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Weekly meal prep ideas

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mountainrun73
mountainrun73 Posts: 155 Member
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I am finally starting a new job next week after almost a year of not working. So I'll be back to the routine of getting up early to workout, at work at 8am, home around 5:30-6 and in bed around 9. I don't like that whole 3 hours between getting home and going to bed to be consumed by cooking. So I'm looking for some ideas on doing weekly meal prep/planning to make eating well during the workweek easy and not time-consuming.

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  • cmDaffy
    cmDaffy Posts: 6,991 Member
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    I saute a bunch of chicken breast chunks, homemade meatballs, steak bites, and put them in easy to grab containers. I have "crockpotted" a lot of chicken, pork roast, beef, etc. and divided them into containers. It's easy to heat them up or throw them on salads. Veggies are pretty easy to steam in the microwave
  • yamilethfreethinker388
    yamilethfreethinker388 Posts: 8 Member
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    Sometimes I make a big pot of chicken soup or chili and freeze it in containers. I also bring a ziplock bag with nuts or chocolate or whatever snack of the day it is. You can prep hard boiled eggs the night before, pack an avocado & salad, or cream cheese with celery.
  • 1thankful_momma
    1thankful_momma Posts: 298 Member
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    Meatballs. I had them for dinner tonight. They save well.
    Hard boiled eggs -- good by themselves or mixed up as egg salad
  • mountainrun73
    mountainrun73 Posts: 155 Member
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    Thanks for the ideas! I typically spend 30-45 minutes prepping dinner, and just don't want to do that every night. I'll be precooking lots of chicken, meat, eggs, and chopping veggies this weekend!
  • petunia773
    petunia773 Posts: 473 Member
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    Most weeks, I'll prep three salads at a time, weighing all the ingredients and making all three identical so I can log them for the next three days' lunches. This includes separate containers for pre-weighed cottage cheese and salad dressing. I also pre-boil a whole dozen eggs and will bake a whole package of bacon on Sunday afternoon so I can just grab two eggs and two slices of bacon for my breakfast every day. If you have leftovers from supper, when you're cleaning up, put it in a container for your lunch the next day and pre-log it into MFP. I find that it's easier/more time-saving for me to prep my next day's meal at night when I'm cleaning up the kitchen from supper. That way I have more time in the morning to exercise, shower and get my kids up and ready for school and I can just grab containers from the fridge and throw them in my lunch bag. I also keep nuts and pork rinds in my cupboard at work for snacks.
  • JQuinnLife
    JQuinnLife Posts: 102 Member
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    Honestly I don't like meal prepping.

    I don't like eating the same thing over and over, I don't like food to be prepared days out and degenerate in quality and taste, and I'm not a fan of using a microwave.

    So I cook, everyday, for an hour, with fresh meats and fresh ingredients. I love cooking, it's my second favorite hobby behind lifting weights.

    As far as time constraints, usually while I am cooking I will be doing a couple other things: Netflix, reading, talking on the phone, surfing the web. Things I'd be doing if I wasn't cooking, so it's not like I'm wasting or losing time by cooking.
  • AKARonab
    AKARonab Posts: 4 Member
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    Blackened catfish, in skillet in less than 10 minutes. Steam some veggies or make a salad, great stuff
  • sault_girl
    sault_girl Posts: 219 Member
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    I put the time in to cook pretty much every night (I do use a crockpot on occasion) but every evening I'm cooking enough for supper and lunch the next day, so that saves some time.

    In a pinch, it really doesn't take long to fry up some bacon to put in a salad or to stir-fry some chicken & mixed frozen veggies.
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
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    I cook and freeze a lot of things. I don't like to cook during the week.

    My stand up freezer is packed to the brim with foods that are in individual portions, flash frozen (burritos, taquitos, lasagna rolls, mini meatloaf, burgers, nuggets, meatballs), or cubes/jars of different kinds of sauce (marinara, bolognese, sofrito, enchilada, BBQ). I like variety so I pick what I want in the morning and pack it for lunch, plus I have the recipes logged here. I probably have at least 15-20 different choices of one pot meals at any given time (so many varieties of soup, stew, curry, stuffed peppers, chili).

    I also like to make things like crustless quiche, hard boiled eggs or have some vegetables prepped so I can just pour them into a pan and roast without cutting off ends or slicing in half, and we typically have some kind of meat leftover from the weekend (a whole chicken or some ribs or steak - my husband is obsessed with our smoker).

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