My First Meal Prep!

So, after my training session with my friend Kayla a few weeks ago over her process of meal prepping, I have been excited to try it myself. This past Sunday provided the perfect opportunity for it, and I set about getting my plan in action!

The first step was to figure out the menu plan -- which recipes I wanted to do and what to combine with them. Below is the menu I decided on:

1. Buttermilk Chicken Nuggets with Roasted Potatoes/Onions and Steamed Broccoli

2. Pork Stir Fry with Roasted Mushrooms and Jasmine Rice

3. Mexican Bowl with Spanish Rice

4. Baked Fish with Steamed Carrots and Roasted Sweet Potatoes

5. Jar Salads with Tuna

6. Asparagus Salad

7. 15 Snacks (10 for Chris, 5 for me)

My plan was to break the first four recipes into four servings, giving me 16 servings. That is enough to provide three people with dinner for four days, and two people with lunch for four days, plus a few extras. That should be enough to get us through a week.

The second step was to arrange a game plan -- what needed to be roasted and could cook together; what needed to be steamed; what needed to be cooked on the stove; what needed to be microwaved.

As I got going, things really ebbed and flowed as I worked through the process. It got a little hectic at times, but everything went really well. I was pleased with my outcome for my first attempt! It took a total of 2.5 hours from beginning to end -- from chopping all the veggies to the final clean up. I didn't think that was too shabby!

All of the ingredients before I got started...enough for four full meals.

The roasted veggies -- I did both batches at one time, and combined two
different veggies on one tray.

The aftermath! I used quite a lot of things throughout the process and didn't
have time for clean up along the way! But, I double used where possible!

All my food properly portioned and ready to go!

Once I let everything cool, I put half the food into the fridge to eat within the next few days, and then I put the other half in the freezer to take out every few days. The beauty of this meal prepping is we can each eat whatever meal we are in the mood for that night.

The real test for this will be how good the food still tastes toward the end of the week. I think that the freezing will help the shelf life for sure. Time will tell!

We've gone through two evenings of this so far. It is sooooo nice to not have to cook after work!! It is saving me time and freeing up some good time in my evenings. Whoop!! We've come home from work, and the time it took me to set the table, heat up three of the dishes, and pull out the condiments was about 7 minutes!!! And then the dishes took about 2 minutes :) This is pretty freaking awesome!