Weekly Meal Prep: The Veggie Bucket
Recipe by Gino Escalante
Through a series of events, I stumbled on a playlist from a few years back. Citizen Cope was staring at me and I just knew we had to catch up. If you don’t know Citizen Cope, stop reading and do some Spotify research. If you do know CC, then fire him up and get to working on a veggie bucket big enough to make a vegetarian question their life decisions. Do you even veggie bro?
Ingredients
1 red cabbage
2 lbs. of mushrooms
2 lbs. of Brussels sprouts
3 colorful bell peppers
1 red onion
2/3 cup of coconut oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
Cut red cabbage (cut in half, cut the root out, then slice vertically and horizontally as thick or thing as you’d like). The thicker it is, the longer it’ll take to cook. Throw your cabbage in the pan and start cooking that at a low-mid flame.
Slice the mushrooms (you could buy them pre-sliced, but I find I like mine a bit thinner). While you are doing this, stir the red cabbage to make sure it doesn’t burn.
Once the cabbage has cooked down a bit, add the mushroom, and half the coconut oil.
Start cutting the Brussels sprouts. I just cut the bottom out and remove any sketchy spots. If you have some Sam Dancer-sized Brussels sprouts, be sure to cut them in half or quarters to make sure they cook evenly.
Once the cabbage and the mushrooms have cooked down, add the brussels and the other half of the coconut oil. Your veggies should now have this great color like you turned the saturation filter all the way up.
Slice the peppers and the onion. Add them once things have cooked a bit. You don’t really need colored peppers, but they do throw a great splash of color that will make it all the more inviting to eat.
Keep cooking it low-med and stir every once in a while. This is a great recipe to do while your banging out other chores.
A few notes before we leave off:
1) As far as seasoning goes, my one piece of advice, is that you cannot take salt back out of the recipe. You are better off adding seasons slowly (especially with such a large recipe) and adjusting as you cook or after once you pull it from the fridge to eat.
2) You could do seasonal veggies for sure. But it’s winter in New England right now and…give me one sec here…let me check…yep. Confirmed. Sadness is the only thing that’s in season.
3) Don’t want to eat Keto, but enjoy vegetables? Then don’t add…like 90% of the fat (or taste) and you should be good to go. Just be sure to stir them a bit more since the coconut oil can keep them from burning (it’s magic!).
4) Now you might be asking yourself…will it fit? I don’t know the answer to that, Who am I to say what fits where…but the answer is probably not. Work on your head game while trying to balance it all out.
5) Enough to have a beefy side for 10-18 servings (poor choice of word is intentional).
6) Be mindful of how quickly you will eat this. After about 8 or 9 days the veggies will start to smell like funk and you may want to throw them out. Since I find throwing out food to be appaling, I just double down on the veggie sides towards the end if need be. The veggies will freeze well and keep for a while if you want to cook it all but store half the recipe for another week.
Enjoy,
CG
Want more tasty recipe ideas? How about the support of a coach and a like-minded community? Then the Invictus Online Nutrition Program is for you! Besides getting a personalized plan, you will be able to share ups, downs, recipes and more with others in the group which is moderated by Invictus Nutrition Coaches, Connor Nellans and Jenn Ryan.
