(upbeat music) - Hey there, Lacey here
with A Sweet Pea Chef. Welcome back. I am so excited you're here
today because we have a pretty epic video going on. We are gonna be doing something
that so many of you guys have been requesting. You've been asking me to do
another five day meal prep like my meal prep for weight
loss that I did a while back. And I know you've been so patient, and I asked which type of
video you guys want me to do, and the by far number one
request was to make an anti-inflammatory meal prep video. So that's what we're gonna be doing today because you guys requested it and because bloating and
inflammation is just the worst. So we're really gonna focus on that today. So we're gonna make a five day
anti-inflammatory meal plan that is gonna cover all of
your breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners for the entire week. It's gonna give you just
a ton of anti-inflammatory recipes that are gonna
help with inflammation. And we're gonna do this
entire meal prep in less than two hours. So you're gonna have
all of your meals done for the entire week in
less than two hours, so it's a really good deal. Make sure if you haven't yet
to go subscribe to my channel so you never miss my
new weekly recipe videos and get healthy inspiration and you get to be a part
of this healthy lifestyle choice we're making to
eat healthy and clean. If you do, come and say
"hi" in the comments, and I'll say "hi" as well. All right, so let's get started
with this anti-inflammatory meal plan. So right off the bat, if
you're following a clean eating diet already, fortunately
a lot of overlap happens with anti-inflammatory foods as well. So in an anti-inflammatory
diet we're looking for foods that are whole, have really
good vitamins and minerals, are unrefined, and are just
basically good, whole foods for you. That means we're gonna be
choosing to avoid things like processed foods, processed
snacks, sodas, high sugar, highly refined flours, and
all that kind of stuff. And we're avoiding that
anyway on a clean eating diet and opting instead for
things like nuts, fruits and vegetables, beans, and just
everything that's whole and good for ya. So that all being said, while this meal plan is clean-eating, it is highly intentionally
planned for anti-inflammatory foods to get your body
feeling better and to get you back on track. The first step with any large
meal plan, to save time, is to start with the foods
that take the longest to cook. So for this meal plan, that
means we're gonna be choosing our sweet potatoes, our
wild rice, and our quinoa because starches generally
take the longest to cook. We'll be having roasted
sweet potatoes in our dinner, so we'll need to start preheating
our oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and lining
a rimmed baking sheet with some parchment paper. Then set that aside. So go ahead and get your
whole sweet potatoes, and we're going to wash
them in some running water to remove any debris or dirt. Then we're gonna pat them dry
and then, as we lay them out onto our baking sheet, we're
gonna poke several holes along the outside of it,
either with a fork or a knife. For your sweet potatoes,
try to find ones that are pretty evenly sized. That way it won't be difficult
to have an even portion every meal for our dinners. If you can't, I'll show you
how to mix and match your sweet potatoes later, but it's best if you can
have them be evenly sized cause they'll also bake
the same amount of time evenly in the oven as well. Then just pop our sweet
potatoes into the oven. We're gonna bake them for
about 55 to 65 minutes until a fork or a knife
inserted goes in easily into the sweet potato. You can also gently squeeze it, and if it's tender, that means it's done. No need to add any oils or wrap them in aluminum foil or anything. These are very simple, and trust me, they are gonna be so tasty. Next we're gonna get
our wild rice started, so in a large stock pot, go
ahead and add in our wild rice, some water, and some sea salt. We're gonna heat this over
high heat until it comes to a boil, and then we're gonna
reduce it to a simmer, put a lid on our pot. And then we're gonna cook this
for about 40 to 45 minutes. We're looking for the wild
rice to absorb all that liquid and to become nice and tender. If you didn't want wild rice,
you could always substitute it for another rice like brown rice. Just we're looking for something
that has a lot of fiber to it and is a whole grain. So when our sweet potatoes
have about 20 minutes left, we can start our quinoa. Quinoa is really awesome. It doesn't take very long to cook, but we want to have it done ahead of time because it's one of those
things that it just cooks on the side while we're getting
everything else prepped. So add into our sauce
pan our uncooked quinoa, followed by some water. And then we're gonna
