Meal Prepping and Planning Saves Time, Energy and Money
It is Sunday afternoon and I naturally start thinking about the week ahead. All the work I have to do, emails needing a response, meetings to attend. And of course, I also need to worry about food - what am I going to cook for my family?
I’ll tell you, meal planning is not on my ‘fun activities’ list but doing it saves me a whole lot of time, money and stress. And that makes it all worthwhile.
Here is how I go about planning a weekly menu for my family, you can do the same for yours:.
Curate recipes. Google is a beautiful thing: you can search for recipes that follow your dietary guidelines (gluten-free, dairy-free, etc), then pick and choose the ones you think will be eaten by your family. Also, it is a good idea to find recipes that use some common ingredients so you can reduce waste and save money.
Make a grocery list: it’s important to do this in advance of doing your shopping. You can save a lot of time and money by writing down exactly what you will need. We all know what is like going to a grocery store without a clear plan. You end up buying things because they were on sale or someone told you they were good for your IBS issues. Then a few days later you forget you had them or don’t know what exactly you were going to make with them, and off to the garbage they go.
Cook in batches. Oh yes! Cook once, eat multiple times during the week. Having prepared meals available comes in handy when you are in back to back meetings for example, ‘hangry’ and rushing to eat whatever is in your way.
Below you will find 5 of my favourite recipes, these are included in the sample meal plan used earlier in this post.
Meal Prepping/Cooking Tips (you decide which day(s) is your meal prep day!)
Think of all the things you can prep or cook in advance that will allow you to have a more relaxed week ahead.
For example:
Roast the whole chicken
Roast veggies (this can be done a few times a week)
Cook a big pot of rice
Make your bean salad (it gets better with time, once ingredients mingle)
Cut up veggies for your snacks
Make your salsa