Cooking is honestly one of my least favorite chores, and meal planning has never worked out for me because I often don’t want to eat what I had planned. I was spending so much time each day cooking, and sometimes even thinking about making dinner filled me with dread. But I was really inspired by Mrs. Confetti’s post on batch cooking one day of the week to have meals for the entire week because it seemed like a form of meal planning I could actually keep up. I started doing this a couple of months ago, and it has made preparing meals more streamlined and less time consuming for me. I still have to cook during the week, but the pre-prep that I do on Sundays greatly reduces the amount of time I spend in the kitchen each day.
taco meat, frittata, sweet potatoes, pasta meat sauce
I typically cook for 2 hours on Sunday preparing foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the following week. This is what a typical batch cooking session might look like:
B R E AK F A S T
– wash and cut up fruit (usually apples and bananas and finishing up whatever we have on hand that’s about to go bad) for green smoothies. Place each serving in individual ziploc bags with frozen kale or spinach, hemp seeds, and chia seeds. Freeze.
L U N C H
– boil eggs for kids’ lunches/salads
– wash lettuce for salads
– cut up various vegetables for salads: tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, red onion, bell pepper, radish, carrot, snow peas, etc.
– wash and cut up fruit (grapes, pears, berries) for kids’ lunches
D I N N E R
– roast sweet potatoes
– make pasta meat sauce
– make chili or a stir fry using whatever vegetables we have on hand
– make soup (freeze individual portions in ziploc bags)
– cook rice
– wash/chop veggies for the week
eggs, seaweed soup, chili, mushrooms
This definitely isn’t enough food to last us one whole week. But preparing this food does give me some flexibility in case I don’t have time to cook dinner or a side. For instance the sweet potatoes last us 3-4 days at which point I roast another batch. So if I don’t have time to make a vegetable, we can eat them because they taste great even cold. If I don’t have time to make dinner, I can quickly defrost some soup and serve it with rice or we can eat the stir fry or pasta meat sauce, which the kids usually like.
The reason why I don’t cook more main and side dishes is because everyone enjoys the food more when it’s freshly prepared, so I only focus on dishes that taste good when reheated when batch cooking. Day to day I try to roast as many proteins and vegetables as I can because that requires the least amount of time and work. I roast sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts regularly. Typically I add some olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper and just pop them in the oven. I’ve been trying to get the kids to eat roasted carrots and squash as well, but I usually have to introduce a food many, many times before they like it. Asparagus and peas are also favorites that cook very quickly on the stovetop.
I love salmon day because I can just pop it in the oven. But the kids’ palette when it comes to protein isn’t that broad, so proteins are where I spend most of my time cooking on things like meatballs, chicken katsu, etc. So while I still do cook dinner most nights, the total time spent cooking is greatly reduced because of my weekend pre-prep of veggies, and fall-back foods on those days I just really don’t want or have time to cook.
Maybe one day I’ll get my act together and meal plan, but for now this method has been the easiest form of meal planning I’ve actually been able to stick to for such a long time!
Do you do any type of meal planning and prep that reduces the amount of time you cook each day?
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22646 posts
With DH’s new job/schedule I haven’t, but we did this entire summer. And as much of a pain as it was, it was SO nice not to have to cook after work during the week!
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
This is how I try to approach cooking too, because I suck at cooking during the week.
kiwi / 511 posts
I have worked out a bunch of meals that can be made and on the table in roughly 30 minutes or less and I have embraced my crock pot on a timer. It is not so much the cooking that gets me down but the menu planning and shopping list making. I used to do it weekly, but towards the end of September I challenged myself to plan for all the weekdays of October, since it is weekdays that are my challenge. For Saturday/Sunday I go with whatever looks good at the store/on sale or will fit with the activities for the weekend.
Doing that made the shopping list making so much easier and I realize that my dread of menu planning is what cast a shadow on the list making. I only made my list once a week I didn’t shop for the month.
I have mostly done the same thing for November but I have a few holes in the calendar and I am ok with it, my biggest unfilled block is actually the week of Thanksgiving where I am missing 3 days, and overall I am missing 5 days so that isn’t too bad.
Occasionally I will do multiples and freeze one, but even with the crock pot meals that I made where you can freeze them and then thaw overnight and put in the crock pot, I find are easy enough that I can just assemble and put it in the crock pot in the morning, I don’t need to prep multiple bags of things. I will do it for a few really really good recipes simply because I will buy for that recipe in bulk because I know we will want it in a more frequent rotation.
pomegranate / 3768 posts
@Mrs.Bee: When you freeze fruit and such for smoothies, how long can it keep for?
admin / watermelon / 14210 posts
@dolphin: we don’t have much freezer space, but a lot of people freeze a whole month’s worth at once and drink them every day. They should keep for at least that long!
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22276 posts
I’ve really been wanting to do this! I also dread cooking.
pear / 1852 posts
I may have to start this again. When I was expecting our girl I did a lot of freezer cooking: cooking double batches of things that freeze well so the first few weeks home I just needed to take the time to reheat something. We had a LOT of casseroles and chili.
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
Yep, we do this as well. I also cut up a bunch of veggies for my husband and I to take for lunch. On Sunday night, I usually have 5 tall stacks of food parcelled out for the week!
clementine / 806 posts
Whenever we go grocery shopping, I cut and prep the veggies and fruits as well. I’ll also always have miyuk gook and gomtang in the freezer for our go-to, I don’t want to cook, reheat for the win dinners. Plus having all the veggies chopped up means jjigaes are a breeze during the week.
guest
This was such a helpful and inspiring post, thanks so much Mrs Bee! I tend to mealplan on Sundays and just make sure we have things to make quick meals. I should start batch cooking on Sundays, but often times I just want to kick back and relax with the hubby when the kids are napping ;).
blogger / persimmon / 1398 posts
In a way, I approach it the same… but I do freezer meals. So, I get all the planning, buying and prep out of the way in one day… but freeze everything before cooking. Since me being in the kitchen is such a trigger for M, I do a lot of meals that are either slow cooker or “dump in a dish and bake.”