Hello Hello! I hope y’all have had a wonderful weekend and your Monday is off to a great start! I had just the weekend I needed after some stressful days these last couple weeks. I was able to step away from the Queen City to visit some of my closest friends, Kimberly and Bre in Greensboro and Raleigh. After work Saturday, I made a quick stop in Greensboro to have lunch with Kimberly then took off to Raleigh for the rest of the weekend with Bre. I had a great time catching up with both of these ladies. It also always amazes me what a stress reliever it is when you can step away from the day to day monotony and just smile, laugh, and catch up with close friends. Anyways, enough about my weekend and on to today’s scheduled post….Creating all your meals for a week in three hours.

Meal prep to me, and I think to many, is one of those daunting ideas. The idea of making ahead of time EVERYTHING you are going to eat for an entire week (or in my case 5 days) is kind of a crazy thought. So for today’s post, I am going to break down for you how I meal prep, start to finish, in less than 3hrs…..

Step 1: Inventory what you have on hand and throw out anything that has spoiled in your pantry and refrigerator. Should only take about 5min.

Step 2: Based on what you have already plan your meals and snacks for the week. Typically I choose a theme to follow to keep grocery costs to a minimum and avoid waste. I like to make 2-3 options for the entire week to keep from getting bored at meal time. For snack I plan to have 1 salty snack, 1 sweet snack, 2 fruits, 1-2 veggies, and 1-2 dairy / protein options for the week. From this prep sheet, highlight or circle everything you need to get at the grocery store. This should take 15 – 20min.

Step 3: Write your grocery list according to how the grocery store is laid out. This means keeping your produce together, meats together, etc. Less than 5min.

Step 4: Grocery shop. Stick to your list. 20min. If it takes you longer than this you aren’t sticking to your very well organized list.

Step 5: Unpack the groceries, put the produce in the sink to wash. Less than 5min.

Step 6: Start with the meat and the starch for the week. These will be the base for your meals.

Step 7: As the bases are cooking, wash and chop your produce.

Step 8: As the bases are cooling, cook your veggies.

Step 9: As veggies are cooling, start dividing your base items into individual containers.

Step 10: Finish packaging the rest of your items. This means adding your cooked veggies to the appropriate meal, dividing up your raw produce, creating individual snack bags for your sweet and salty items, etc.

Steps 6 – 10 can vary in length but should be no more than 75 to 90min.

Step 11: Put all prepped food away in easy to grab locations and clean up the kitchen. No worries with the exception of the containers, you will have almost no clean-up to do all week! 🙂 10min

Total time: 2:15 – 2:30 and no more cooking for the week!!

 

What different ways do you go about meal prepping? Please comment below with any tips and or tricks you have!

Have a great day!!!