cook this over high heat until it comes to a boil. Then we're gonna reduce it to a simmer, add our lid, and we're gonna cook this
for about 15 to 20 minutes. You'll know the quinoa is
done when all of the water has been absorbed, and the quinoa seeds
have kind of opened up and puffed up. Then you can remove it from the heat, fluff it with a fork, and then set it aside. All right, so now that
we have those starches taken care of, we can go ahead and start
on our chickpeas and kale. And these are gonna both
be used in our lunch bowls, and, yes, they are both
gonna be super tasty. To season our tumeric chickpeas, go ahead and drain them in the sink, and rinse them off with some water. And then we're gonna pat them dry. Then we're gonna transfer
those into a large mixing bowl. We're gonna add some
really tasty seasonings, like some ground cumin,
garlic powder, tumeric, sea salt, and black pepper. And then we're gonna gently toss to coat. Now we're gonna heat a
skillet over medium-high heat and add some olive oil. And then we're gonna transfer
our seasoned chickpeas into this hot oil. We're gonna cook this for
about eight to 10 minutes. You're gonna want to toss it occasionally. We're looking for the
chickpeas to kind of get smaller in size, cooked down, and then also get a nice
crispy outside to them. That's gonna be really tasty
when you have them later. If you notice that you
need a little bit more olive oil, that's totally fine. And also, try to avoid
smashing the chickpeas because they can get a little
bit tender as they cook. So to avoid that you can
always kind of shake the pan rather than using a
spoon to stir everything. Once you have them nice and golden brown, and you have that fragrant
smelling delicious chickpeas in the air, you can remove them from the
heat and let them set aside. To make our garlic kale,
in another saute pan that has a lid, we're gonna
heat it over medium heat and add in a little bit more olive oil. And then we're gonna add
in our kale that's been broken up into small pieces. So we're gonna cover our kale and then we're gonna toss it occasionally. We're looking for the
kale to become softened, which is gonna take several minutes because kale is pretty
tough to begin with. So you have to be a little
bit more gentle with it, and let it cook a little
bit longer to break down those fibers. Once the kale is really tender, you can go ahead and add
in your minced garlic and your sea salt and
then toss to combine. Then just cook it for
about another minute or so until that garlic becomes fragrant. And then you have delicious sauteed kale. And remove from the
heat and set that aside. So our snack for this
anti-inflammatory meal prep are these delicious lemon
tumeric energy balls that are chock full of all
sorts of anti-inflammatory goodness and they're
just lemony and gingery and so delicious. So to make them, it's really easy. All you need is a food
processor or a really good heavy, high speed blender. We're gonna add in our raw
oats, raw almonds, pitted dates, freshly squeezed lemon
juice, some fresh lemon zest, ground tumeric, ground
ginger, ground cinnamon, and some black pepper. We're gonna process this
mixture in the food processor until it starts to stick to itself. You might need to press
it down a few times using like a spatula or a spoon. And we're really wanting
it to become really sticky, fully mixed together, and then it'll start to
stick to itself as it spins. So now we need to divide this
mixture into 15 portions, and a really easy way
to do that is to use a one tablespoon meatball scoop, which is super easy and really
helps with making things like energy balls. I can leave the link for the
one I use in the description below. So go ahead and grab your
one tablespoon portions of your energy ball mixture, and then we're gonna form
each of those into balls with your hands. And then you just set
those aside and repeat with the remaining. And you should have about 15 of these. Each day our snack is gonna be
three of these energy balls. So I store these energy
balls in the fridge in an airtight container, and they harden up when
they're in the fridge. And they're super tasty. I keep them all together
in one meal prep container, and I just grab them as I need. But if you need to take them with you, like on a certain day, you can just grab three
of them and put them into a separate container. But definitely keep them in the fridge during the week to make
sure they store well. All right, so now it's time
to make our quinoa salad, which is gonna be the stuffing
for our sweet potatoes, which is gonna be for our dinners. And it is seriously one
of my favorite things, so I'm really excited to show you it. So in a large mixing
bowl, we're gonna grab our cooked and cooled
