Weekly Meal Prep: The Humble Meatball, Rice and Beans, Chickpea Masala and Black Sticky Rice Porridge

The current Melbourne lockdown is limiting the grocery that we can get, so we have to make do with what we have this week. We only got a tray of beef mince for our animal protein this week and I have saved up a few cans of tuna, salmon and sardines for our backup. 

The first and easiest meal to come up with is the humble meatball. 

I used 2/3 of the beef mince for this and added onion and carrot to fill up the meatballs. Parsley and Oregano are fresh from the garden. We have also secured a bag of breadcrumbs, after a few weeks going without, so I'm cherishing this one jar of breadcrumbs so much... 

We also struggled to find onions, so I used 1/4 of the onion for the meat balls and use another 1/4 for the sauce. I'm saving the garlic and only use 1 clove for this.

The onion, garlic and carrot are sauteed to soften them and bring out the sweetness. Combined everything and mix before rolling them.

I'm saving the canned tomatoes that we have. We're not stockpiling so I only have 2-3 cans at home at any one time. I decided to only use 1/2 can for the sauce and simply add water.

In the freezer it goes for mid week meal.

Last night I pre-soaked kidney beans, chickpeas and Black Sticky Rice for the next few dishes. I love this method as it reduces the amount of plastic and cans of the produce.

The process is very simple and doesn't take too much time. I boiled them this morning to soften them before cooking each dishes.

Stacking them to save bench space.

The next dish that I cooked was for lunch today. It's a regular in our household. We all love beans, it's great for digestion and it fills you up.

1/3 of the beef mince went into this dish with 1/2 can of the diced tomatoes and I left a little bit of the tomatoes for the chickpea Masala. (Yes, I use 1 can for 3 dishes... I'm saving my canned tomatoes to the max this week.)

Kale and Parsley are fresh from the garden. A small amount of kale is acceptable for my 5 year old. 

Chickpea Masala is our favourite. We try to eat as much vegetarian meal as we can during the week, sometimes 3-4 days per week. I still have another vegetarian dish in the freezer from last week so I only cook one dish for this week.

The great thing about this dish is I can add a lot of good herbs that will help us increase our immunity during the cold weather. Lots of onion, turmeric and ginger goes into this dish.

Lastly, I made black sticky rice porridge for warm dessert this week. We had a few weeks of mung bean porridge and I thought to change it up a little bit to give variety. 

My five year old decided to give it a try and he declared that he likes it now...