The Road to 40 Day 38/365: Meal Prep Monday

by | Jun 17, 2025 | Strawberry-Filled Donuts

One of the things that I really wanted to do for Vino was meal preps for his lunch and probably our dinner.

When we moved back to Singapore last year, we started writing down our food for the week. This way, we could do our grocery online and cook accordingly.

However, sometimes cravings and events mess the schedule up, and we sometimes end up with spoiled veggies. As a result, I resorted to buying ingredients after dropping Vino off in school depending on the weather and what we might feel like eating on the day.

Recently though, our freezer has been filled with stuff that are supposed to be easy to cook – deboned chicken thighs and breasts, minced meat, and some other frozen things. I thought I needed to “process” those things to just quickly pop them in the air fryer or whatnot.

I did meatballs with the minced pork. It has become a Vino favorite because it’s easy enough to bite and eat. I like it because it has carrots which he can’t remove.

For the minced beef, I did burger steak/salisbury steak. I don’t know the difference between the two, but I did a beef patty with the intention of serving it as it is with some buttered veggies on the side.

Finally, for the chicken, I did my take on cordon bleu. Back in high school, two of my favorite lunch food were the tuna sandwich and the cordon bleu. Neither Vino nor Che likes tuna sandwiches as much as I do, so I’m gonna try cordon bleu.

I’ve never done it before, and it’s not something that we would order regularly anywhere. But that’s what I find exciting about food and cooking – it’s always an opportunity to see what I can or cannot do.

It’s always rewarding. If I fail, I get to learn from it. If I succeed, I get Vino to finish his food with some claps in between.

Like what I do with everything that I cook, I looked at recipes and incorporated things I learned before. For this, instead of using toothpicks to keep the shape of the rolled chicken, I wrapped it in cling wrap like I did for my beef wellington copycat before.

I got these ready and went on to pick Vino up from school. He has goalkeeper practice today, so it was best to get the meal prep out of the way so that there’s little prep needed for dinner.

For this day’s training, there were only two of them in the session. Kids being kids, they always want to just play around when there’s no instructions given to them.

But I keep telling Vino that the more he wastes time, the less training he will be able to get.

It was cool seeing him dive for balls and doing all these ground rolls so he feels comfortable with low shots or jumping for shots that are farther from his reach.

I want to take in everything I can also so that we can replicate it when we’re in the PH next month.

When we got home, I showed Vino the options he had for dinner and asked what he wanted first. He initially wanted the cordon bleu because it sounded delicious for him (imagine chicken tenders, ham, and cheese in one bite), but I said it might take time to cook.

He then chose the burger steak. While I intended for it to not have sauce, I still made one just for the option. It’s not my usual mushroom gravy, but I used the same techniques and some basic ingredients. No beef stock, but I had chicken power, so I used that. Seasoning, pepper, and worcestershire sauce gave the flavor punch I thought I needed.

Vino loved it, and actually got spoonfuls of the sauce to add to his burger. I usually put more than Vino could eat on his plate so that he’d eat a lot.

Sometimes, if we put something that he could actually finish, he’d choose to stop at some point and say he’s full. So what I do is put more, so that when he leaves something on the plate, he’ll try to leave just enough to say “he’s full” but not a lot of wastage.

 

Anything he leaves, I finish. It’s a small bit of sacrifice for my weight, but it’s always totally worth it seeing him eat a lot as well.

Related Content

Send Us A Message