Please suggest affordable and easy meal prep ideas!

You don't need to eat organic. If you do enough reading on it, it's not really better than "regular" food, anyway. They still use pesticides, just different ones. Save your money.

I personally like the Cozi app for its meal planning section, to do lists, shopping lists and calendar. If you don't use an app that has a meal planning function you might try that one; it's free. As far as meal planning, odds are you're like most of us and really eat the same 10-15 meals over and over. I know that my husband and I cook about 4-5 mights per week and either eat out or have leftovers 2-3 of them. So, get your favorite easy 10-15 meals and think about putting them on rotation. It might be easiest to envision them in groups of how many meals you plan to cook in a week then determine a shopping list for each group. That will make shopping easy for each week.

As far as prepping, I find it's easiest to do on the weekends when I have more time. You might also look at grouping some of your meals so that you're reusing something you made earlier in the week. For example, if you roast a whole chicken on Monday (or buy a rotisserie one, which is more my style) plan a meal for Tuesday or Wednesday that makes use of the leftover chicken, say a soup or a salad. You could make mashed potatoes as a side for one meal and then do a shepherd's pie later in the week. Or make white rice as a side for a stir fry and then use the rest in a casserole or soup. I also do things like buy a package of ground beef at Costco (5-6 pounds) then

• Use quart size freezer bags for 3/4 pounds of it (there are 3 of us and a serving is 1/4 pound). I flatten the beef in the bag for easy stacking and defrosting when I need it.
• Cook one or two pounds into crumbles, let it cool and then freeze to make things like chili really easy the day I'm going to make them.

Foods like chili are easy to make huge batches in the crock pot and then freeze into single (or family sized) servings for another night or for lunches. Just make sure it's on your meal plan so you remember to use it.

Kalikel wrote: »

Learn to cook.

I'm a big fan of Alton Brown for learning to cook. A lot of what he makes is ridiculous with calories and unhealthy stuff. He had an awakening and started eating healthier, himself, lol. He admits that people could not eat all of it on a regular basis and remain trim and healthy. But "Good Eats" was the best cooking show that ever ran and all the recipes are available in book and online at the Food Network. The show still reruns on The Cooking Channel. MANY episodes were devoted to single veggies and making them in ways that were good. "Field of Greens", "Give Peas a Chance" and "Et Tu Mame" are the only names I remember, but like every single veggie got it's own show over the years.

That show was on for 13 or 14 years and was only cancelled because AB quit. If he decided he felt like doing it again, they'd put him back on the air tomorrow. It was a great show for learning how to cook. If the recipes are too rich, you can tweak them to something less calorific.

You can use frozen fruits and veggies and dried beans (and peas) and save a lot, but some fruits and veggies must be purchased fresh.

If you could afford expensive, boxed things - and enough to eat excessive amounts of them, you can afford some fresh ones. They needn't be organic. Regular fresh will do.

I spent a lot less on food when I switched to buying healthy stuff. That business about how people have to be fat because healthy food is too expensive...it's hogwash.

Buy your meat when it's on sale and freeze it.

I love Alton Brown and Good Eats. I learned a lot about the science behind cooking from him as well as the idea that kitchen gadgets should be multi-taskers and not single use.

I also agree about eating to lose weight costing less. You don't need to eat organic, expensive food to lose weight; just eat less of what you've always eaten.

Some basic ideas: try prepping ahead and portioning out individual servings and then freezing (essentially creating your own freezer meals), embrace the crockpot, realize organic isn't necessary, frozen veggies and fruit are often fresher than the produce section (due to flash freezing soon after picking) and are far cheaper, etc.

Some more specific ideas:
I'll cook 8-10lbs of chicken breasts in a crockpot with just some basic spices (I do chili powder and cumin) then use it for topping salads, in tacos, in any casserole, add BBQ sauce for pulled chicken, in soups, etc. Using a whole chicken is even cheaper, and then you can use the bones to make a stock for soup.

Some crockpot ideas:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/372359/bring-your-crockpot-slow-cooker-recipes
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/758287/crocktober-break-out-your-crock-pot-recipes-for-october

This is what I did on Sunday:
-Grilled and shredded 5lbs of chicken breasts.
-Cooked a batch of rice.
-Baked batch of 24 turkey meatballs.
-Purchased veggies and fruit.

Now, with this in hand I can quickly make the following:
-Chicken breast: Taco salads/bowls with rice, black beans, avocado, salsa. Throw into home made soup. Lettuce wraps. Sometimes i just munch on it when I'm hungry. Use it to make a salad into a meal.
-Meatballs: Asian stir fry with rice, veggies, meatballs with marinara and zoodles/polenta/spaghetti. I've made a kale white bean soup with these before.

The key for me is to make the time consuming parts of the meals (usually the meats) ahead so I can just throw them in to a variety of dishes. These items also freeze well in case I don't get through them, as I hate wasting food.

I recently bought the Vidalia Chop Wizard and have become a big fan of how easy it is to chop vegetables. I chop onions and green peppers for my omelets in a minute!

I have a strict rule never to eat a packaged meal just as it is from the store.

Buy as many different types of frozen vegetables, meat (ground meat divided into 100g portions before freezing is ideal) and fruit as you can. Use microwave dinners as your base meal and add handfuls of your favourite vegetables and/or meat prior to putting in the microwave (increase the cooking time to make sure everything is cooked properly). add a little milk or condiments if the vegetables stretch the base sauce in the meal a bit thin. If all the veg and extra meat make the meal too big, divide it in half once cooked and save the other half for later in the day or the next day. Takes a minute or two at most to do.

Even something as simple as 2 minute noodles can be turned into something great by throwing in frozen ground beef, turkey or pork plus a bunch of veggies and a boullion cube. It takes thirty seconds to dump a little frozen veg on top of a microwave meal and maybe an extra 3-6 mins extra cooking time. suuuper fast and easy.

Sometimes I buy a selection of packet sauces too, to augment a microwave meal and allow me to add more veggies and/or meat. This will often turn one store bought meal into two or three which can be saved for later.

Even microwave desserts and store bought yoghurt or puddings shouldn't be eaten without adding some frozen berries or fruits. Again, takes less than a minute to reach into the freezer and grab a handful before cooking or serving. It's not exactly "clean eating" but boy, is it fast. Plus it's a lot healthier than eating the microwave meals as-is.

So One rule! Never eat a pre-packaged supermarket meal or dessert as-is!!!!