Decide what recipes or foods you
want to prep. There are lots of ideas out
there. Simply Google it or check Pinterest.
There are some foods that you can
make in bulk but then use in different
ways. You might make some chicken
breast, and in one meal you eat it hot and
another meal you cut up cold and put it
in your salad. You could create sections
on your baking sheet by making walls
out of tin foil. You can put a chicken
breast in each section and season them
all differently. You are saving time by
cooking them all at the same time but
they can potentially be part of different
meals. You could do the same with veggies
or cut up fruit. You could put the
veggies into a smoothie or an omelet or
even inside a taco or quesadilla. Fruit
could go into a smoothie or top some
protein pancakes or even just be a snack
on its own. Once you have decided on
the meals that you want to prepare, make
a shopping list and head out to the store
to get everything you’ll need.
Batch cooking is preparing multiple
batches of a recipe to be portioned out
and frozen for meals within the next few
weeks or months. You could double or
triple recipes for chili, soup, casseroles,
etc. and portion out servings into containers
to take with you, or you could
freeze a big portion to heat up for family
dinner at the end of the week. If you are
following a diet or being strict with portions,
you could get containers that are
certain sizes or even get a food scale to
measure your food before putting it into
the containers.
With your recipes on the counter in
front of you, take out your ingredients
for everything and read over the recipes.
Begin by cooking the foods that will
take the longest. If you have three
recipes that will require chopped up peppers,
chop everything at once and then
divide the batch to use for the different
recipes. Boil some water that can be
used for pasta or rice and if anything can
be cooked in the Crock-Pot get that
going. Buying a rotisserie chicken can
save you lots of time. That chicken can
be used for chicken salad, chicken sandwiches,
tacos, quesadillas, etc., and the
carcass can be used to make soup. Even
taking a big bunch of grapes and breaking
them into small bunches and putting
them into containers with crackers or cut
up apples is going to be easy to grab as
a snack later in the week. Scrambled
eggs can be reheated, or you can make
an egg bake, which is really scrambled
eggs in a casserole dish with lots of veggies
in it.
Once you get the hang of meal prepping,
you will be amazed at how it
makes the rest of the week easier. If you
get your friends meal prepping, you
could do it together or you could trade
meals with them to get new ideas or to
keep things fresh and fun. It will take
some planning but once you have developed
a system, it will fit right into your
schedule and it will give you a little
more control over something in your
week.
BC Health, Beauty & Fitness 29