Make Ahead Mondays

Here are two Make Ahead Monday ideas for you – one is for breakfast and one is for lunch or dinner. From start to finish, making both of these dishes simultaneously took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to prepare. Not too bad considering it will only take 3 minutes during the week to heat up and be ready to eat!

Southwest Breakfast Burritos - makes 6 burritos

(6) La Tortilla Factory (Low Carb High Fiber) Large Size Tortillas
(6) Wedges Laughing Cow Cheese – I used Sun Dried Tomato
1 ½ cups shredded Cheddar or Colby Jack Cheese (or whatever cheese you like or have on hand)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

I can chopped green chilies

½ cup chopped red onion

1 ½ cups chopped fresh tomato (canned would work, too)

18 tbs Egg Beaters

6 whole eggs
Salt and pepper


Directions: heat skillet and sauté red onion (I used non stick spray to sauté with). While red onion is sautéing beat together Egg Beaters and whole eggs – add a little salt and pepper. When onion is translucent add egg mixture to the skillet. Scramble and cook eggs through. Set eggs aside.
Spread a wedge of cheese on each tortilla. Make an assembly line of the rest of the ingredients, and evenly place on each tortilla. Beans – then tomatoes, then chilies, then egg, then sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Now it’s time to fold the burritos! To properly fold the burrito – check out these step by step directions on this website: http://mexicanfood.about.com/od/techniques/ss/burritofold.htm Don’t worry, the burritos will be packed full of breakfast delight and may be difficult to fold perfectly. Just do the best you can.

I placed these in quart size freezer bags and stacked in the freezer for those mornings I am in a pinch and need a great breakfast. You could split these burritos in half and get two servings out of them or serve two of your kiddos. If you have time to sit down and eat these – you could have a side of salsa with the burrito and get even more veggies in for the day.

Approximatel nutritional breakdown (per burrito)

375 calories

18.75g fat

570mg sodium

34.5g carbohydrates

15g fiber

31.5g protein
2.5g sugar




Fettuccine with broccoli and tomato sauce


1 package Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Whole Grain Fettuccine
1 can NO Sugar Added Hunts Pasta Sauce
1.5 pounds lean ground beef, browned
1 head of broccoli, chopped and rinsed
Directions: While the ground beef is browning, heat a pot of water to boil the fettuccine. Once ground beef is browned, drain and rinse fat off. Place back in skillet and add pasta sauce and broccoli. Cover and let simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime, boil the pasta according to the package directions. Once pasta is finished, drain and allow cooling. Take the meat sauce off the heat and allow cooling as well.
Once everything has cooled, portion out 1/6 of the pasta (ended up being 5oz worth of noodles on my food scale – may be different for yours) and place in a quart size freezer bag. Portion out the pasta sauce into 1/6 portions, and place one portion on top of each bag of noodles. Once everything is cool you can place the bags in freezer. If you flatten the bags of pasta down before placing them in the freezer you can stack the bags on top of each other saving some room in the freezer.

Approximate Nutritional Breakdown:

425 calories

9.7g fat

665mg sodium

54g carbohydrates

11.4g fiber

4g sugar

29.3g protein



6 breakfasts and 6 lunches/dinners prepared in until 90 minutes.