Picture a day that has been a hot mess day (almost every day in our house especially with everyone home and having been cooped up since March). All you want to do is take a few minutes to sit down but it’s 4 pm and you know you have to start getting dinner ready to go so everyone can eat. You have to figure out what you want to fix if you haven’t already, hope you have everything on hand, hope it’s still good, pray nothing needs to thaw (and thaw it if it does), and then get to cooking. Sure you could order take out or get some fast food. Oh, wait…you have already used up your budget for eating out. Back to figuring out dinner.
It can be so stressful and during this pandemic, it was how I felt often. In the past of I have done meal prepping for the month but I got lazy. It isn’t always easy to meal prep and certainly isn’t easy to meal prep with 3 littles running around. Or maybe it’s just me that feels that way. Meal prepping takes time, thought, and prayer that your family will eat whatever you make. Lately my kids’ tastes change frequently and what they liked 2 days ago, they now hate. It can be a challenge at time. In June I got back into meal prep though. Mostly out of necessity for needing to keep my kids eating a little better, necessity to keep me from losing my mind, and necessity to have food ready to go in case I go to the hospital for delivery. I want those caring for my other 3 littles to have food that all they have to do is pull out of the freezer and warm up. Some meals use the InstantPot or the Crock Pot, but they are easy. I put them together and then they just get dumped in the InstantPot or the Crock Pot and go. They don’t even have to be thawed.
School will be starting soon so I want to also have breakfast and lunch planned out so this month required a little more effort. This post is about how I prepare for my meal prep day. I will try to do a meal prep post on how I actually do my meal prep. With kids, my meal prep “day” sometimes turns into 2 days. I don’t get to spend as much time devoted to just prepping. It’s still well worth it!
I start my meal prep preparation by figuring out what I want to cook for the month. Ideally I want food that will be fairly easy to meal prep but that the family will still eat. In our house, adding cheese to ANYTHING pretty much makes it all better! I really start thinking about my meal prep every time I cook something up. If my family doesn’t like it, I try to make a note that it wasn’t well liked so I don’t go through the frustration of making it again and then it ends in complaints and leftovers don’t get eaten and go to waste. Sometimes I can find ways to use the leftovers to turn it into a different meal and make it work. If I am able to do that, I try to make note of that so I can still use the basic recipe and just add what’s needed to make it edible for my family. A lot of time that means turning it into a quesadilla or a taco or maybe even a type of casserole.
I am old fashioned so I sit down with a pen and a notebook. This is usually done at night while the boys are sleeping. My daughter stays up a little later so she will be up but will usually be interacting with Dad while I try to prep. Again, because I have kids, I do it at night and it typically takes more than 1 night to plan my meals. We have some of our go to meals that I know the kids will eat so those are always on the list (even when I fell away from meal prepping). Those typically include my Salsa Chicken, Tacos (a weekly meal), Tater Tot Casserole, Mac n Cheese (who doesn’t love that and you can always add in peas or ham or other things to change it up a little and make it a little more healthy), Sloppy Joes, and a Cajun Chicken Fettuccine. The Salsa Chicken, Tacos, and Tater Tot Casserole are some I came up with on my own although I have seen some similar ones on Pinterest lately so I guess I’m not as original as I thought! I usually buy a boxed version of Mac N Cheese but sometimes I make my own. I have tweaked the Sloppy Joes from recipe I found on Pinterest, although I seem to change it a little each month. The Cajun Chicken Fettuccine is an old recipe from a magazine cookbook I got years ago!
I usually plan double of those recipes because I know the kids will eat those. Each of those meals will usually get 2-3 meals out of it. Then I try to figure out what else might get eaten or what did get eaten the previous month. I sat down with a few cookbooks, some of my meal planning recipes from a previous meal service I used, and sometimes Pinterest.
In June I added back in a roast recipe that everyone seems to love. We usually make it into tacos or quesadillas. It is SO easy. It will have to be added to my list of recipes to post! I HATE roast, but I actually really like this one!
Baked potatoes are a pretty easy fix as well and usually go on my list. You can cook them in the IP (InstaPot) if you don’t want to turn you oven on in the hot summer or if you just need them made up quickly. They don’t get the crispy skin in the IP, but they are still tasty! You can make breakfast potatoes with the bag of potatoes if you buy a big bag of potatoes. You can also make potatoes and onions fried in your cast iron skillet (I really love the burnt parts). YUM! My Mom made potatoes and onions in her cast iron skillet often when I was growing up. I just can’t get enough of those things. We eat them with breakfast, lunch, or dinner!
