I’d love to tell you that, as a staff writer at a food magazine, I have my life together enough to boast a longstanding meal planning routine. The truth is, I’ve historically been more of a scrounger than a prepper when it comes to weekday meals. I live with one roommate and am often cooking just for myself, so I’m reliant on my well-stocked pantry and the fact that I live half a block away from a grocery store. All that said, over time I have developed a grocery shopping strategy that sets me up for success.

Rather than plotting out every single breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I like to stock up on enough groceries to cover most breakfasts and a couple of multi-serving dinners that can double as office lunches throughout the week. Work events, friend hangs, new store-bought snacks I need to test out, and leftovers from tastings in the Test Kitchen tend to make up most (if not all) of the remaining meals. Read on for everything I added to my grocery cart last week, plus how I turned it into a week of meals.

Sunday

For this week’s Sunday shop, I bought ingredients to make Shilpa Uskokovic’s Basil Chicken Stir-Fry and Andy Baraghani’s Honey-Chipotle Shrimp Tacos, plus some Greek yogurt (Fage’s 2% is my favorite).

I was meeting friends for tacos at Greenpoint’s El Chato Sunday night, so there was no need to cook—but in the name of setting myself up for a calm entry into the week, I prepped three servings of protein overnight oats: Just combine ½ cup oats, ½ cup almond milk, a spoonful of Greek yogurt, ½ scoop protein powder, and a pinch of salt in each container. I’ve been working my way through a bag of Be Amazing’s Brown Sugar Oatmeal vegan protein, which tastes like an oatmeal cookie.

Be Amazing Vegan Protein Powder

Monday

Mondays always feel hectic, so I was glad to have prepped a hearty breakfast the day before. I grabbed a jar of my overnight oats from the fridge and topped it with a handful of frozen Maine blueberries before tossing it in my bag and heading to the office.