakes, but they are not pancakes. These are oatmeal cakes.
-Needs salt and flavor, pictured above is with some fruit topping, 2/5 stars would not make again
HIGH PROTEIN BANANA BREAD
For this recipe, I ended up making 17 muffins as I recently moved at the time and did not realize I did not have my loaf pan until I was ready to put It into the oven so I reduced cooking time appropriately
Swaps also included honey instead of maple syrup
These were mildly sweet with good flavor and decently moist – and came up around 144 cals with 7 grams protein. The chocolate chips all sunk to the bottom for me which was a bit of a bummer but still tasty!
4/5 stars
SWEET POTATO MEDALLIONS
Honestly I found this recipe annoying, for lack of a better word (sorry).
for starters, sweet potatoes are very hard to cut, so if you don’t have great knife skills make sure your knife is very sharp to help avoid injury or possibly blanching prior or maybe even using a food processor with a slicing option.
It says cooking time of 20 min however you cannot overcrowd the pan and each batch took 20 minutes so I would argue that the recipe cook time is more than 20 min…
My first batch burned so I lowered the heat than what was recommended
I had a hard time getting the entire thing crispy without burning but I got crispy edges.
That being said, they were tasty – like a mix of a dry and a baked potato, too much effort however.
3/5 stars
FALAFEL BOWL with HUMMUS
I paired the falafel with hummus recipe from the book
The HUMMUS :
-pretty good! I had to add more oil than recommended to make It creamier , otherwise It was way too thick and not really dippable. It was relatively versatile and easy to make. Better than store-bought? Debatable.
Falafel bowl:
– this dish lacked protein so to round It out I added chicken
-the prep and cook time took longer than written – and I took culinary so I know what consistencies I am looking for so I factored that in
-they burnt in 3 minutes on medium low with stainless steel pan so I would adjust accordingly
– the falafel itself is really under seasoned and needs way more salt but not bad. I would make them smaller next time
-paired well with the crunch of pepper and celery
OVERALL, while I tried a good handful of the recipes, not a lot of other things tempted me to try. Maybe you will have better luck with this book. The falafel one was probably my favorite and even then, somewhat lack luster. 3 1/2 star
