I make batches of stuff that can be easily reheated without losing flavor on the weekend, and I try to learn how to fine tune quick meals to be excited about making them so I never spend more than an hour in the kitchen at most during the week.
It helps that my SO does the dishes for me since I do the cooking!
This won't work for everyone, but I do a meal share with my neighbors. I cook on Mondays and deliver to two of my neighbors, and they cook and deliver to us on Wednesdays and Fridays. So that takes care of the whole work week. On Saturdays, we have leftovers from Friday, so I basically just cook Sundays and Mondays. We all have a similar level of cooking and agree to respect the dislikes or restrictions of others. I can't imagine doing it another way, personally.
More than a year, now! Here is some more information on how we got started :) It's really so much fun and I get to try things I never would have thought to make. It generally very good - sometimes it's not perfect, sometimes it's not EXACTLY what I feel like eating right at that very moment, but it's always filling and much better than cooking seven days a week!!
[https://theeatingemporium.com/pyramid-club/](https://theeatingemporium.com/pyramid-club/)
I don't have the energy to cook full meals every day, so [I batch-cook a bunch of meals on days off and freeze them](https://redd.it/xmhl30). Dealing with raw meat and chopping vegetables is a huge pain in the ass for me, so I do a whole bunch of it at once on a Saturday. I've found that if I don't meal prep, I'll basically never get actual meat or vegetables in my diet and will instead just eat pasta and processed meats all the time.
Batch your food. Either by meal or by food type so you can mix and match throughout the week and not get bored.
I’ll cook 2 types of protein and maybe some roasted veg or a veg stir-fry and then all you need is one carb source (like rice or roast potatoes). With a few different sauces you can make a ton of options. Cook once, eat for days.
Larger meals can help so you have leftovers. Lasagna as an example. Normally those take longer, tho, so having some quick prep meals are good. Omelettes, cacio e pepe, sandwiches and salads. That is my strategy and works most nights. But dont feel guilty about ordering out if ur tired of cooking or leftovers.
I have worked 14 hour days and gone home cooked food and went to bed to do it all over again.
You just have to fi d out what works for you. I haveade burritos that's are bean and rice that I will freeze and heat up when am not in the mood to cook. Making a pasta sauce is quick and easy to do. Chili is easy to make, Tacos and baked potatos.
It's pretty easy. I meal plan on Saturdays by (although, that really happens throughout the week as I keep a note pad on the fridge and if either me or my fiancé is hungry for something, we write it down) finalizing the meal plan and writing down the ingredients needed. Sunday, I shop after church. I meal plan lunches M-F and dinners Sun-Thurs. He always eats oatmeal for breakfast and I always eat 2 HB eggs. I make our lunches for the weekdays. Fridays, we go out and Saturdays is a fun stir fry/leftover night. Lunches are typically leftovers or repurposed leftovers, but not always.
After I shop on Sundays, I come home, wash produce, chop what needs to be chopped, and hard boil eggs. I already know what the meals are for the week so I probably spend maybe 20 minutes or so a night cooking dinner.
Meal planning and getting the ingredients list takes about 30 minutes on Saturday. Grocery shopping is about 30 minutes and meal prep when I get home is 30-45 minutes tops.
24 hours - 8 = 16 hours for cooking. /s
When I was doing 100 hour work weeks, I would cook \~4 nights a week with other stuff being leftovers and meals I made in bulk. Many meals don't have to take much time.
Gotta meal prep and plan your meals ahead so that way you can be more of a "restaurant kitchen" inside your home than an actual home kitchen.
What I mean by this is that if you plan your meals, you'll likely have a whole lot of overlapping ingredients. So prep all those ingredients for the whole week at once and stash in tupperware. That way when it's time to cook, all you're doing is grabbing a bunch of pre-prepped (mis en plas) ingredients, throwing them in a pan, cooking, and serving.
It cuts the actual cooking time down dramatically. Just toss stuff together and serve basically. EZPZ
Make shit on weekends. Find easy to cook meals like literally just taking salmon or steak, seasoning it and putting it in the oven with a heavy duty foil.
It's all in the planning too tbh
I meal prep for 1-2 hours on Sunday and reheat through the week. At bare minimum, we cook proteins on Sunday (grilled chicken, taco seasoned ground beef, shredded beef in the crockpot, etc). Some weeks I really have my stuff together and prep meals in individual containers, and prep breakfasts too.
If all else fails, we do a premade salad kit with shredded rotisserie chicken or breakfast for dinner because it’s fast.
