Do you want to save time, money and reduce your waste or waist? Do you prefer to pack lunch once for the week instead of every day? And, how about coming home to dinner and a clean kitchen? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then Meal Prep is worth your time and effort!

Your approach may be different than ours. The important thing is to start somewhere. Are you one to slowly walk into the pool, so-to-speak, or do you go all in? If you prefer to dip your toe in more slowly, perhaps just start with a healthy breakfast. You can prep overnight oats, fruit parfaits or smoothies, for example. Or, for your lunch/dinner, try roasting vegetables and making rice ahead of time. But, if you’re the “all-in” kind, then you are like us – lazy. That’s right, cooking every day is not our thing. Here’s what we’re doing.

In a nutshell… for four people (Veda’s family of three and Michelle), we plan to spend about four hours one day per week cooking. We choose four different recipes, each recipe serving 12, making a total of 48 meals. Between the four of us, this creates lunch and dinner for six days. We’ll eat each recipe three times. While to some that may sound monotonous, controlling what we eat maximizes our time and budget, which is more valuable to us than eating something different every single day. Just remember, there is no wrong way. It’s what works for you! Click on recipes to see our favorite meals if you need some ideas.

Now that you have your goals clearly in mind, you are ready to get started!

Step One – Get your kitchen organized. Throw out the old spices and expired foods 🤭as well as any foods that don’t fit your goals or lifestyle. Trust us – it will make cooking more enjoyable and keep you on your journey.

Veda got rid of the processed foods. 😀👏🏾👏🏾

Organization makes a kitchen HAPPY!!!!

Step Two – Be realistic! If you already know you don’t like eating left overs (I’ve never understood why people feel that way, but we don’t judge 😉), please don’t jump into meal prepping with the goal of eating the same meal 5 days in a row. You’re setting yourself up for failure.  And, when you fail, you won’t say, “I wasn’t realistic”. Instead, you’ll complain how awful meal prepping was and you’re happy you’re not doing it. But guess what! No one really cares!!  Be realistic and it will keep you positive.

Step Three – Block out time in your calendar every week to plan your meals, to make your grocery list (before you put any items on your list make sure you really need it and make sure you actually do have the items you think you already have) and to cook your meals.

Step Four – Work smarter not harder in the kitchen. Crock pots are awesome!!!! Let it do the work for you. You can have one meal completed while you’re sleeping through the night. Also, we find it easier if we can use the same ingredients in several meals for the week.

Step Five – Have fun!!!  We always meal prep with a healthy cocktail and music.