I hear this a lot “I don’t know how you cook every day. If I could plan like you do, I’d have an easier time of staying on track.”
So here we go!
I wasn’t always like this. I think it came out of being super cheap, and super lazy. I have two small kids, a job, 2 hours a day commute, and a love of running (which takes so much time). Like most of you, I really don’t have a lot of spare time. I’m out of the house by 430 each morning, and back home with both kids around 5pm. Then I have to make dinner, eat, wash the kids, put them to bed and find my own bed by (hopefully) 830. I’m constantly exhausted. So I plan and prep my meals to save time and money. As a family of 4, we spend $700 on food a month. I need to stick to that because there is not a lot of room to spare in the budget. Sound familiar?
10 years ago, I learned to cook. Rachael Ray held my hand the whole time. Simple easy recipes, not too many ingredients, and under 30 minutes to prepare. I was spoiled by easy and cheap meals from the beginning. The meals I make today follow the same principles, though the ingredients have changed slightly. Like I said in Cost of Health, I’m not spending any more a month on groceries, than I was before we cut the unhealthy foods out.
If you are thinking about starting to meal plan and prep, here are some simple tips to get you started:
Tip 1: Buy a freezer if you can. It doesn’t have to be new or expensive. I found mine on Craig’s List for $50, and it’s older than I am. It’s a Montgomery Ward! Costco has new one for under $200. You will make this money back so many times over. If you don’t have space for a freezer, you can still use the space in a standard fridge/freezer combo to just keep a few meals on hand.
Tip 2: Make a plan and a list, every time. ONCE a week I go grocery shopping. If my family decides they NEED something mid-week, it goes on the list for next week. Sorry, not sorry. I don’t have time to run an errand twice. Also, every time you step into that a grocery store, you are going to buy something you don’t need. Minimize trips, and you will save money.
Tip 3: Buy in bulk, cook in bulk. When things that you always buy are on sale, buy more than you need and freeze it. I don’t make a month’s worth of meals every weekend. I used to, and it is doable, but I recommend starting smaller. Now, I just double and triple recipes as I make them, maybe once or twice a week. I just freeze the meals in gallon Ziploc bags (laying them down flat so I can stack them like books later). Each bag is enough for the 4 of us for dinner. Making pot of chili? It is not any harder to put in twice of everything. Grilling a chicken for Saturday BBQ? Grill two, either at the same time, or do the second one while you are enjoying the first. Thanksgiving turkey? Get a bigger one that you need and freeze the rest of the cooked meat for soups and casseroles, and then use the bones to make a turkey broth.
Tip 4: Please tell me you have a crock pot. Put it to good use! A super lazy way to cook 5 lbs of chicken breast meat at once? Grab one of those big packs of chicken breast, like 4-6 lbs. Throw all the meat in the crockpot. Don’t even bother to trim the fat, it will just melt off as it cooks. Add in ½ cup water, 1 tsp each of pepper, salt, and garlic powder. Let that baby sit on low for 8-12 hours. So easy! Then you can bag it and freeze it in 1lb or lunch-size portions, to throw over veggies or in a casserole. (You can also bake that same “pallet” of chicken, in the oven for 425 for about 45 minutes, and then cube it.) You can do the same thing with a pot roast.
Tip 5: Make all (or most) of your food at home. For a family of 4, when we go to a restaurant for one meal, it is going to cost us over $100. With 2 small kids, we decided it really just not worth it for us to go out. That amount is almost what I spend on groceries for the week, and it’s for only one meal! Not to mention, if you are on a healthy track, eating out is probably not a good idea, since it’s hard to know what is really in the food you are ordering. (This is not to say that we never go out. We do a few times a year for birthdays and anniversaries.)
Tip 6. As you are planning your meals for the week, try to use similar ingredients, or ones that you can prep together. Chop all your onions for every recipe for the week at once. Batch cook and chop chicken all at once, to use in meals throughout the week. Mini tip: when I cook a lot of meat at once, I don’t flavor it too much so I can use it in several different recipes, I usually just use salt and pepper. I let the meat get its flavor from the recipe it’s going to end up in.
Tip 7: Pick a time to prep and cook as much as you can at once. Make a pot of coffee, put a movie on for the kids, and get to work. This can be pretty overwhelming, so go easy the first few times. Start with an hour or two on a weekend. (If there is interest I can put together meal prep plans, with ingredient lists and how-to’s. Let me know!) But to give you an idea, in an hour I can:
- Prep 4 casseroles at once, and have them wait in line for the oven
- Hand Tobias 2 whole chickens and have him grill both at once
- Make a gallon of bone broth from those 2 grilled and cleaned chickens (and let it sit on the stove for hours)
- Put something in the crock pot for later in the week
How I make a plan:
Here is the meal plan/shopping list I use list:
- The food that is on there, are the things I get every week.
- I usually have 2 big salad dinner days, and one soup day (I try to work in bone broth at least one a week to keep our guts happy and healthy). There will at least be 1 day for leftovers from all the other meals, and 1 day for a previously made meal out of the freezer, so that leaves me with 2 just dinners, and the weekly lunches to figure out.
- For the other 2 dinners that I make for the week, I will try to pick at least one thing I can double batch and freeze. I may also double batch whatever soup I make that week, and freeze that as well.
- For the weekday lunches, I make one casserole a week, and divide it up into 5 servings and freeze them. We have one drawer in the freezer where I throw all the individual lunches, and there is quite a variety in there now. I try to keep the individual meals similar in size and calories/macros so it’s easy to plan dinners to work well with them.
The beauty of all of this, is you will eventually have a well-stocked freezer with healthy meals at the ready, so you can take a week off of cooking if you like. (I’ve done this… and it’s AMAZING!)
