Meal Prep With Me For Uni

In my honest opinion, meal prepping is the best way to help your future self make better nutritional choices. By planning ahead, and minimising the work involved in cooking during the week, you make it so much easier for yourself to grab healthy meals and snacks rather than the processed alternatives. As a uni student, I find meal prepping is essential for monitoring my budgeting, and also ensuring that I’m continuously fuelled with great food on the go. This week, I give you an insight into my typical meal prep process including how I choose, budget and prepare my meals for the week!

If you haven’t really heard of meal prepping before, the concept is life changing. By dedicating a little time once or twice a week to meal prepping, you’re minimising the decisions and time involved with making healthier food choices when you’re busy and on the go. By prepping, chopping and cooking entire meals, or just a few elements, you’re making healthy eating the easiest option in your fridge!


Here are the top 3 reasons why I personally love meal prepping:

1. It’s budget friendly! When I haven’t planned my meals for the week, unexpected expenditures always arise. Whether it’s a last minute lunch grabbed at the university cafes, or grabbing a takeaway dinner on your way home from work - things tend to add up. As a student, I like to be as mindful as possible about how I spend my money. Good quality food is important to me, and I’m a true believer that it’s possible to eat well without blowing the budget. Using a ‘Click n Collect’ service at your local supermarket is even better! It helps you compare prices of the available products and make educated decisions before you throw things in your trolley!
2. It takes the thinking out of it! When we’re tired, busy and overwhelmed, we love taking the easiest route - takeaways, uber eats, or a highly processed throw-together meal. We use the Nadia Food Bag for dinners, so my meal prep focuses on preparing nutritious lunches that I can transport to uni easily and healthy snacks I can grab on the go. With meal prepping, I know that each morning I just grab my snacks and lunch from the fridge - no extra thinking or energy required!
3. It keeps me inspired to be creative with food! Many believe that meal prepping means eating the same meal over and over again. While this works for some people, I prefer to use meal prepping as an opportunity to get creative in the kitchen and try new recipes. I often find myself trying at least one or two new recipes a week, as a result I have a totally new perspective of some ingredients and I’m much more experienced in the kitchen!

The Process:
For me, meal prepping is a weekend job. On Saturday, I typically grab out my meal prep printable and look to the week ahead to identify things coming up which I’m going to have to consider when it comes to my meals. This helps me figure out which meals I’m going to need to take on the go with me, and which I’ll have time to sit at home and eat. From there, I flick through some of my favourite cookbooks or blogs to find some recipe inspiration. I find recipes by Chelsea Winter, Nadia Lim and Libby Weaver are my personal favourites - I know I can rely on them to be equally delicious and nutritious.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FREE MEAL PREP PRINTABLE

One of the things I love about our meal prep printable is that it breaks down your shopping list into the areas of the supermarket. This makes it super easy to grab things as you walk around, without letting you forget an item and have to turn back!


Because I use the click and collect process often, I plan to have my groceries ordered by Saturday night so I can pop into Countdown early on Sunday morning. If I’ve planned ahead, I prefer to grab my fruits and vegetables from the local farmer’s market or vege store - I love to shop local when I can.


By Sunday morning, I’m up early and I head to grab the groceries. Then I come home and get straight into the meal prepping as I unpack the groceries from their bags. By getting into the cooking straight away, I don’t lose motivation and end up leaving the ingredients in the fridge! I firstly wash all my vegetables and fruits using our DIY Vegetable Wash, then I chop and prep all the raw ingredients first so I can easily through together meals or elements.

This week’s meal prep:
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Here is a snapshot of this week’s meal prep planner! I’m only having to prepare breakfasts, lunches and snacks for the week days.

On the menu this week, I’ve prepared a warming chicken soup for the first three lunches. Then on Wednesday or Thursday I’ll cook up some simple burger patties for the Naked Burgers which will be my lunches for the remainder of the week. Breakfast wise, I’ve never really just been a muesli or smoothie girl. I know I need a filling and protein rich breakfast to keep me going all morning! So this week I’ve picked out a delicious Kumara, Kale & Quinoa fritter recipe by Ben Warren. I’ll serve these with either bacon or a scrambled egg in the morning. For days when I’m really pushed for time, a smoothie tends to be sufficient enough. I just pack extra snacks for a morning tea! At university, I have to keep snacks handy at all times. I love bliss balls, kale chips, and veggie sticks with hummus. These are all easy to transport and keep in my bag during the day!


If you’re meal prepping dinners, check out recipes for some freezable meals! We’ve got a blog post here which shares some great options!

Recipe Inspiration:
Here are some of our favourite recipes from the blog which we love to meal prep!

Super Stella Slaw

Healthy Raspberry Muffins (gf, df, rsf)

Delicious Lactation Bliss Balls

5 Junk Free Lunches

Hoisin Pork & Crispy Pancakes

5 Junk Free Snacks

5 Junk Free Lunches

6 Freezer Meals

Tips and Tricks:

1. Get the family involved. Meal prepping can be overwhelming for people juggling kids during the weekends. If you find you don’t have the time to dedicate to a meal prep, consider making more portions of your weekly dinners to keep in the freezer for lunches. Use your evening times once the kids are asleep to prepare as much as you can for the day/s ahead. For you, meal prepping might not be the big process of planning days in advance. It may be consist of sitting down and planning the weeks meals, snacks and groceries to make sure you have everything you need in the house!
2. If you’re using the oven, start with the coldest required temperature first! Also work from coldest to warmest when it comes to using the oven. For example, I always leave making kale chips until last because they require sitting in a cooling oven for a few hours.
3. Keep it simple: if you’re struggling for recipe ideas, pick out a few protein options, a few vegetable options and pair them up for a simple dinner. Pre-grill or cook the proteins and roast the vegetables in the oven! Voila, you have easy dinners and lunches all ready to go!
4. Look for sheet-pan, slow cooker or pressure cooker recipes! These are less time consuming and super simple to throw together.
5. Plan to freeze: freeze some of this week’s meal prep for future meals if life gets busy!
6. Make kids lunches easy! Prep some fruit/vegetable options into small containers, and keep healthy snacks like hard boiled eggs handy. These are great for kids to grab from the fridge or to pop into last minute lunchboxes.
7. Mason jar meals are your new best friend! Easy to transport, perfectly portioned and pretty darn cute to look at too. Check out our mason jar salad recipes here!
8. Prep breakfast smoothies by portioning out the ingredients into glad bags and keeping them in the freezer. Simply pop the smoothie bag from the freezer into the fridge the night before and you’ll have a grab n go smoothie for the morning! We love washing our and re-using the glad bags several times to reduce wastage.
9. Eat seasonally: this reduces the cost, and provides you with the best nutrients for the current season. It’s also significantly easier to shop locally and reduce your consumption of unwanted pesticides. Check out our printable seasonal fruit/vegetable lists here.

Inspired yet? Let us know in the comments below!


From our home to yours,