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THERE’S A LOT to be said for being so organised that you know what you’re having for lunch and dinner any day of the week.
A lot.
Sadly, most of us probably don’t fall into that particular camp.
But it’s so worth it.
There is plenty of information out there about meal-prepping, and how amazing it is – some of which we’ve covered before here, but most of it is directed toward people who are on a healthy-eating/clean-eating kick.
But what about incorporating these ideas into the average, everyday lifestyle – is it possible?
Of course it is.
As usual, all it takes is a little thought and preparation…
It’s actually not as hard as you think it is to be a bit more prepared for the week. From what we’ve seen, everyone who does it goes food-shopping at the weekend and spends an hour or two cleaning, chopping, roasting and baking on the Sunday in order to load up their fridge with all sorts of tasty treats ready to pull out and devour whenever the mood hits them.
Keeping your fridge organised means you’re less likely to waste money by throwing food out that’s gone off because you didn’t know was there, or buying too much of the same thing, or not knowing what you can cobble together on any given evening, so throwing your hands up in the air and ordering a takeaway.
Planning your meals for the week means you know that you’ll have all the ingredients on hand for any given meal so you won’t be scrambling around when you’re just in from work – because nobody wants that.
Now this is a level of organisation that far exceeds anything we’ve ever come across – ingredients for each meal are bundled together ready to pull out of the fridge and cook on a particular night.
We’re not saying this is the way forward, but it’s certainly something to aspire to.
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I’d love to be more organised when it comes to dinners instead of standing there looking in the fridge for about 10 minutes wondering what to cook for dinner . one day I’ll get around to doing a weekly meal plan .. although I’ve been saying that for a long time too !
I’m a commuter so I generally plan in advance as much as I can… If I have time and energy at the weekend to batch cook everything then I will… but what I always do when I do my big aldi shop (which might only be once a fortnight or once a month) is buy a free range chicken, roast it, and when it’s cooked and cooled I strip the bird and freeze the meat in cooked portions.. So when I want to make a curry I can just pull out a freezer bag full of cooked chicken, throw it in with whatever veg I’m using and it’s heated and defrosted in the pan with the rest of the food.. much much cheaper than fillets and the chicken is a lot nicer than fillets.. I would get about 3 or four dinners for two out of one chicken. And I can have a curry ready in fifteen minutes.
I do a food shop on a Sunday which will usually consist of food for Monday – Wednesday and then I will do another shop on Wednesday for Thursday and Friday but I don’t cook the meals at the start of the week, I cook them the night before each day.
I know it’s boring but I find that having the same thing nearly everyday makes it much easier to plan because you don’t actually have to think of every meal you want at the start of the week. The weekends for me are a free-for-all!
the recession is over. why the focus on putting poor take-away owners out of business! go get yourself a chicken curry.
Gotta chicken curry on Friday. Wasn’t nice. Every bit of the chicken except the breast meat was in it. Recession has brought standards down in a lot of the places too.
the recession is over? sweet, I’m getting myself a butler to prepare my lunches from now on!
Shepard pie, mutton stew, pizza, vegetable soup, steak on Friday, frozen fish on Saturday, roast on sunday
Do you find the frozen fish a bit cold and difficult to chew?
Yes plan dinners and some lunches and do a quick ‘what does everyone want’ before shopping
I buy dinners on a Monday separate from the big shop and mostly in the butchers because the quality is not there in the high street shops.
have your say