School years and semesters are now well under way for folks whose work is most pressing on that September-to-June cycle. And where have we been? Well, getting said year under way, of course.
Despite the fact that I'm on research leave, we are diligent about our meal planning and about using weekends to do some advance work for the week. (This means that doing the prep has taken precedence over blogging about it over the past two busy weekends - sorry, friends.)
If you've been around food blogs for any length of time, you've seen ten thousand people praising meal prep and telling you it's the secret to your new healthy lifestyle. I wish this was the moment when I said "but they're wrong!" or "do it like this!" but... meal prep, especially lunch prep, is crucial to our family's ability to eat well and resist the siren calls of ordering a pizza or grabbing something processed.
However. Karen and I can manage most of the prep in about 2-3 hours, depending on what we're having that week and how much time we actually have. (I have timed us the past few weeks.) This includes going from dried beans to finished hummus, among other seeming feats. Because, well, it's the weekend, and we want to do weekendy things, too!
I offer here some tips and tricks that we've learned to make that meal prep an easier, less painful process.
1) Use your tools.
If you have a crock pot, or an instant pot, use them effectively and frequently. We often do soups or casseroles for lunch, especially as fall heads into winter. Plan something you can stick in the crockpot in the morning - then you can scratch something off the list without too much thought.
Here's an example: last weekend was a bit ridiculous, with commitments on Friday night and all day Saturday. So on Sunday, I started a crock pot full of enchilada quinoa (a favorite recipe from Creme de la Crumb). Then I put chickpeas in the instant pot. While those were cooking, I whipped up lunch packs (see below); then when the chickpeas were done, I could hastily whip up the hummus. Boom, food.
Here's another example: for a long time, beans were my environmental and culinary nemesis. I hated buying the cans when dried beans were cheaper and involved less waste. But I always forgot to cook the dried beans, because they need soaked, cooked, etc., and frankly, I have shit to do. Enter the instant pot! I can pre-cook the beans for the week while I'm cleaning or making other food, then store them in jars. Cooked beans can be stored in your fridge for about a week. So make two batches of beans and you're done until next weekend: you have the convenience of canned beans, without the can.
2) Prioritize lunch.
This is a weird tip, perhaps, but consider: if you don't get to all your prep, you might have one night of the week when dinner is a grab-and-go emergency. If you don't prioritize lunch, what are you going to eat for lunch all week?
We make "lunch packs" for the week in reusable containers. I prepackage snack veggies & hummus, nuts, fruit, and one other portioned snack (usually pretzels), along with entrees for lunch. I am a snack person, so a small lunch entree is fine with me. I'd rather have the luxury of picking at snacks all day. If you're more of a hearty-lunch-with-few snacks person, you can make this even easier on yourself. As a result of the lunch packs, we can hastily stuff things into a lunch box while the cats have dinner or while the coffee's brewing in the morning.
This is where I should add that I also pre-prepare breakfast. Karen's a teacher and she's out the door early. I am an awful person if I do not get a hearty, preferably warm breakfast into myself pretty promptly upon waking up. Some favorites include egg muffin cups of various kinds, baked oatmeal, etc.
3) Prepare the dishwasher.
We run the dishwasher 2-3 times over the weekend and then perhaps every few days the rest of the week. If you meal prep, you are going to need your dishwasher and your sink, and you are going to use them *hard* for a day. And for goodness's sake, clean the space when you're done cooking. Yes, you are tired. Yes, it will be worse if you wait.
4) Turn scraps into fancy things for later.
So, we eat my saag paneer every week or two, probably. At the end of the week, if I have greens, I make a batch of sauce and freeze it. That means that I use up those bits of food, reducing waste, and I have my own DIY freezer meals for a weekend when I genuinely don't have time to dedicate to food prep. Or toast those weird leftover bits of bread, and now you have your own bread crumbs. (For bonus points, use those bread crumbs in homemade veg burgers or something!)
5) Pick ONE exciting or complicated meal for the week. Just one. Seriously, one.
I love cookbooks and recipes a lot. There's nothing like poking around or googling for some inspiration. But it's easy to get over-excited and over-ambitious, make a plan that you can't hope to stick to -- and then fail to stick to said plan. Around here, we get ONE exciting or complicated meal a week. It's usually made on Sunday, and if we're very lucky, it provides another night of leftovers.
6) Pick one incredibly easy meal for the week.
You know that day is coming, even if you don't know when it is. You know, the day when you're exhausted, grouchy, and want nothing to do with making dinner. Or maybe it's the day when you have events in the evening, are likely to be running late for everything, and need something to eat *now* so you can run out the door again to the next thing. (In our house, we call that "Thursday.")
It is a good and desirable thing to plan ahead for that meal. It's a great night for a veggie burger, a grilled cheese sandwich, breakfast for dinner, whatever. Plan for it, and don't feel guilty about it.
So what's this week's plan? We've made single-serving baked oatmeal using muffin cups and a batch of seitan as a lunch protein. (I've tried baking the seitan this week. I envision a post in future about my seitan science experiments, because I'm told that you can make it in the instant pot!) Lunch packs are all prepared. And dinners include chana saag (yay for chickpeas); that kale salad with fried chickpeas that we love; leftover lentil sauce on pasta (using up last week's leftovers); and a fancy Friday night dinner (fish with green beans and, if I feel really ambitious, a potato gratin). We've also whipped up a chocolate porter cake, because there are birthdays in the house this week. Having our beer and eating it, too!