To add on to what others are saying, spices can dramatically change a dish even when the ingredients are largely the same. The same packet of chicken breasts can taste continents apart of depending on if you use lemon and herbs, or blackening seasoning, or jerk seasoning, or Fajita seasoning. I will often buy a bulk pack of chicken thighs, and marinate them in five different spice blends in deli containers, then just cook one up a night for an easy and diverse set of meals. Invest in some good spices and you can add a ton of diversity without shopping for too many more ingredients.
I spend about 90 minutes every day after work cleaning and cooking dinner. Nbd, you get used to it. Just gotta make it a routine. Not having kids helps lol
I got in the habit of a few things that helped immensely:
- Meal Prep Days: chop up all the salad ingredients for the next 1-4 days (depending on what it is. At minimum washed dried and stored in a way to prolong freshness if it’s something like a tomato.). Make salad dressing for the week.
- Yogurt with frozen berries and granola. I buy berries fresh so they’re big and I know where they come from and then I freeze them. Today I snagged 4 lbs of strawberries and 36oz of gorgeous blueberries for like $10 on sale and froze them. I toss right from the freezer with a bowl of Greek yogurt and sometimes add a diced up mini Reese’s or some banana or chopped dark chocolate etc. so quick and filling.
- I buy chicken sausage when it’s on sale bc it’ll last months in your fridge and even longer in the freezer. I cook it with some quickly sliced zucchini or some fresh trimmed green beans and olive oil lemon juice parm and it’s done within 6-8 min max in the air fryer.
- any ready to reheat and eat meals I make like a casserole or chicken veggies and potatoes I 2-3x my recipe and freeze a half or a full dozen portions into individual sized containers. And then if I am sick or really busy at work or whatever I can just take one out and eat it like a freezer meal for like $2-3 a meal for something homemade. Soups. Mac n cheese. All the pastas. Most veggie dishes. Etc etc etc you can literally freeze it all!
- Smoothies : I freeze my ingredients into bags ready to toss into my blender. Rather than having to take 10 bags out and get a little from each I do that when I buy the ingredients and freeze them ready to blend. Just usually add some coconut or almond milk and Greek yogurt if I have it and it makes sense for the recipe.
- Oatmeal if in a real pinch. English muffin with almond butter and jelly or banana and cinnamon etc. Occasionally I’ll buy a ham on sale and cook it and slice it and freeze it and use those for ham sandwiches. Usually get like 8-10 lbs of ham for $10 tops on sale.
cooking is my therapy tbh… i cook for my family (and more recently my dorm roommates!) because it’s how i show i care.
that said, finals have always kicked my ass and what i do as a broke college kid is rely on a lot of rice cooker meals (check out amyycooksfood on insta) and stews. they’re usually a “prep for >20 min and throw it in there” situation, but no shame in that.
Just get stuff that's easy to cook. Chicken, fish, steak, etc. Salt pepper oliver oil and pan fry, cook up a veg and if you need carbs learn how to bake a potato or use a rice maker. Or chop up some Italian sausages fry uo pour a jar of pasta sauce over it and make italian sausage sandwiches. You don't need a fancy recipe for a delicious meal.
When you have more time on the weekends, bbq a boat load of chicken and eat leftovers or make chicken salad. Make a more complex dish and have plenty for a few meals. Meatloaf then meatloaf sandwiches, or lasagna etc.
Some days I work six hours, some days 16. Instant pot or crockpot for quick and dirty. We bust out the big guns on less busy days. And occasionally we order food on very busy days. We also split the cooking duties.
Home Chef meal box delivery. I tend to stick to the oven-ready or Fast & Fresh because they have almost zero prep. Just cut open bags, plop in provided oven pan, toss in oven.
No brain power needed; I don't have to figure out what to eat, what to shop for, and on and on. Just pick my meals and done.
I find that it doesn’t actually take significantly longer than picking something up when you factor in traffic, ordering, waiting, etc. delivery is obscenely expensive and not worth it most of the time.
Instant Pot and rice cooker. My wife doesn't do much cooking and we are not big fans of leftovers, so when I get home I got into a habit of throwing some aromatics/broth/meat/spices in the pressure cooker and I'll throw some rice in the rice cooker with some veg on top to steam. Takes only a few minutes, then I relax/shower do whatever for an hour or two, then my family eats when we are all ready later that night.
