7 Days to Successful Meal Planning: Day 6

Are you ready for today?  Well you're going to want to set aside some time and gather all of your groceries.  We're going to meal prep today from your meal plan for as much of the week as possible.  I also hope that you have baking dishes, storage containers, etc.  Sorry, I should have pre-warned you...I sometimes forget that not all kitchens are completely stocked with fun utensils and storage containers as mine. (I am a bit of a kitchen utensil junkie...after all, that is what makes cooking so much fun.)

The truth of the matter is this step is quite time consuming when you first start.  However, although it seems time consuming in the beginning you'll find even in the first week that it will save you an immense amount of time. I have tried a lot of different tactics to meal prep, prior to finding the tactic that works best for me.  So here it goes...I prep nearly EvErYtHiNg to completion all in one day to  ensure that I am using what's on my meal plan and to avoid those easy trips to a restaurant as a last minute excuse to not have to make dinner or a forgotten ingredient.

This doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to do it, as you bring everything up to it's final step minus baking.  No one really wants leftovers every night, as there is nothing that is so good as a freshly prepared dinner.  So if I'm having a steak dinner with a tossed salad, I will trim the steaks place the steaks in a leak-proof container in their marinade of choice and let them be till the night they make their arrival. Even better, if my husband beats me home and is feeling like doing dinner for me, he simply checks the menu and fires up the grill!!!  Casserole type dishes, I will go as far as the step immediately before placing it in the oven and put some foil or a cover over it and place it in my fridge.   Crockpot meals?  I place those in storage containers and then dump right in the crockpot morning of on my way out the door.  Often times I have more than one meal a week that I need my crockpot for, so I will go ahead and prep the first meal in the removable container and store the rest.  Soup...made up to the point of throwing into the sauce pan and warming it up.

The best part of prepping all of your meals at once...your "dish" has the chance to mingle with all the other spices/ingredients allowing for maximum flavor!!!  Also, you pretty much only have to clean up the table afterwards as all your prep dishes were all washed at one time!!!  Counters are clean for the most part and the evening is yours for the taking. 

Sooooo, what are you waiting for?!?  Let's get cooking and see how you do???  As I'm wrapping up here, I know that the days that I do everything doesn't work for everyone.  I just happen to have off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so I do my shopping and prepping on those days...prior to having those days off I did it all on the weekends.  My meal prepping usually takes me approximately two hours to prep roughly 19-21 meals.  Not bad when you start adding up the time you spend from start to finish each night in the kitchen when you aren't doing any of the prep work!  Enjoy yourself during this time, have a glass of wine, turn up your favorite tunes, lock the kids in their rooms (just kidding), and allow yourself to enjoy this time...after all you're becoming a "Domestic Diva"!!!