Meatball recipes are pretty easy too. I cheat and buy the precooked gluten free meatballs to use for my meatball recipes, but you could certainly make your own. I just haven’t found a recipe or a tweak to keep my homemade gluten free meatballs held together. Meatballs can be turned into a meatball sub, a sweet meatball that can be served over rice or quinoa, or added to spaghetti. I love their versatility!
So I sat down with my recipes and write down my meals I want to cook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I also make note of what page and what cookbook they are in so I’m not trying to figure out which one the recipe is in when it comes time to cook them. If I get it from Pinterest, I make note of that as well. I picked out 18 recipes for dinner (but remember, some will be used twice). For breakfast I only picked out 9 meals, but some of those are waffles or pancakes and since I have an overabundance of pancake/waffle mix right now, we will likely have a lot of those made up and frozen for future use. For lunch I only came up with 7 ideas. Most of my dinner recipes will have leftovers for lunch so I don’t feel like I need a huge list for lunch. Some of those leftovers will be turned into a quesadilla or put on nachos or tacos so the kids think they are getting something new for lunch!
As I was making my list of meals we would eat, I had another page going that I wrote down ingredients needed. I don’t always write down everything because there are things I know we have on hand. We always have diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and spices on hand. We usually have frozen broccoli florets on hand but I write those down so I can cross off however many we have. You could make up a list that is already broken down into the different sections and place the items in those sections or just write everything down and then go back and put it in order. Whatever works for you. When I’m going to be shopping the store myself, I like to have a list that is broken down the way the store is set up. The store I was shopping at starts with produce, then cleaning supplies, (I would prefer it at the end so my cleaning supplies aren’t going in before my other food), paper goods, health and beauty, baby stuff, gift bags and cards, drinks, snacks, frozen foods, breakfast, coffee, canned goods, alcohol, and then around the outer edges: dairy, butter, eggs, hashbrowns, meat. So if I’m going to the store, that’s how I would create my list. Since I’m doing order pickups right now, I do my list Produce, Pasta/Sauce, Spices, Condiments, Snack, breakfast, Frozen, Refrigerated, Dairy, Meat, and Misc. I compare my list with what I have on hand so I’m not buying things we already have.
Once I have my list completed, I sit down and price compare. This is also time consuming, but if you are living on a budget, worth it. If you have any coupons, check you coupons with what you need prior to starting your price comparison so you can calculate those in as well. Some stores offer special coupons for you on their apps and you can combine the coupons with those offers to get a bigger discount. For my grocery pick up I have 3 stores I go to because previous shopping experiences have shown me my 3 lowest price grocery stores. I pull up each pickup app and start comparing. Again, I see what offers I have on items and what coupons I might have. It can be time consuming because I frequently do math to see if percentages off make a difference. Sometimes it may only save a couple of cents on items, but a couple of cents on 200 items can add up quickly! Luckily the 3 stores I frequent are close to each other and close to my house so I’m not spending a ton on gas which would negate the savings. Once I have my price comparison completed, I finalize my lists at each store and set my pick up times. I try to set my pick up times during the same hour so I’m only going out once and can do my pickups at the same time. Saves gas and saves time!
After my pickup, I have to find space for everything! I try to keep like items together wherever I put them. So all the meat goes on 1 shelf (or 2 if needed) in my fridge or freezer, the produce stays together, the cheese together, dairy items (yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream, etc) together. I have my pantry drawers labeled with what goes where although I need to redo them. Some have fallen off and some have changed. But, I put the items together (canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato past in 1 drawer; beans in a drawer; condiments in a drawer; pasta and sauce in a drawer; etc.). It makes it easier because I can just go over to the pantry and pull out what I need and easily know where it is. Or I can send the hubby to the pantry and he can easily see what is where or help put things away because it’s labeled! It keeps us from having an argument if he puts some of the food away!
Now take a breath! You have your plan for your meals, have purchased your needed items, have them put away in an organized manner, and now you can plan when you will do your prep! For me, meal prep starts in about 30 minutes! It is a week before August starts, but this way I have our August meals ready to go and if I go into labor, I’m not freaking out about the lack of easy, organized meals in the freezer! It will be a long day, but Daddy will help with the kids so I can get as much done as possible today!
Happy meal prepping preparation day(s)! Feel free to leave comments below with some of your favorite meals in your rotation! How do you prep for your meal prep day?
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