how to meal plan and prep.

How to Meal Plan and Prep for the Week Ahead

Yaay! After weeks of promising you guys this post, I’m finally getting around to it. As I said in my stories a while back, it had been a while since I meal planned/prepped with the move and all of our home projects, but now that everything has pretty much returned to normal, it feels so good to be back to it. I spent a couple of weekends tweaking, researching products and trying new processes out, but I finally feel comfortable sharing a fairly streamlined process with you all!

The Benefits.

I tell you what, planning and prepping your week’s meals ahead of time does take some time and energy, but it’s something I’ve come to really enjoy. That feeling you get on a Sunday evening when you can sit down with a glass of wine and a clean kitchen knowing you’ve got healthy meals and snacks ready for your family all week is such a good one. Not to mention, meal planning ensures three very important things:

1. It saves you money

It hardly ever fails – during weeks that I don’t get a chance to meal prep and plan, we end up eating out at least two nights during that week. I easily get overwhelmed without a plan and if I let it go till last minute it’s so much easier to throw my hands up and put in a takeout order. Which gets expensive fast!

2. It gives you more time with your family during busy weeknights

They way I meal prep, I do all the heavy lifting on Sunday nights. Meaning I plan out not just the meal itself, but how I’m going to do it, what I’ll need and, most importantly, I get all the veggies chopped and ready to go (well, most). That way, when I’m pulling a meal together all I’ve got to do is pull ingredients out of the fridge and toss them straight into a hot pan, crockpot, etc.

3. Makes eating healthy so much easier

Prepping snacks and meals beforehand means you can easily control what is within arms reach at a moments notice. Portioning out baggies of grapes, purchasing individual humus servings and keeping fresh fruits and berries in the fridge provides healthful alternatives to heading to the pantry for crackers and cookies!

The Process.

Okay, okay so what’s my actual process? Here is my meal planning process step by step.

1. Plan

On Saturday nights I plan it all out.

What do I plan? Dinners, snacks and some lunches.

I used to meal prep a full weeks worth of lunches, but since it’s just G and me (for the most part) eating dinner, we usually have leftovers that we can heat up for lunch here. However, to compensate for a few of the nights where we may not have leftovers (or just don’t feel like a repeat), I’ll plan one other option – and it’s usually the same thing: chicken salad.

To plan, I consult some of my cookbooks and/or take to Pinterest. I simply Pick 5-6 recipes (depending on our schedule and what we’re doing that week) and write down all of the ingredients I’ll need for each one.

2. Take Inventory

Before making my grocery list, I’ll do a quick sweep of the pantry and fridge to take inventory of what I have and what I need. Throughout the week, I also use our Echo dot (and the app that goes with) to record items that we are running low on or ran out of. So, at this point I’ll consult that list and combine those items with the new for a full shopping list. Make sense?

I will also say that, at this point, I like to purge/clean out/wipe out our fridge of old leftovers and any items that may have gone bad. Also, tossing anything that might be in the pantry that needs getting rid of. This just makes the whole process so much more pleasant once you get home with your groceries 🙂

3. Grocery Shop

On Sundays I shop. Depending on what and how much we need, I’ll choose my store(s) accordingly. Typically we take a trip to Costco once or twice a month to stock up on proteins, household items and some produce items. If we need a minimal amount, I’ll go to Aldi or Kroger/Publix.

4. Wash and Prep

Once I get everything home, I’ll wash and prep our produce.  Prepping them just means I slice or dice them according to what my recipes call for. To store them, I place them in one of our glass or plastic containers for storage. Using these containers ensures our fruits and veggies last the whole week through. I use this pen to write on our containers. It washes off easily.. just soak in hot soapy water for a few minutes! Side note: the only things I don’t wash are berries – as washing them/adding extra moisture will make them rot/grow mold much faster!

 5. Cook

When I say cook, I don’t mean full meals (I used to, and decided it was unnecessary for our family at this time). Anything I cook at this point is usually for lunch options. My go-to right now is sweet potatoes, boiled eggs and chicken that we can put in salad. I use the Instant Pot to make the eggs and cook the sweet potatoes. For the chicken, I just drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle with seasoning of choice and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 375. We love chicken and boiled eggs atop a big bowl of greens. The sweet potatoes are mainly for me (and sometimes Fischer). I like to have them for lunch sometimes topped with a small amount of coconut oil or even chicken!

6. Clean Up

After everything’s washed, chopped, cooked and put away, I pick up my dishes and give the kitchen a good cleaning! After that it’s a glass of wine and some QT with G on the couch 🙂

If you want to see this process in action, come hang out with me on the weekends via my instagram stories! I’ll try to make sure I share as I go from now on 🙂 Feel free to ask questions or leave comments below!

The Tools I Use: