Weekend Cooking: Healthy Meal Prep by Stephanie Tornatore and Adam Bannon

I love the holiday season. I like the decorations, the parties and celebrations, and—of course—the food. But you know what happens when January rolls around? I’ve pretty much had it and am so, so ready to get back to real life.

The first thing I do once we’ve finished the leftovers from our annual New Year’s Eve dinner party is take hold of our diet. I don’t make resolutions; instead I simply return to sane, healthy eating.

One new cookbook that has me already looking forward to January is Stephanie Tornatore and Adam Bannon’s Healthy Meal Prep (DK, Dec. 12). You may know the pair as the hosts of YouTube’s Fit Couple Cooks.

The couple's goal is to show everyone how easy it is to eat healthfully if you take the time to plan and prep your meals. Totnatore and Bannon should know, they themselves lost weight and improved their fitness by eating the types of meals they share with their many fans.

For Tornatore and Bannon, the trick is all planning ahead, which saves time and money and guarantees they eat well. Healthy Meal Prep compiles all their best tips and tricks plus provides twelve weeks of meal plans. Each plan takes two to three hours to prep and provides a week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for a single person. Have more mouths to feed? The authors suggest that you “scale up the recipes as needed or meal prep . . . every few days instead of once a week.”

Each meal plan includes an equipment list, shopping list, recipes, step-by-step directions for once-a-week cooking, tips, serving instructions, snack suggestions, vegetarian and/or vegan options, and more. There’s a full-color photo of each week’s completed meals, and each four-serving recipe is easy to follow and includes nutrition information.

The meals themselves are nutritionally balanced, are devoid of processed foods, and require no last-minute additions. Many of the dishes are also low carb, vegetarian, and low sugar. What's more, the couple's nutritious tricks are very easy to incorporate into your daily life; for example, their quick-to-make homemade ketchup is sweetened by a couple of dates instead of white sugar.

So what about the meals? Each meal plan provides six breakfasts (all the same) plus four servings each of three main meals (that’s twelve meals), which can be used for lunches or dinners. Breakfasts include make-ahead oatmeal, frittatas, yogurt cups, and pancakes. The main-meal recipes call for common, everyday ingredients to make dishes such as Mediterranean chicken with vegetables and rice, pesto salmon with roasted peppers and quinoa, black bean and lentil nachos with chips and lime, and turkey meatballs with broccoli and polenta (click the image just above to see more).

Each meal comes with assembly instructions and serving tips. So you cook one day and have twelve meals packaged and ready to eat all week. The portion sizes are satisfying for the average person, though you can, of course, adjust as needed for your own tastes.

Who will love this book? Healthy Meal Prep is geared specifically to people who are willing to cook but feel they just don’t have time during the week to put together a nutritious lunch to take to work or to get dinner going once they get home. It would also be perfect for a young person in his or her first apartment and for families with staggered eating times. People who are watching their diet for weight loss or general health can safely eat Tornatore and Bannon's meals. And, finally, I plan to use the book specifically for make-ahead lunches.

Although I encourage motivated cooks to work their way through all twelve weeks of meals, I also strongly encourage people to mix and match the meals according their own situation. Remember, each meal makes four servings, and you can use those meals in a variety of ways.

Are Wednesday nights always a grind? Cook one meal ahead and save it for that midweek madness. Is everyone in your family on a different dinner schedule thanks to meetings, practice, and other activities? No worries; cooking ahead means there will always be a nutritious dinner ready and waiting in the refrigerator.

Cooking for a shut-in, new father, or elderly parents? With the recipes in Healthy Meal Prep and a couple hours of your time, you can be a godsend to a person in need.

Okay, what don't I like? Honestly, I don’t find much to complain about. My only real issue is this: although almost all of the meals can be eaten cold, I think the majority would be tastier heated up. That should be no problem for most workers and for at-home dining, but not everyone has access to a microwave during the day. In addition, experienced cooks may want to borrow Healthy Meal Prep from the library, reading through the tips and types of recipes so they can adapt their own family favorites to once-a-week cooking.

Watch the video to see how much fun Stephanie Tornatore and Adam Bannon have in the kitchen and to get an idea of the types of recipes you’ll find in Healthy Meal Prep.

(Note: all images in this post are from Healthy Meal Prep and are used in the context of this review (any blurriness is totally my fault). All rights remain with the original copyright holder: DK Publishing. Thanks to the publicist for a review copy; all thoughts are my honest opinion.)

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