Meal Prep Tips
This is definitely a passion of mine… staying organised and having healthy meals and snacks on hand!
Meal prep can mean different things for everyone so find what works for you and what you can fit into your routine. It should help you save time in the kitchen during the week and make it easier for you to choose healthier options. You may choose to prep only your breakfasts, dinners and ingredients (like veggies) so that you can spend less time making dinner in the evening or prep all of your meals including your snacks, so you can grab and go.
Smoothie dump bags are a great time saver in the mornings:
Add your smoothie ingredients (fruits and veggies) into zip lock bags for the week ahead and store in the freezer.
In the mornings, you can pop the contents of the bag in your Nutri Bullet / blender and add in any powders (I use Collagen, protein powder and Maca) and add in your liquid of choice (I prefer to use water). Easy peasy!
Our meal prep varies from week to week depending on if I need to replenish meals that I have ready to defrost in our freezer for during the week, if we need ‘healthy’ snacks, finger food options for the girls etc.
Start small and see if even spending 30 mins in the kitchen on a Sunday to prepare for the weeks ahead make a change... it could be a step in the right direction
Here is a picture of our meal prep back in November 2017 (top) and our meal prep as it stands at the moment (bottom)… things change and evolve, imperfect action is better than no action.
My top 3 meal prep tips:
1. What works for you?
Don’t try to tackle prepping several main meals if you don’t like to eat left overs or frozen meals. Think about what you enjoy eating and how you can make that more time efficient ie. smoothie dump bags, veggies for freshly cooked meals etc.
2. Get organised
Find yourself a rhythm / cycle so that you know what days you need to plan your meals because there is nothing more annoying than not having the ingredients for the meals that you want to cook. We find we don’t waste groceries this way, as we buy the food for the meals that we are going to cook as it is all planned out in advance.
We store our recipes and create our meal plan and shopping list using Plan to Eat which makes our meal planning process much more seamless. We also order our groceries online which means we have a deadline to ensure our groceries are delivered on our chosen day / time slot.
I order our groceries online so we have a deadline with that process to ensure they arrive on time.
3. Time efficient
I love to experiment with making new recipes, but it can be very time consuming especially when you are trying to make the most of your ‘meal prep’ time. I try to make no more than 2 new recipes at a time because when you are cooking familiar recipes, I find it is easier to multitask.