Easy food prep to wow your guests.

I was asked to help prepare meals for a friend of mine who is wanting to do more at home eating and less it going out to restaurants.

I was trying to explain the concept of food prep. The concept of planning many meals, to know what you're  going to eat every day of the next week,  pretty much blew her mind.

I decided to get together with her, go to the grocery store, come up with the menu, shop for fresh ingredients, come home and prep everything.

I came up with two scenarios in my mind ahead of time so it would seem less scary to her when we hit the grocery store.

I promised her that prepping her meat a certain way, planning accompaniments  for lunch and dinner for the next 7 to 10 days, wasn't as hard as one thinks it is.

I actually find it kind of freeing. 

 We hit the market, purchased chicken breasts and pork tenderloin.

Starting her out slow...

We prepped the chicken breasts three different way. IE Mexican Italian and some with a bit of Indian flare, cut them into portions and then I set them into the plan for each meal. She remained skeptical. 

We also decided to buy a package of two pork tenderloins to butterfly and stuff.

One was a red pepper, spinach, feta, oregano, sea salt, fresh cracked pepper, A drizzle of olive oil and a chiffonade of fresh basil.

The second was feta cheese, lots of spinach, chopped cherry tomatoes, sea salt a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and pine nuts. 

To not scare her with butchers twine, I decided to show her how to close the meat with toothpicks. 

I wish I had taken a picture of her face when I said the next time we will be rolling it up and tying closed. LOL

We lined a jellyroll pan with foil,  placed the two tenderloin side-by-side, covered and baked in a 350° oven for about an hour.  

They were stuffed quite fully and I waited until the internal temperature got to a safe degree.  

We let them rest for about 20 minutes and then she sliced them on the bias. There were approximately 8/9 nice sliced servings per tenderloin. 

They looked quite perfect and I was told that her husband loved them.  He picked the one with pinenuts as his favorite. 

The next blog post I'll add of the pictures and recipes of all the accompaniments we had boiling and roasting while the meat was cooking.

It was almost like a Thanksgiving day.

Part one of food prep was successful.