Meal Planning/Prep

I only prepare one week at a time. Typically Sunday's are my prep days. I look at what my work schedule is like, whether I'll be traveling, etc. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of reheated meat (unless it has a sauce or something to prevent it from drying out) so I'll prepare everything needed for a meal except the meat and I'll cook that fresh.

Chili, stuffed peppers, stir fry are some of my favorites and are great reheated.

grantevans11 wrote: »

So do you plan a whole meal in advance, or do you just prep particular foods and then decide what you are having on the day.

E.g you prep turkey, chicken, rice and potatoes on Sunday, then on Wednesday decide you want the turkey and potatoes. Or do you prep turkey and potatoes because that is the meal you planned to have on Wednesday?

Not sure if I've worded that question particularly well but hope you understand it!

I do a little of both. I make mason jar salads for lunches, about 2-3 days worth as that's all my fridge can manage. I have cooked protein, steamed/sautéed veggies and roasted squash and sweet potatoes. For dinners, I just measure out bits of what's in the fridge and warm it up in a cast iron skillet.

I plan a couple of recipes for the week and have all of the ingredients prepped, for example, this week, we'll have Greek marinated chicken which I'll marinade about 4 batches, throw 2 in the freezer, and grill the other 2. We'll have stew in the crock pot, which makes great leftovers and freezer meals.

On Thursdays we have "Leftover Madness" where I put everything still in the fridge out and you make your own plate. We usually get through quite a bit of what's left leaving me to plan Friday dinner, clean the fridge on Saturday, meal plan then shop, prep and cook on Sunday.

I know this seems like a lot, but I cook everything from scratch......

My husband works from home so he's able to make most of our meals fresh. However the vast majority of stuff we cook is not terribly labor-intensive. We eat lots of beans, lentils, stir fry, salads, veggie burgers w/ homemade sweet potato fries, etc...and we're big fans of breakfast food at any meal.

What we typically do is think of 2-3 breakfast ideas, 4-5 lunches and 4-5 dinner options. Then we grocery shop for fill-in items to make all of those meals. We really don't keep a TON of stuff on hand in our fridge or pantry because we buy so much fresh food and go off this one week system. I mean, we've got stuff we could make other meals from, but not a ton.

There are usually a few meals each week that we eat elsewhere (dinner once a week with family, Saturdays lunch or dinner out), but for the rest of the time we choose items from our list and have those. I think it might be more difficult for us if we made out a menu ahead of time with the days of the week and meals for each day. It works a lot better for us to just choose from the items on the menu with our tastes/moods and the amount of time we have on hand that day. That way, if something comes up we can just switch from tofu and slow-roasted vegetables to something quick like a dinner salad with crab and chopped egg...this keeps us from being like "oh, guess we'll just grab takeout".