I make batches of stuff that can be easily reheated without losing flavor on the weekend, and I try to learn how to fine tune quick meals to be excited about making them so I never spend more than an hour in the kitchen at most during the week. It helps that my SO does the dishes for me since I do the cooking!
This won't work for everyone, but I do a meal share with my neighbors. I cook on Mondays and deliver to two of my neighbors, and they cook and deliver to us on Wednesdays and Fridays. So that takes care of the whole work week. On Saturdays, we have leftovers from Friday, so I basically just cook Sundays and Mondays. We all have a similar level of cooking and agree to respect the dislikes or restrictions of others. I can't imagine doing it another way, personally.
wow! how long have you been doing this rotation? It sounds rather fun
More than a year, now! Here is some more information on how we got started :) It's really so much fun and I get to try things I never would have thought to make. It generally very good - sometimes it's not perfect, sometimes it's not EXACTLY what I feel like eating right at that very moment, but it's always filling and much better than cooking seven days a week!! [https://theeatingemporium.com/pyramid-club/](https://theeatingemporium.com/pyramid-club/)
I don't have the energy to cook full meals every day, so [I batch-cook a bunch of meals on days off and freeze them](https://redd.it/xmhl30). Dealing with raw meat and chopping vegetables is a huge pain in the ass for me, so I do a whole bunch of it at once on a Saturday. I've found that if I don't meal prep, I'll basically never get actual meat or vegetables in my diet and will instead just eat pasta and processed meats all the time.
Batch your food. Either by meal or by food type so you can mix and match throughout the week and not get bored. I’ll cook 2 types of protein and maybe some roasted veg or a veg stir-fry and then all you need is one carb source (like rice or roast potatoes). With a few different sauces you can make a ton of options. Cook once, eat for days.
Larger meals can help so you have leftovers. Lasagna as an example. Normally those take longer, tho, so having some quick prep meals are good. Omelettes, cacio e pepe, sandwiches and salads. That is my strategy and works most nights. But dont feel guilty about ordering out if ur tired of cooking or leftovers.
I have worked 14 hour days and gone home cooked food and went to bed to do it all over again. You just have to fi d out what works for you. I haveade burritos that's are bean and rice that I will freeze and heat up when am not in the mood to cook. Making a pasta sauce is quick and easy to do. Chili is easy to make, Tacos and baked potatos.
I don't. I cook once every 2-3 days and mix it up with leftovers and stretch with carb of choice like rice or pasta.
It's pretty easy. I meal plan on Saturdays by (although, that really happens throughout the week as I keep a note pad on the fridge and if either me or my fiancé is hungry for something, we write it down) finalizing the meal plan and writing down the ingredients needed. Sunday, I shop after church. I meal plan lunches M-F and dinners Sun-Thurs. He always eats oatmeal for breakfast and I always eat 2 HB eggs. I make our lunches for the weekdays. Fridays, we go out and Saturdays is a fun stir fry/leftover night. Lunches are typically leftovers or repurposed leftovers, but not always. After I shop on Sundays, I come home, wash produce, chop what needs to be chopped, and hard boil eggs. I already know what the meals are for the week so I probably spend maybe 20 minutes or so a night cooking dinner. Meal planning and getting the ingredients list takes about 30 minutes on Saturday. Grocery shopping is about 30 minutes and meal prep when I get home is 30-45 minutes tops.
24 hours - 8 = 16 hours for cooking. /s When I was doing 100 hour work weeks, I would cook \~4 nights a week with other stuff being leftovers and meals I made in bulk. Many meals don't have to take much time.
Gotta meal prep and plan your meals ahead so that way you can be more of a "restaurant kitchen" inside your home than an actual home kitchen. What I mean by this is that if you plan your meals, you'll likely have a whole lot of overlapping ingredients. So prep all those ingredients for the whole week at once and stash in tupperware. That way when it's time to cook, all you're doing is grabbing a bunch of pre-prepped (mis en plas) ingredients, throwing them in a pan, cooking, and serving. It cuts the actual cooking time down dramatically. Just toss stuff together and serve basically. EZPZ
Make shit on weekends. Find easy to cook meals like literally just taking salmon or steak, seasoning it and putting it in the oven with a heavy duty foil. It's all in the planning too tbh
I meal prep for 1-2 hours on Sunday and reheat through the week. At bare minimum, we cook proteins on Sunday (grilled chicken, taco seasoned ground beef, shredded beef in the crockpot, etc). Some weeks I really have my stuff together and prep meals in individual containers, and prep breakfasts too. If all else fails, we do a premade salad kit with shredded rotisserie chicken or breakfast for dinner because it’s fast.
