Hellobee Boards

Well the Cooksmarts service is a menu plan company that gives you a list and recipes and it tries to reuse ingredients throughout the week, so I guess you could try to do the prep on the weekends in advance.

When I menu plan, I want to able to reuse and remix the ingredients at 2 different ways. For example, on my prep days, I may cook a pot of basmati rice, bake a few chicken breasts with simple seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic powder), and chop up 2 bell peppers, 2 onions, and 2 zucchinis. That can be done in under 1 hour. Then my meals for the week would be augmented/tweaked with bottled sauces, frozen veggies, an easy prep meat like sausage, bread, and a bagged salad. For example:

Monday: Asian stir-fry night. Saute chopped chicken and a handful each of the veggies with bottled teriyaki sauce, chopped garlic and peanuts. Serve with the rice.

Tuesday: Sausage and pepper hoagies. Saute some sliced Italian sausage, peppers, and onions together, add in some marinara sauce and serve on toasted rolls with mozzarella cheese. Add a bagged salad on the side.

Wednesday: Burrito bowls. Pan fry peppers, onions, and zucchini with a little taco seasoning, then add strips of cooked chicken to heat. Heat up a can of black beans, add a handful of frozen corn, and season with spoonful of salsa. Serve over your cooked rice. Add salsa, guac, chips, etc.

Thursday: Takeout or random quick meal night, like broiled salmon, boxed couscous, and a steam in a bag green beans.

Friday: Homemade pizza night. Make a pizza with the leftover marinara, meat, cheese, and veggies from the week. If you have any bagged salad leftover, serve on the side.

If you throw in another meat and cook a second carb, then you can easily take care of all your meals for the week.

I do weekend prep, but not the way that is laid out in the link. I can't eat pork (or whatever) three times in a week, my husband demands variety!

So instead, what I do is to prep on Sunday and then cook on the weeknight. This week what I did was to prep a baking dish with pork cutlets, sliced bell peppers, onions and mushrooms and just put it right in the fridge. When I got home on Monday, I preheated the oven before I even changed out of my work clothes and dinner was on the table in less than 30 minutes.

I do similar things with chicken breast, salmon filet, etc. Weekend is prep the pan, weeknight is baking it off. I can't be doing food prep during the week, unless it's simple, like boiling water for pasta. We have one time saver, and that's Veetee rice packages (I know, the horror of using prepared food) but it's the perfect portion size, i don't have leftovers and I am not dirtying pots and pans.