I’ve mentioned in previous posts that Colin usually eats leftovers for most of his meals. During my first 18 months as a mom, I would cook double batch meals every other night, and we would eat the same thing two days in a row. It minimized cooking every day, which helped me streamline my week.
Because C wasn’t the best with independent play and his bed time was so early, I handled all of my cooking after he went to bed for the night.
But now that Colin’s bedtime begins with a 7 instead of a 6 (or even a 5, way back when he was tiny), I wanted to reclaim my nights for myself. When I am exhausted after a long, draining day, the last thing I want to do is chop, prep and cook, much less wait until it’s done cooking to eat. So one week, after doing my big weekly shop on Sunday morning, I thought it might be interesting to change things up. Mr. Confetti was playing with C outside in the snow, and I decided to get a jump on our week’s meals. I started my prepping all of my ingredients for the week, and then I thought, “Heck, I am just going to cook it all now.”
Bees, it was magic. I didn’t have to cook all week. By the end of Sunday evening, my fridge was lined with Tupperware containers filled with everything from main dishes to sides, veggies and pre-washed and cut-up fruit. It. Was. Awesome.
Since then, I have fine tuned my system. On Friday or Saturday (or even early Sunday morning, if I’ve procrastinated), I will sit down with Mr. Confetti, figure out how many nights he will be home for dinner and how many days he will be in town and need to pack his lunch (usually leftovers). I review my schedule and Colin’s, and then I create a menu for the week. Typically, it includes 3 main meals and 3 veggie side dishes, some of which get cooked in double batch so all this food will last the whole week long. From there, I make my grocery list in my favorite app, and shop during Colin’s nap on Sunday. Shopping without a toddler is quick and efficient, so I hustle home and start prepping while C is still asleep. If Mr. C doesn’t have to work on Sunday afternoon, I begin cooking right away since he can handle C for the afternoon, and if not, I wait to cook in earnest until after bed time, and then I will plow through each meal, cleaning as I go.
Some of the perks of this system include:
- There is always something ready to eat, right when you get home in the evening, all week long. Just warm it up, and it’s ready!
- No more balancing act, juggling the needs of your toddler with the food that is hot on the stove. If you want to engage your child in cooking, you can. On Sunday. And then forget about it for the rest of the week.
- If you’re not in the mood to eat what was planned for dinner that night, you have two other easy options already made and ready (at least at the beginning of the week)
- If your unreliably picky toddler decides that the meal he ate happily a few weeks ago is now not suitable for his darling little palette, you have two other healthy, homemade options in your fridge.
- If you realize you forgot something or you run out of energy to finish all of your recipes, that’s okay. You have all week to find a time to grab that item you missed and cook the dish. Much better then realizing it right before you’re supposed to cook for that night, with no wiggle room and a hungry kid to boot.
- While you’re waiting for one dish to finish in the oven, you can move on to your next project or two on the stove – less wait time means being more efficient.
There you have it, my ultimate kitchen short cut.
Have you ever tried cooking on Sundays? How do you manage feeding your family with the weekly grind?
cantaloupe / 6086 posts
I think I need to start doing this! I try to prep at naptime but I also work at home and it gets hard.
Do you find it limits the things you can cook, in terms of what reheats well? I already cook that way somewhat since we eat a lot of leftovers and DH is rarely home when I eat with LO.
persimmon / 1472 posts
This is a great idea and I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me – such a timesaver while still having home cooked meals! I’ve also tagged Mrs. Wagon’s crockpot meal prep idea so between these two methods, I really should not need to go into a panic after DD goes down to bed to decide what’s for dinner. Thanks for sharing!
grapefruit / 4649 posts
This is a really great idea. I get stuck because I often don’t feel up to cooking on nights my husband isn’t home but this would fix that problem. Plus the dishes during the week would be a piece of cake! I love cooking but I hate the dishes!
kiwi / 511 posts
I have tried this to some extent but I find that I am not really a fan of it, likely because we eat left overs for lunch so it is kind of like eating leftovers for dinner too which kind of sucks.
We do plan a menu and since I have help while I cook, DH is with the kids it is a bit easier since I don’t have to juggle them too. Previously DH would come home just as I was putting dinner on the table and he would greet me the frazzled lady who just cooked with two kids crying and screaming for attention, climbing my legs because they were tired, hungry and I wasn’t paying enough attention to them. We decide that he should switch up his schedule too and be home while I cooked it was much better for family harmony.
I plan menus either Friday night or Saturday morning during breakfast and make the grocery list. I usually plan for that day, Sunday and then M-F. I make more time consuming things on the weekend since I have the “luxury of time” hahahaha, really it just means I can start cooking before 4:45 to have dinner on the table between 5:15 and 5:30.
We usually grocery shop as a family because the kids love it. DH and I each take a cart and we share a list via the Our Grocery App (I can categorize things and I took the time one day to put in the aisle numbers to make it easier. So I have aisle 1 is dairy, orange juice, smoked meat, aisle 2 is vinegars, dressings and oils etc), he goes to one side of the store and I go to the other and meet in the middle. Then I do a quick mingling of the groceries between the two carts, he goes first in the line with an empty cart and then I bring up the rear and put stuff on the belt and by the time all is said and done, my cart is empty his is full and he is able to put the empty away while I pay.
