Preparing and Storing Meals for Ten Weeks

If you missed the beginning of this series check it out:
Planning Meals for Ten Weeks

Grocery Shopping for Ten Weeks

After I shop and put away my groceries I am ready to begin preparing meals. I only prepare the meat and the produce for the meals. Rice, pasta, etc are prepared on the day it is served. Unless it is a casserole; those can be frozen in foil. Meal prep day, for me, generally goes like this:

1. Start any beans that I will need to soaking (this takes awhile!).

2. Start any bread that will be necessary to mixing and rising.

For non-casserole meals:
1. Gather containers to store the meals in and label them. I use pyrex, plastic storage containers (think Gladware) and plastic bags.

2. Sort recipes by meat type: chicken, beef, and no meat.

3. Cut and cook meat and place in appropriate container. I generally will prepare several pounds at a time and then divide it amongst the containers. A kitchen scale is helpful, but not necessary. After doing all of the chicken, I simply wash the pan, cutting board, the flipper, and the scale and do the beef immediately.

4. I re-sort all of the recipe cards to find all that have a particular vegetable. Say celery. I chop all of the celery needed for the month and sort it amongst the containers. Then I sort the cards again and do the same with the next vegetable. Over and over and over.

For Casseroles:
1. Line the small casserole dishes with foil and enough on both ends to cover when wrapped over the top.

2. Make the casserole and fill the casserole dishes. Put in the freezer until hardened.

3. Once the casserole is hardened, I pull on the foil until it pops out of the casserole dish. Then I wrap the ends of the foil around the casserole.

4. I pull out a ziploc freezer bag (already labeled from the last time I prepared meals – save the bags and they are ready to be used again) and slide the casserole into the bag and zip it up!

Put it all in the outside freezer!

Wash the dishes, wash all of the towels (because I tend to go through several), and you’re done! That was easy!

Once meals are prepared I assign one to each day!

Each morning, I simply go to the freezer and pull out the container for that nights meal to thaw during the day. When I get home all I have to do is combine all of the ingredients (the hardest part of the night is preparing the pasta or the rice) and our meal is ready to go! I add all spices and canned products on the night that I serve. I don’t know that it ever takes me longer than 15 minutes to get dinner on the table using this method….which is wonderful! And there are less dishes each night at dinner which is also wonderful!

I hope that explains my system and answers some questions, or course it will be different for you, but it’s really not as daunting of a task as it sounds and we have found that this saves us a lot of time, money, hassle, and stress!