Vegan Meal Prepping | “Chipotle” in a Jar Recipe

Today I thought I’d share a few more tips on meal prepping, give you some ideas and a little cost breakdown on my savings for this set of meals. For this prep I used half-gallon and pint-sized vintage blue, Ball mason jars. I also used the Cuppow BNTO food storage cups that fits perfectly on top, so you can include sauces/dips/etc. For your wide-mouth jars 🙂

For the watermelon, I like to prep that by using a melon baller. I don’t have to fuss with throwing away the skin, I can grab and go and it’s ready! For each jar I used a medium-sized seedless watermelon. I paid $4 for each one, totaling $8 total but to be fair, it’s a great snack and each jar lasts me two full snack times. I even have some for breakfast, so it’s like 2 1/2 meals per each for 1 day. So if you broke it down like that, it’s about $3.20 per meal/snack. Which isn’t bad at all to me! Especially since I eat about 5-6 times a day!

“Chipotle” in a Jar
(Serves 2 abundantly)

Ingredients:
1 can of Organic Black Beans
1 cup of Rice (uncooked)
4-6 Roma Tomatoes (diced)
1/3 cup Onion (diced)
2 Corn on the cob
Cilantro
Jalapeño Juice (optional)
2 Limes (zest & juice)
1 tbsp oil (any kind you want/have)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Basically everything is pretty straight forward
Cook your rice as instructed by your packaging, you could even get minute rice if you’re wanting to make this even faster but I prefer making it fresh
Set that in a bowl once it’s all done and add in the zest and juice of 1 lime and your oil
Mix that all up and add in some cilantro, salt and pepper if you’d like
Let that come to room temperature
Dice up your tomatoes, onion and as much cilantro as you want, adding a bit of salt and jalapeño juice, lime juice & zest
Set that aside in a bowl and move onto corn, slicing it off the cob and lightly boiling it on the stove, same goes for your black beans

Now the trick is to make sure everything is 100% completely cooled to room temperature. Don’t start filling your jars till it is. Also, these are the only things I like getting at Chipotle so that’s why I’m only doing these. But feel free to add in some vegan mock meats, tofu or sautéed veggies!

I like to layer beans at the bottom, so they don’t bleed into the rice. Then rice, corn and pico on top so those flavors marinate with the corn and rice. I also make guacamole fresh and then scoop it into the BNTO cups you see at the tops of the jars. I like to make sure that’s as fresh as possible.

Now I eat this straight out of the fridge since it’s all pre-cooked. So if that’s not your style then by all means separate your heated from your cold. So you can heat up and then mix it altogether as you like.

Cost breakdown:
1 can of Organic Black Beans – $1.29
1 cup of Rice (uncooked) – $1.00 (more or less depending on what you buy
2 Limes – $.40
Cilantro – $.10
Roma Tomatoes – $1.10
Onion – $.25
Corn – $.40
Oil – $.10
Seasonings – $.5

Totaling: $5.14! for two GIANT portions that easily could be divided into 2 meals per day (4 total) or one large dinner. It costs me about $6.25 for a veggie bowl at Chipotle, so spending less than that to make two bowls that are greater portions seems like a solid savings to me. But that’s totally your call. I’m just trying to cut unnecessary costs when I can and I find its way cheaper making this at home and I can customize it to my likings.

I like to top mine off with hot sauce, salsa and guacamole. I’ll post up my guac recipe later on in the week.

The pasta used for this next meal was 2 for $3 and I only used 1 bag (divided in half) for these two jars. I also used 2 large zucchini ($1), 12 ounces of sauce (6 oz. per jar, $1) and 1-2 tbsp. of sun-dried tomato slices ($.50). So for two giant pasta jars, I paid just at $4.00! ($2.00 each!) which is super cheap and easily 2-3 meals per jar.

For my second snack idea I have organic carrots and celery. I love snacking on crunchy veggies to curb my snack-attack cravings for chips or other less than healthy options.

Organic carrots were $4.00 for 5 pounds. I used 4 or 5 large carrots for these three jars, equaling about $1.25. Organic celery was $2.00 for 2 bunches/stalks. I used both for all three of the jars. So it totals about $3.25 ($1.08 per jar). Spending just about $1 per jar, per snack is great to me! Plus I used all organic 🙂

You could easily take all these meals/ideas and prep them for even less. I used a bit of organic ingredients, so choosing otherwise would come out slightly cheaper.

Hope you all enjoyed the mini recipe post and food prep ideas. It’s a fantastic way to plan ahead, save some money and make crazy busy times in your life seem a bit less hectic knowing you’ve already got food ready and waiting. It also gives you no excuse not to eat healthy and be happy knowing your making good choices towards your health in general.

Please keep in mind that both meals were using half-gallon jars. You can portion these out to pint jars too. I simply use half-gallon because calorie wise each one equals a typical workout session for me and these are for refueling after such so I don’t have to cook.

Stay healthy and happy my friends! 😀

<3MC