(Also, the above took us... 3 hours and five minutes.)
Despite the fact that I'm on research leave, we are diligent about our meal planning and about using weekends to do some advance work for the week. (This means that doing the prep has taken precedence over blogging about it over the past two busy weekends - sorry, friends.)
If you've been around food blogs for any length of time, you've seen ten thousand people praising meal prep and telling you it's the secret to your new healthy lifestyle. I wish this was the moment when I said "but they're wrong!" or "do it like this!" but... meal prep, especially lunch prep, is crucial to our family's ability to eat well and resist the siren calls of ordering a pizza or grabbing something processed.
However. Karen and I can manage most of the prep in about 2-3 hours, depending on what we're having that week and how much time we actually have. (I have timed us the past few weeks.) This includes going from dried beans to finished hummus, among other seeming feats. Because, well, it's the weekend, and we want to do weekendy things, too!
I offer here some tips and tricks that we've learned to make that meal prep an easier, less painful process.
1) Use your tools.
If you have a crock pot, or an instant pot, use them effectively and frequently. We often do soups or casseroles for lunch, especially as fall heads into winter. Plan something you can stick in the crockpot in the morning - then you can scratch something off the list without too much thought.
Here's an example: last weekend was a bit ridiculous, with commitments on Friday night and all day Saturday. So on Sunday, I started a crock pot full of enchilada quinoa (a favorite recipe from Creme de la Crumb). Then I put chickpeas in the instant pot. While those were cooking, I whipped up lunch packs (see below); then when the chickpeas were done, I could hastily whip up the hummus. Boom, food.
Here's another example: for a long time, beans were my environmental and culinary nemesis. I hated buying the cans when dried beans were cheaper and involved less waste. But I always forgot to cook the dried beans, because they need soaked, cooked, etc., and frankly, I have shit to do. Enter the instant pot! I can pre-cook the beans for the week while I'm cleaning or making other food, then store them in jars. Cooked beans can be stored in your fridge for about a week. So make two batches of beans and you're done until next weekend: you have the convenience of canned beans, without the can.
2) Prioritize lunch.
This is a weird tip, perhaps, but consider: if you don't get to all your prep, you might have one night of the week when dinner is a grab-and-go emergency. If you don't prioritize lunch, what are you going to eat for lunch all week?
We make "lunch packs" for the week in reusable containers. I prepackage snack veggies & hummus, nuts, fruit, and one other portioned snack (usually pretzels), along with entrees for lunch. I am a snack person, so a small lunch entree is fine with me. I'd rather have the luxury of picking at snacks all day. If you're more of a hearty-lunch-with-few snacks person, you can make this even easier on yourself. As a result of the lunch packs, we can hastily stuff things into a lunch box while the cats have dinner or while the coffee's brewing in the morning.
This is where I should add that I also pre-prepare breakfast. Karen's a teacher and she's out the door early. I am an awful person if I do not get a hearty, preferably warm breakfast into myself pretty promptly upon waking up. Some favorites include egg muffin cups of various kinds, baked oatmeal, etc.
3) Prepare the dishwasher.
We run the dishwasher 2-3 times over the weekend and then perhaps every few days the rest of the week. If you meal prep, you are going to need your dishwasher and your sink, and you are going to use them *hard* for a day. And for goodness's sake, clean the space when you're done cooking. Yes, you are tired. Yes, it will be worse if you wait.
4) Turn scraps into fancy things for later.
So, we eat my saag paneer every week or two, probably. At the end of the week, if I have greens, I make a batch of sauce and freeze it. That means that I use up those bits of food, reducing waste, and I have my own DIY freezer meals for a weekend when I genuinely don't have time to dedicate to food prep. Or toast those weird leftover bits of bread, and now you have your own bread crumbs. (For bonus points, use those bread crumbs in homemade veg burgers or something!)
5) Pick ONE exciting or complicated meal for the week. Just one. Seriously, one.
I love cookbooks and recipes a lot. There's nothing like poking around or googling for some inspiration. But it's easy to get over-excited and over-ambitious, make a plan that you can't hope to stick to -- and then fail to stick to said plan. Around here, we get ONE exciting or complicated meal a week. It's usually made on Sunday, and if we're very lucky, it provides another night of leftovers.
6) Pick one incredibly easy meal for the week.
You know that day is coming, even if you don't know when it is. You know, the day when you're exhausted, grouchy, and want nothing to do with making dinner. Or maybe it's the day when you have events in the evening, are likely to be running late for everything, and need something to eat *now* so you can run out the door again to the next thing. (In our house, we call that "Thursday.")
It is a good and desirable thing to plan ahead for that meal. It's a great night for a veggie burger, a grilled cheese sandwich, breakfast for dinner, whatever. Plan for it, and don't feel guilty about it.
So what's this week's plan? We've made single-serving baked oatmeal using muffin cups and a batch of seitan as a lunch protein. (I've tried baking the seitan this week. I envision a post in future about my seitan science experiments, because I'm told that you can make it in the instant pot!) Lunch packs are all prepared. And dinners include chana saag (yay for chickpeas); that kale salad with fried chickpeas that we love; leftover lentil sauce on pasta (using up last week's leftovers); and a fancy Friday night dinner (fish with green beans and, if I feel really ambitious, a potato gratin). We've also whipped up a chocolate porter cake, because there are birthdays in the house this week. Having our beer and eating it, too!
(Also, the above took us... 3 hours and five minutes.)
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