quinoa and add it to it, followed by some diced cucumber. Also I use English cucumbers
because they're a little bit sweeter, and you don't
have to remove the peel. They're really tasty, so if you can find any English cucumbers, especially organic English cucumbers, definitely go with those. Then add in some grape tomatoes, some pitted Kalamata
olives, sliced red onion, and some crumbled feta. And then in a separate
mixing bowl we're gonna make our dressing for this tasty salad. So in a small mixing bowl
we're going to add in some olive oil, red wine
vinegar, freshly squeezed lemon juice, sea salt, and black pepper. And then we're gonna
whisk this all together. And then we're going to
take that salad dressing, and we're gonna put it on
top of all of our quinoa and cucumber and tomato mixture. And then we're gonna toss
it all together to coat. This is so good, you
could eat it on its own. But it's even better stuffed
into a baked sweet potato. So now that our sweet
potatoes are done baking and are tender and have
cooled enough to the touch, we're gonna go ahead and
grab them and slice down the center using a knife. And then go ahead and
kinda squeeze each end and kinda push towards each
finger so that you push all of the sweet potato open a little bit. Then using a fork, press down
the inside flesh of everything to kinda get everything
spread out and even. You kinda want it to be
a little bit like mashed sweet potatoes in there
because that's gonna make it easier to eat later. So do all the hard work
now when you don't have your salad in the sweet potato already. So like I was saying, I try to get evenly sized sweet potatoes, and a medium-sized sweet potato
is perfect for this recipe. If you don't have evenly sized ones, and one's like super big
and one's kinda small, you can always take a piece
of one of the larger ones and put it in the bottom of
one of the other meal prep containers and kinda even everything out. The idea is that you have it nice and even so any meal you grab, any dinner
is gonna be the same size. That way you know kind
of what you're expecting. And you don't have like a
giant sweet potato one day and then a little baby one the next. So now grab that delicious
Mediterranean quinoa salad that we prepared, and we're gonna divide
that evenly across all five of our baked sweet potatoes. And, yes, this is as
delicious as it looks. Trust me, it is so good. So this is gonna be our
dinner for each of our days, and you can enjoy this hot or cold which makes it really
easy to just grab and go. Personally I love it cold, but having it hot also works really well. Just put it in the
microwave and reheat it for about two minutes until
everything's heated through. So let's set all of our dinner aside, and we're gonna prep
our lunch Buddha bowls. So for most of these meals today, I'm using my glass meal prep containers, which are super awesome. They're eco-friendly, and they're reusable. You can microwave them. You can just store them in the fridge. They're awesome. I'll leave the link for them
in the description below if you're interested in
getting yourself some, and they're pretty cheap too. So they're a really good
buy if you're looking to meal prep like this for a whole week. So into each of our meal prep containers, we're going to add in our
cooked and cooled wild rice, which is gonna be our base for our bowls. It's gonna be about one cup per meal. Then we're gonna add in
our seasoned chickpeas. That's gonna be about a
third of a cup per meal. Then add in our sauteed kale, and then I add in about
a quarter cup of sliced red grapes and a wedge of
lemon for that additional anti-inflammatory boost. If you wanted to, you could
store the grapes and the lemon separately, or you could just add them
in and then I actually reheat my lunch bowls with the
grapes and then I remove the lemon right before I reheat it. And then I squeeze the lemon on, and it just kinda keeps
everything stored together. But if you wanted to add the
grapes in and reheat them, they're actually really good heated. So if you want to give that a
try, definitely recommend it. So now you have your
tumeric chickpea Buddha bowl of goodness all ready to go. This is a really really tasty lunch. You find that you're not fully super full and you want a little bit
more added healthy fats, I recommend adding in some
diced avocado when you're ready to serve. Avocado is a really great
anti-inflammatory food, so it's always good to
add that in if you want it and if you're still hungry. So our final meal that
we're gonna be making for our meal plan is our breakfast. And for that we're gonna be
making matcha chia make-ahead smoothies which are really really tasty. And I actually make all
five of them ahead of time, and then I store them in the freezer. And then each day, the night
before, I'll grab out one of my Mason jars with
