Is this Your Food Prep?

Its 6:00pm, you just arrived home from work. You are hungry and your children are starving. There are no leftovers in the fridge. Forget leftovers, there’s not even “right-befores”. I don’t think that will catch on, but I made that up for the groceries that should have been sitting right there in your fridge before you got home.

So you call the pizza man….again.

Let’s avoid this situation. First and most importantly, you must have groceries. You cannot cook something you don’t have. In the above scenario, all hope would not have been lost if there were healthy groceries in the fridge and cupboards. There are countless meals that can be prepped, cooked and on the table in 30 minutes. Google search some variation of “30 minute meals” and you will have more than enough options. Even better, do a Google search based on the groceries you want to cook, for example, “30 minute chick and potatoes”.

But this article is not about 30 minute meals. It is about not being in the above situation at all. It’s about having a plan. It’s about food prep.

What is food prep you say?

Food prep is any type of work you do to ensure your ability to healthy meals when it would normally be hard/stressful to have. It can be advanced as preparing 7 days of lunches and dinners on a Sunday afternoon or as simple as doing some work in the morning to ensure dinner goes off without a hitch later that day.

Without further ado, here are some tips for food prepping:

Keep it simple

This is probably the most important. If you are already finding yourself short on time for cooking and in stressful situations, then the last thing you need to do to yourself is try to prepare ahead for a 5 course meal or for a recipe with 42 ingredients requiring 13 pots and pans. Choose a lean protein, a few spices, a vegetable or two and maybe a starch depending on your diet.

Don’t have an all or nothing attitude

Maybe you are not ready to prep an entire week’s worth food yet. That’s OK, start simple. Find yourself eating out most nights? Try defrosting chicken in the morning, then cubing it. Dice some veggies too. That way when you come home, they simply need tossed in a skillet together with some oil. You will literally have healthy food ready in less than 10 minutes. As you get comfortable with food prep, you can gradually tackle bigger tasks.

Do food prep based on what you struggle with

If you eat a healthy breakfast every day, but then struggle for dinner, guess what? You probably do not need to food prep a week’s worth of breakfasts. You will not have benefited from your time and effort. Instead, identify your weaknesses. Maybe you love to sleep and do not want to wake up any earlier to prepare a healthy lunch to take to work. Maybe you buy some groceries that only need microwaved or can be eaten cold. Store those groceries at work. Maybe you need to go a step further and prepare some lunches ahead of time on Sunday afternoon. The point is, if you are really good at something already that is not the area you need to improve. Spend your food prepping time wisely.

Do not let yourself get bored

Not everyone is a food robot. Some people out there can eat the same healthy foods day in and day out with barely any change in flavor. Most people are not like that. If you are worried you may get bored by preparing food days in advance, this is the tip for you. You can mix and match. Let’s say you are cooking up chicken, steak and lean pork chops for your proteins. You also have chopped peppers roasting, carrots boiling, and broccoli steaming. You had planned for several meals of chicken with peppers, pork with carrots and steak with broccoli. Guess what? How about you mix the sides? Chicken with peppers one day, with carrots the next and broccoli on the third day. Are you making a starch? Mix that up to. Suddenly, what was only 3 meals being repeated multiple times during the week, just became 9 or 27 different meals.

Pick your favorites

“What? You just told me to mix and match”

I know, all of that mixing and matching will help you find the meals that really hit the spot for you. I am not suggesting you abuse it and make yourself sick of these favorite meals. But the more you do food prep with a meal you like, the more comfortable you will become, the more of a habit you are building. You may even begin to refine it and make it better tasting or better for you as you go on.

Does not have to be a weekly endeavor

This has already been said or hinted at in various ways. But don’t feel trapped to only do food prep on Sunday and only do it in weekly increments. Maybe you are a morning person but your employment doesn’t start until 9:00am. You are up and ready to start your day at 6:00am because you are a natural early riser. Spend that time preparing the day’s food, or maybe even the next day’s as well. Work in food prep increments that work for you.

Use your kitchen and your time wisely

Look around your kitchen, assess what you have. Is there a slow cooker? Rice cooker/vegetable steamer? Oven? Stove top? Microwave? You likely have plenty of options. The initial steps of cooking multiple meals at once will involve some planning, but it will be worth your while. Your first attempt will likely leave you with ideas on how to improve the second time around. Look for items/recipes that cook at similar temperatures in your oven. You could potentially be using that space to roast potatoes, veggies, chicken and pork at the same time, with large pans going on all oven racks. At the same time, you could have a meal slow cooking, rice and a vegetable steaming, and steaks on the stove top. No need to wait until one meal is done to start a second meal; you can have two or three going at the same time. The only limit is your imagination.

BONUS – You can portion out your food

A benefit of food prepping is that you will be portioning out your meals. Provided you know the quantities of the ingredients you started with, you can pretty much identify the nutritional status of the meal you prepared. It’s always good to know what you are putting in your body.

Do not get frustrated

Cooking doesn’t come naturally to everyone. It can be hard, let alone preparing large quantities or working with unfamiliar recipes. Add to that, you may be trying to cook two meals at the same time. There will be struggles and failures. Don’t quit. There will also be victories. You will be pleased when you sit down after work to a healthy meal when you normally didn’t have time. You will feel great when your family thanks you for a tasty meal. You will be pleased with how your bodies feels as you give it the healthy food it desires.

Your food prep results may not always look as pretty as this. That’s OK. Keep at it!