I should do more prep work on the sides, but usually the most time consuming prep is potatoes and I don’t want to pre cook them. I did an experiment this weekend when I peeled the potatoes and put them submersed into water with a squeeze of lemon juice. That saved me a ton of time because I was able to cut them up for roasted potatoes while the oven was pre heating, the thing is you can only do that 24 hours in advance or so says the internet. But I can easily do that after the boys go to bed for the next day.
We do a lot of frozen veggies because the nutritional value is the same as fresh and it gives me more flexibility if one of the kids is being especially fussy I can make a favorite veggie for them to focus on rather than one that they like but it isn’t their favorite. That and then I don’t have to do a ton of prep work on the veggies. I go with straight veggies I don’t normally get any of them with the various sauces.
blogger / watermelon / 14218 posts
I’ve done cooking once a week to prepare slow cooker freezer meals for the week, and it works out SO well. It makes the rest of the week go so much smoother than if I don’t. I usually try to grocery shop on Fridays with LMW (my day off) or Saturday so that I can do all the prep on Sunday night after the kids go to bed. I’ve got to get back into that rhythm soon!!!
honeydew / 7504 posts
I do kind of a modified version of this, I guess. Basically, I prep everything on Sunday. Sunday night we usually eat dinner as a family. Monday night, D gets leftovers or something like chicken nuggets or a veggie burger – stuff I can easily heat up for him. Hubs and I eat after he goes to bed, and whatever we’re eating gets “finished” while D is eating, getting bath, and being put to bed. For the rest of the week, D either eats what Hubs and I ate the night before, or one of our quick go-to meals. We mostly do frozen veggies since I can more easily portion out single servings for D – I just put a serving in a ramekin and nuke them for a minute.
cantaloupe / 6017 posts
I think I’m going to have to do this when I go back to work in the fall. Thanks for the tips!
coconut / 8234 posts
This is what I try to do. On the Sundays that I am too busy too cook it shows up in frazzled weeknights. DH rarely takes lunch, but I take it every day. I try to make dishes that can be repurposed, so if we have meatballs with pasta one night, we’ll have meatball subs a couple of nights later. Last night we had catfish for dinner and tomorrow night we’ll have fish tacos.
This gives me more time with LO before bedtime and a break from working all day & then coming home to cook.
blogger / kiwi / 675 posts
I may need to try this lady! I have done frozen meals to prep for Summer’s birth but thats the extent of my experience with it. I really enjoy cooking but it is a grind every day of the week. Maybe a mini version of this system would work for me.
blogger / pomegranate / 3201 posts
I wish I could be organized enough to do this! I bow down to you
grapefruit / 4923 posts
i try to cook two big meals over the weekend, and then another one on wednesdays (my work at home day). i also try to prep ingredients the day before so things get spread out. sometimes this all works, sometimes it doesn’t.
apple seed / 4 posts
Love this idea. Can you give us an idea of what type of meals and sides you’ve found that work well for this? It seems like it would be better for soups/stews, casseroles, etc.
guest
This is awesome! Could you give an example of what a sample week of prep looks like for you?
pomegranate / 3414 posts
Love the idea but like @Mrs.Maven said, whenever I’ve tried to do this it just feels like we are eating leftovers and not an actual meal. I sit down on Saturday morning while the kids are eating breakfast plan out our weekly menu (Sat-Fri) and then make a grocery list for anything we don’t have on hand. The kids and I usually go to the store on Saturday morning.
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
I was doing this when I was doing the Whole 30, but now I’m back to making 30 minute meals most days! I’m usually home by 5-5:30 with dinner on the table at 6 so it works for us.
It IS nice to not have to do prep and cleanup all week on a plan like this though!
blogger / nectarine / 2600 posts
I wish I could do this but I hate cooking so much its hard to want to devote the time sadly
blogger / pear / 1563 posts
What a great idea! I’m going too start doing this by the summer!
admin / watermelon / 14210 posts
I wish I could do this but just can’t work up the motivation.
pear / 1696 posts
I think I might have to try this out. I work Sundays but maybe could cook Saturdays. I have been preparing meals nightly and it is getting to be a bit of a grind. Finding some slow cooker meals that we like has helped, as I usually get it going it during LO’s morning nap (he sleep 2-3 hours in the AM!). And then just prepare veggies in the evening.
grapefruit / 4671 posts
I wish I could do this, but I really like to eat freshly prepped meals!
blogger / nectarine / 2010 posts
I love meal planning and how much of a time saver it has become. We have a freezer full of meals so that’s where I head if I don’t feel like cooking during the week. I’ll have to look at next week’s meals and see if Sunday cooking would work.
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21616 posts
I generally meal plan Saturdays, shop on Sundays. I always have the intention to make at least 1-2 things on Sundays for the week (like muffins for breakfasts) but it’s so difficult to actually execute! I wholeheartedly agree with the benefits though!
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
Yes, yes, yes. I’m definitely trying this tomorrow. You’re my hero!
blogger / clementine / 998 posts
Nice.i really need to try this