With temperatures rising across the country this week, the last thing anyone wants to do is head into a hot kitchen. And although it can be really tempting to skip cooking altogether in favor of takeout (or breakfast cereal), just one hour of using the oven can set you up with a week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that require zero cooking.
This Power Hour is for those of us who want to skip cooking altogether when it gets any hotter than about 75°F, but who still want to eat well throughout the week. We’ll walk you through what to buy to make meal prep easier, and how to heat the oven for just one hour over the weekend to bake breakfast and make a few dinner staples for the week ahead.
My Meal Plan Goals
My family is quite omnivorous, but we try to eat a variety of vegetables and fruits every day and keep meat and seafood to a minimum — both for our budgets and our health.
- Breakfast: My husband and I need quick and cooling breakfasts that can be eaten on the go but will keep us full until lunchtime. The kids mostly eat fruit and cold cereal for summer breakfasts.
- Lunches: I work from home and my husband’s schedule varies from day to day, so I find having both an option he can pack and something big batch that I can turn into salads works best for us.
- Dinners: We live in high dessert — so late afternoon and evening are the hottest parts of the day. Balanced meals that don’t include heating the house are a must.
Meal Prep Snapshot
- Feeds: 2 for breakfast and lunch, 4 for dinners
- Prep time: 1 hour of cooking
- Meals covered: About 80% (no weekend meals)
- Weeknight cooking required: None, save for toasting some bread, if you like.
My Meal Plan
Breakfast
- Muesli + Yogurt + Chaat
Lunches
- Salmon and Kale Caesar Wraps
- Chopped Chickpea Salad (Greek version)
Dinners
- Chinese Chicken Salad Spring Rolls
- Tofu and Broccoli Salad with Peanut Butter Dressing (baked tofu)
- Upside-Down BBQ Chicken Bowl
- Smoky Roasted Vegetable Hummus Bowl
- Cauliflower Banh Mi
My Shopping List
Try not to be intimidated by the length of this shopping list. There’s a lot of produce, but most of the pantry ingredients were already in our cupboard. Buying a single rotisserie chicken will cover both the shredded chicken and the BBQ chicken (just add your own sauce) and keep you from turning on the oven.
- Produce: 2 medium heads broccoli, 1 medium head cauliflower, 2 medium English cucumbers, 3 medium red or yellow bell peppers, 1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, 1 small head red cabbage, 1 small head romaine lettuce, 2 bunches kale, 24 ounces broccoli slaw, 2 cloves garlic, 3 medium red onions,1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels, 1 bunch carrots, 1 bunch radishes, 2 oranges, 2 apricots, 1 peach or nectarine, 1 pint strawberries, 1 bag cherries, 1 pint blueberries, 3 medium bananas, 1 lime, 1 bunch mint, 1 bunch cilantro, 1 bunch parsley, 1 3-inch knob ginger
- Meat & Seafood: 1 rotisserie chicken
- Refrigerated: 1 pound extra-firm tofu, 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese, 1 container hummus
- Frozen: 1/4 cup shelled and cooked edamame
- Pantry: Creamy Caesar salad dressing, ranch dressing, 1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges, fried chow mein noodles or fried wonton wrapper strips, 2 (6-ounce) cans wild salmon, 2 (15-ounce) cans chickpeas, pitted kalamata olives, rolled oats, wheat bran, unsweetened coconut flakes, dried apricots, dried cherries, dark brown sugar, smooth peanut butter, sliced almonds, raw pecans, raw pepitas, roasted peanuts, roughly chopped or sliced almonds, rice paper wrappers, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, Sriracha, olive oil, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, red wine vinegar
- Spices: Salt, ground cinnamon, smoked paprika, chaat masala
- Other: Garlic bread, pita or pita chips, baguette
Power Hour: How I Get the Prep Done
Here’s the deal: We want to get everything into the oven so we can be done in an hour, so the muesli, baked tofu, and roasted vegetables get prepped and cooked in quick succession. Then, you can pretty leisurely do a little chopping, mixing, and packing while everything cooks.
A Week of No-Cook Dinners
Breakfast
Muesli has been my go-to breakfast for a while, but adding the chaat (a flavorful fruit salad) kept things interesting this week. My husband ate his muesli with whole milk instead of yogurt as he rushed out the door a few mornings.
Lunch
I alternated between the chopped chickpea salad and kale Caesar (no wrap) all week, but ran out of both for Friday and had leftovers of the hummus bowls instead. Next time I’ll pack the kale Caesars and their wraps separately for my husband’s grab-and-go lunches, as he noted that the wraps got soggy by Tuesday.
Dinner
- Monday: Chinese Chicken Salad Spring Rolls: Okay, so we did not actually eat this meal as spring rolls (I had grand ambitions, but we were a bit too lazy to even wrap them). Instead, we ate them as a big dinner salad — crunchy noodles, peanut dressing, and all.
- Tuesday: Tofu and Broccoli Salad with Peanut Butter Dressing: I was pleasantly surprised by how crisp the baked tofu stayed in the fridge. We skipped reheating the tofu in the microwave and ate these cold on the hottest day of the week.
- Wednesday: Upside-Down BBQ Chicken Bowl: I did heat the grill on Wednesday night for garlic bread! You could easily use a toaster oven to keep things truly no-cook. This was my family’s favorite meal of the whole week.
- Thursday: Smoky Roasted Vegetable Hummus Bowl: Hummus bowls are always a dinner win in our house, and we opted for pita chips instead of toasted pita to keep things cool.
- Friday: Cauliflower Banh Mi: I’m obsessed with these sandwiches! Any worry about not grilling the cauliflower and toasting the bread was gone as soon as that spicy Sriracha mayo hit my mouth.
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Power Hour Meal Prep is the series where we help you put it all together. We show you how to eat well during the week with an hour or two of Power Hour prep over the weekend. Every plan is different; mix and match to find your own personal sweet spot.
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