I run a very tight schedule
I’m sure you do too. In this fast paced world it is so very hard to balance what needs doing, what should be done, and what we actually want to do! My schedule during the week leaves me with very little time in the evening,(I typically leave my house at 6 or 6:30 am and don’t get home till 7 or 8pm), and therefore makes thorough planning essential. This is my plan for how I approach meal prep for a week so I can cook basically only once a week.
Meal Preparation
Now I should mention that in my house at this time it is just my husband and me, and we have an agreement- I cook, he cleans. This means I almost never do dishes- my husband would go so far as to argue that I never do them- he may be right! But one thing I do all the time is the cooking. We don’t go out to eat very often, and because I can be quite frugal in certain areas of my life,(ahem, cheap), I have never used any meal prep services. Instead I do my own meal prepping. I want to spend as little as possible on good food that is reasonably healthy, spend as little time as possible preparing it, have it taste great and not get bored. At heart I am a foodie who loves flavorful food, so I’m really not about having a baked to death pot roast every night. Or ever. I hate pot roast. But I digress.
For breakfast I typically have a protein smoothie which takes literally a minute to prepare. My husband does intermittent fasting and skips breakfast. (For more on my protein smoothies and how I came to eat them everyday check out Kelly Levesque and her two books, Body Love, and Body Love Everyday.) For Lunch I have a salad bowl and dinner is something that I have either prepared in a crockpot or something that takes hardly any time to assemble.
Now because of my frugality I do my meal prepping one of two ways:
I select a base meal, for example: I buy a whole chicken at the store. Cook it in the crockpot on Monday, and serve it with a side. A sample week could look like this:
Monday: Chicken and a Salad.
Tuesday:Chicken Enchiladas
Wednesday: Chicken Alfredo Pasta with Steamed Veggies
Thursday: Leftover Chicken Enchiladas
Friday: Chicken Curry and Rice
Saturday: Chicken Tortilla Pizzas
Sunday: Improvisation day!
By the time we get to Sunday we are usually done with our main dish so I make something that I always have on hand that can be easily whipped up, like spaghetti and meatballs.
2) The second way I like to do cost effective meal prep is similar to the first but instead of selecting a base meal, I have base ingredients that I reuse in various ways during the week. For example:
Monday:Vegetable Mexican Soup
Tuesday: Veggie Fish Bake,(lay the fish on a bed of lever over veggies and bake)
Wednesday: Vegetable Soup leftovers
Thursday:Spicy beef and rice
Friday: BBQ Beef Wraps and Salad
Saturday:Beef Stir Fry over Noodles
Sunday: Improvisation Day!
For a week like this I would prep the soup ahead of time to be cooked in the crockpot. Then I would prep the beef for the crockpot or cook utilizing another method. Lastly I could chop any veggies ahead of time, leaving only fish, rice and noodles to be cooked during the week.
That is typically how our week goes, I find that for the 2 of us we typically get 2-3 meals out of any large casserole or crockpot meal, that means I only have to prep 2 or 3 large meals, and then have a few extra ingredients on hand for meals that are quick to throw together and we’re set!
Now let me back up to discuss the meal prep itself. The first step is to write out your menu for the week. But listen! It only takes a few minutes, for me it usually takes about 15 minutes. I come up with a “category,” if you will, that I want to eat that week; chicken in the first example, or beef in the second. I look in the fridge to see if I have extra of an ingredient to use up, a bag of spinach, or tomatoes, and take my findings into account and try to find a recipe that will use it up. I then come up with or search for recipes using my main ingredient,(typically on Pinterest), and then let whatever sounds good guide my choices, (I like to meal plan right before a meal because then I’m hungry and it’s easy to find recipes that sound good!
I do my grocery shopping and then will spend approximately 1-2 hours prepping at some point that weekend, for me Saturday evenings or Sunday early in the afternoon are usually the best times. I start cooking everything that needs to be cooked ahead of time, while the meat cooks I will start slicing and dicing. Then I assemble ingredients for any casseroles or my crockpot. I also prep my lunch bowls at this time. I would say after doing this prep I usually spend less than an hour during the week cooking.
I hope this helps make your cooking life a little bit simpler! What are your meal prep tips and tricks?