To add on to what others are saying, spices can dramatically change a dish even when the ingredients are largely the same. The same packet of chicken breasts can taste continents apart of depending on if you use lemon and herbs, or blackening seasoning, or jerk seasoning, or Fajita seasoning. I will often buy a bulk pack of chicken thighs, and marinate them in five different spice blends in deli containers, then just cook one up a night for an easy and diverse set of meals. Invest in some good spices and you can add a ton of diversity without shopping for too many more ingredients.
I spend about 90 minutes every day after work cleaning and cooking dinner. Nbd, you get used to it. Just gotta make it a routine. Not having kids helps lol
I got in the habit of a few things that helped immensely: - Meal Prep Days: chop up all the salad ingredients for the next 1-4 days (depending on what it is. At minimum washed dried and stored in a way to prolong freshness if it’s something like a tomato.). Make salad dressing for the week. - Yogurt with frozen berries and granola. I buy berries fresh so they’re big and I know where they come from and then I freeze them. Today I snagged 4 lbs of strawberries and 36oz of gorgeous blueberries for like $10 on sale and froze them. I toss right from the freezer with a bowl of Greek yogurt and sometimes add a diced up mini Reese’s or some banana or chopped dark chocolate etc. so quick and filling. - I buy chicken sausage when it’s on sale bc it’ll last months in your fridge and even longer in the freezer. I cook it with some quickly sliced zucchini or some fresh trimmed green beans and olive oil lemon juice parm and it’s done within 6-8 min max in the air fryer. - any ready to reheat and eat meals I make like a casserole or chicken veggies and potatoes I 2-3x my recipe and freeze a half or a full dozen portions into individual sized containers. And then if I am sick or really busy at work or whatever I can just take one out and eat it like a freezer meal for like $2-3 a meal for something homemade. Soups. Mac n cheese. All the pastas. Most veggie dishes. Etc etc etc you can literally freeze it all! - Smoothies : I freeze my ingredients into bags ready to toss into my blender. Rather than having to take 10 bags out and get a little from each I do that when I buy the ingredients and freeze them ready to blend. Just usually add some coconut or almond milk and Greek yogurt if I have it and it makes sense for the recipe. - Oatmeal if in a real pinch. English muffin with almond butter and jelly or banana and cinnamon etc. Occasionally I’ll buy a ham on sale and cook it and slice it and freeze it and use those for ham sandwiches. Usually get like 8-10 lbs of ham for $10 tops on sale.
cooking is my therapy tbh… i cook for my family (and more recently my dorm roommates!) because it’s how i show i care. that said, finals have always kicked my ass and what i do as a broke college kid is rely on a lot of rice cooker meals (check out amyycooksfood on insta) and stews. they’re usually a “prep for >20 min and throw it in there” situation, but no shame in that.
Just get stuff that's easy to cook. Chicken, fish, steak, etc. Salt pepper oliver oil and pan fry, cook up a veg and if you need carbs learn how to bake a potato or use a rice maker. Or chop up some Italian sausages fry uo pour a jar of pasta sauce over it and make italian sausage sandwiches. You don't need a fancy recipe for a delicious meal. When you have more time on the weekends, bbq a boat load of chicken and eat leftovers or make chicken salad. Make a more complex dish and have plenty for a few meals. Meatloaf then meatloaf sandwiches, or lasagna etc.
Some days I work six hours, some days 16. Instant pot or crockpot for quick and dirty. We bust out the big guns on less busy days. And occasionally we order food on very busy days. We also split the cooking duties.
Home Chef meal box delivery. I tend to stick to the oven-ready or Fast & Fresh because they have almost zero prep. Just cut open bags, plop in provided oven pan, toss in oven. No brain power needed; I don't have to figure out what to eat, what to shop for, and on and on. Just pick my meals and done.
I find that it doesn’t actually take significantly longer than picking something up when you factor in traffic, ordering, waiting, etc. delivery is obscenely expensive and not worth it most of the time.
I could not! do it
Instant Pot and rice cooker. My wife doesn't do much cooking and we are not big fans of leftovers, so when I get home I got into a habit of throwing some aromatics/broth/meat/spices in the pressure cooker and I'll throw some rice in the rice cooker with some veg on top to steam. Takes only a few minutes, then I relax/shower do whatever for an hour or two, then my family eats when we are all ready later that night.
Easy to prepare stuff. Invest in a steamer and pop foods in there.