Meal Prep?

mum23

Who does this? Making a weeks worth of meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, boxing it up and being ready?
wha kinda things do you eat?

chadh89

I've been wondering this same exact thing lately. I'm too tired most nights after work to deal with cooking something for an hour, then cleaning up the mess. But it seems that anything "healthy" made on Sunday won't still be good by Thursday or Friday.

dejawills15

I do that. For breakfast I eat oatmeal with milk and peanut butter in it, turkey bacon, and eggs. For lunch I eat tuna, pretzels, apple, orange, and I make a homemade smoothie. The dinner I had last week was asparagus, cooked potatoes and carrots, and steak. I put them in separate containers to even it out and watch my portions. I like doing it.

tahxirez

Meal prep doesn't have to be as complicated as creating whole meals a week in advance. You can start by just making a meal plan and then chopping all the vegetables required, marinating/thawing/trimming the meats, preparing sauces in advance, and pre-cooking pastas/rices/starches. You would be surprised how much time that saves in cooking later in the week. Good things to prep are soups and chili (use a crockpot and freeze portions for a quick lunch.) Just wait to add any rice or pasta until you are going to eat it because they don't freeze as well. I usually bake off some chicken breast in a few flavors for quick lunch salads or sandwiches (or even a dinner on the fly.) Breakfast you can make egg muffins (scrambled eggs, veg and a little cheese in a muffin tin) or a big batch of steel cut oats that you can add fruit to later. For snacks I just pre-package crackers or popcorn in ziplock bags, keep whole fruits on hand, cheese sticks, nut butter etc. Meal prep is anything that will make life easier during the week...and learn to love the crockpot if you don't already
One more thing, when you make your meal plan try to choose recipes with similar/same ingredients to streamline shopping trips and make the most of what you buy.

RodaRose

We buy two rotisserie chickens, cut them into quarters, and put them in freezer bags to heat up with veggies and maybe some rice. For nights we are not cooking, the chicken is handy.

kshama2001

I'll plagiarize myself from another thread:

Soups/stews/curries freeze especially well so are a good option for batch cooking when you are planning to freeze some.

When I worked in an office and batch cooked on Sundays, I liked to make one set of four chicken thighs one way and have with potatoes and broccoli for dinner and bake another set of four chicken thighs a different way and have with rice and green peas for lunch.

I'd package the lunches in the containers I would use for bringing them to work.

I didn't notice any degradation in quality in the meals I'd have on Thursdays.

scottf186

Only meal prep I do is bake 5 days worth of chicken in the oven (chicken breasts from Safeway) and some ground beef that will last me a couple of days. For carbs, I used to cook a week worth of rice but at the end of the week the rice got a little funky. So I actually spend the money and just buy those mini 1 cup microwavable rices from MinuteRice. then place some type of veggies with the protein (usually green beans). For breakfast Ill cook some whole eggs and egg whites with toast. then throughout the day have small snacks (protein shakes, cottage cheese, fruit, etc.).

BrandyGanus

I use Sunday to plan my meals. I plan what I'm going to make, go to the grocery store and do light prep work (chop celery, onions).

I make oatmeal (4 servings) twice a week and separate it out into 1-cup containers for me to heat up in the morning. I also stock yogurt and fruit if I want that instead of oatmeal.

I make tuna salad and make a half of a tuna sandwich for lunch the night before. I also had leftover chicken and made chicken salad to put on top of my salad for lunch.

I usually only make two dinners per week and it lasts the entire week. This week, I did pineapple curry with rice (took 30 minutes) and oven-baked fajitas (about an hour).

Snacks usually consist of Tillamook cheddar cheese or laughing cow creamy swiss and fruit (pineapple or avocado) or sliced vegetables (cucumber, yellow or orange bell pepper).

I like having a choices.