the smoothie in there and put it in the refrigerator
to thaw overnight. Then in the morning I can just grab it, and it's ready to enjoy. So doing this make-ahead
smoothie method is awesome because you make it once. You only clean the blender once, and you have all of your
smoothies ready to go. If you're someone who makes
a smoothie every morning, you know the struggle of
having to clean your blender every morning and get all
of the ingredients out. So this is a really big
time saver and perfect for this meal plan. All right, so to make our smoothie, we're gonna start with
your milk of choice. I use unsweetened almond milk, but any milk will do. Follow that with some frozen
bananas, pitted dates, some matcha powder, chia seeds,
and some fresh baby spinach. And then just blend until smooth. Depending on the size of your blender, you might need to break it
into like three smoothies at once and then two. Or if you can make all five
smoothies at the same time, more power to you. That sounds like an amazing blender. But I usually have to
break mine up into like three and two. And then I divide that
evenly into five Mason jars, and I really recommend
using these Mason jars. They're super awesome. They store well in the
freezer or in the fridge, and I have reusable Mason jar lids, which are super awesome. And I can link to all
of this below for you. These are really great. Just make sure that you
don't fill your Mason jar all the way to the top. You're gonna want to leave
a little bit of space because, as you know,
when you freeze something it expands, and you don't want to break anything. So leave a little bit of
space, put that lid on your Mason jar, and then transfer
all of these into the freezer. Okay so let's go over
our meals for each day. For breakfast we have our
matcha chia make-ahead smoothies which contain dark leafy
greens with our spinach, our matcha powder, the
dates and chia seeds. And all of these have proven
anti-inflammatory properties. Plus there's no added sugar
or any refined ingredients or artificial ingredients, so this is a fully good
for your body recipe. For lunch we'll be enjoying our tumeric chickpea and kale Buddha bowls. They're so tasty, and they contain
anti-inflammatory chickpeas, kale, red grapes, and wild rice, all with proven anti-inflammatory properties. And that lemon squeeze
right at the end to top everything off not only
adds a burst of flavor, but also adds to helping
reduce inflammation and helps your muscles and your joints and just overall inflammation. So really good to add that
lemon squeeze at the end too. For snack we have our lemon
tumeric energy balls each day. And those have lemon and tumeric and other anti-inflammatory spices
like pepper and cinnamon and ginger. Plus because they're so
chock full of so many tasty and healthy ingredients, they're also gonna keep you
full and be a really good snack each day. And then dinner is gonna be
our Mediterranean stuffed baked sweet potatoes which
are so delicious and filling. We have so much anti-inflammatory
goodness stuffed into these baked sweet
potatoes, including the sweet potato itself which
is high in vitamin C and E. And also they have alpha and beta carotene which have anti-inflammatory properties, so those are good for you. Plus you have it stuffed
with quinoa, cucumbers, tomatoes, and red onion with
that fresh lemon vinaigrette. All of those were chosen because of their anti-inflammatory properties. All right, so like I said,
every recipe in this five day meal plan has been specifically
chosen and optimized to be as anti-inflammatory as possible
to keep you well balanced and just regular for your
diet and just really reducing a lot of inflammation. So you might have noticed
that I haven't added any meat into any of the meals for
this five day meal plan. That's not because meat is a
bad choice if you're following an anti-inflammatory diet. In fact, foods like fish and
cold water fish specifically, like tuna and salmon,
are really great for you and high in omega three fatty acids and omega six fatty acids. So they're really a great
option if you wanted to add in some fish as well. And so as much as food is very important, it is not everything for
an anti-inflammatory diet. I also would encourage you
to drink a lot of water, get regular exercise and
make sure to get good sleep. Because all of those really
help in addition to your diet to reduce inflammation. Thank so much for hanging
out with me today. I hope you enjoy this
anti-inflammatory meal plan, and let me know if you have any questions on substitutions in the comments below. If you're looking for more
meal plan inspiration, check out my seven day meal
prep for weight loss video. And make sure to give
this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it. I will see you next time. Bye bye. (upbeat music)
