Food Prep Domination — Corey's Clean Eats

Tips and tricks for dominating your weekly food prep

I've been doing the Sunday Food Prep thing for so long, I can't really remember a time when I didn't do it, to be honest. How did I get through the week in the pre-prep days? I can't imagine.

A lot of people look at food prep and are instantly overwhelmed by it. I get a lot of questions - how much time does it take? How do you know what to cook? You're okay giving up so much time on your weekends to cook? For me, it's just a part of my life. With my gluten and dairy restrictions, and my desire to eat as close to natural as possible, it just lends itself to the need to make my own food, so that I can control what I'm fueling my body with. And to be honest, I find it fun to try to debunk the myth that eating healthy has to be boring. I want lasagna? I'm going to figure out how to make myself something that satisfies that desire without ruining my digestive tract and compromising my goals.

To answer the time commitment thing, let me put it this way: Would I rather spend time on the weekend setting myself up to eat healthy, home cooked meals all week that don't make me feel sick and don't make me gain weight, OR, would I rather have a little extra R&R on the weekend but scramble all week to find myself suitable food and end up spending more money and eating crappier food and thus, feeling like crap? You know the answer. It's all about priorities. I no longer feel like food prep is taking away from my life because I see how valuable it is and how much it contributes to my journey to be my best and healthiest self. Now I didn't always have this mindset, and sure, sometimes I wish I could just eat whatever I want and not worry about it. But I can't. So my weekend meal prep requirements have turned into a ritual. One that I generally don't just completely skip. Whatever life or my schedule throws at me, I am committed to figuring out a way to prepare myself food for the upcoming week.

With all that being said, I wanted to share some tips and tricks I've accumulated along the way, in the hopes that these might inspire you to jump in on the Sunday food prep bandwagon. And as always, I'm always happy to spit-ball ideas with you, and share recipes and approaches. So ask away!

Don't bite off more than you can chew, literally

Start small, with a manageable amount of food so you don't completely overwhelm yourself and turn yourself off to the idea and process of food prep from the get-go. Also, when you're first starting out, you won't really have a sense of how much food you'll need for the week. You don't want to prepare too much food and have it go to waste. Start off trying to cover your meals through Wednesday and see how far that gets you. Then the next weekend you can adjust as needed by preparing more or less food, or being prepared to do another mini prep on Wednesday if you so choose.

Make a plan

This might sound obvious and perhaps I'm oversimplifying things, but, I am a big believer in lists. With a lot of things floating around in my brain on a daily basis, I find it incredibly helpful to pull those things out of my brain and put them down onto paper in something resembling an organized fashion. Not surprisingly, I start thinking about my food prep for the next week immediately after completing my current week's prep. I give myself a few days to let things stew in my brain. I poke around online for new recipes or ideas, I ask my friends, etc. Usually by Wednesday I have some more solid ideas forming which is when I start to make my plan.

Let's take this week for example. I started last Monday with "what do I want to eat next week?". I answered myself:

some kind of lemon chicken
my usual veggies, (green beans, brussel sprouts)
some form of non-grain carbohydrate
one non-chicken dish
something to augment my breakfast smoothie (must have fat and protein)

I also factored in my weekend schedule. I knew I was going to be gone all day Sunday at a baby shower, so I was going to have to do some prep on Saturday. And I also knew that a crock pot recipe would be perfect to throw together Sunday morning and let cook all day. On Saturday, I had an appointment at 10:30 on and yoga at 4:00 so whatever I was going to do had to get done in that timeframe. With my food desires and schedule restrictions considered and solidified, I sought out recipes for inspiration for what to actually make. By Friday, I found a great one skillet lemon/herb/ghee chicken recipe for inspiration, landed on trying these garlic smashed potatoes all the bloggers have been talking about, and decided to repeat a recipe from last week for smothered pork chops in the slow cooker. With my grocery list in hand and my plan of attack formulated, all I had to do was execute.

Do your shopping and cooking on separate days

If you're anything like me, going to the grocery store is about a 6 on the 10 point stress-meter. The parking lot alone is a source of anxiety, given the group of folks that show up at the Whole Foods in Framingham, and their parking lot habits… And even when I make myself a list, my grocery trip is usually about an hour long adventure, door to door. One thing that has saved me some gray hairs is figuring out that doing my shopping on one day, and my cooking on another, makes me a lot less stressed out. I've been hitting up the grocery store on my way home from work on Friday night. That sets me up for a successful weekend of cooking, without overwhelming me. I find that if I have to shop and cook on the same day, I'm much less motivated as I know it adds at least an additional hour to my total food prep time commitment.

Spread your cooking out over the weekend

Similar to shopping and cooking on separate days, lately I've been spreading out my food prep over the course of the whole weekend, instead of just one day. I started doing this out of necessity because my weekends started to fill up with events that I needed to work around. But now I'm finding that dedicating shorter periods of time throughout the weekend to cook, instead of all at once for what seems like hours, feels a lot more manageable. For example, this past weekend went like this:

Friday night: grocery store on the way home from work
Saturday morning: made pasta e fagioli (testing an old family recipe), smashed potatoes, roasted brussel sprouts, and zucchini bread
Sunday morning: prepped pork chops and got them into the slow cooker while I was at the baby shower all day
Sunday evening: made dinner, but made extra for leftovers - one skillet herbed lemon chicken and green beans
Monday night: tonight I will pop the two remaining chicken breasts I have into the oven with some olive oil and spices to have for the week

So at the end of the weekend, I have pork chops in a gravy, lemon chicken, brussels, green beans, potatoes and a small amount of pasta e fagioli (I gave a lot away as I'm trying not to eat rice pasta during the week). And after tonight I'll have baked chicken as well.

It doesn't have to be fancy to be effective

I'm sure you see all these Instagram posts and Pinterest pins and bloggers posting all these super fancy, complex meals. Let's be real - most of those people cook for a living and don't have jobs outside of that. So while that incredible looking Coq Au Vin with a bunch of fancy sides looks impressive, it might not be very practical for you when first starting out on your food prep journey. Stick with the basics, making sure you're covering off on your macronutrients (protein, carbs and fat).

In fact, when you're first starting out, I would recommend taking the approach of making meal components for later assembly, as opposed to making full blown meals. I like to speak in examples so let me tell you what I mean by "make meal components". A lot of times, I just bake or pan cook a bunch of chicken with just basic spices. I'll roast a bunch of different kinds of veggies. I'll make a big pot of rice (if I'm doing rice), or a big tray of sweet or white potatoes, or sweet potato latkes. Those are my components. Then, during the week, I assemble. One night I'll chop up the chicken and throw everything together in a pan - chicken, veggies, starch - get it warmed, and then add lemon juice, chicken broth and some fresh cracked pepper. Easy. Another night, I'll put everything onto a baking sheet and cover with Rao's roasted garlic tomato sauce and heat it in the oven. Want tacos on Tuesday? I'll chop up the chicken, throw it in a pan with some peppers and onions and salsa and then have a couple of tacos with Siete's Cassava and Coconut tortilla, or over cauliflower rice or regular rice. Three completely different meals with all the same components. To jazz it up, in addition to making your components, you might try also making one complete dish, like a turkey chili, or a butternut squash lasagna. That will add a lot of variety into your week and is a very manageable amount of food to prep.

Make friends with your dusty appliances

Have a crock pot you haven't used in a year? Santa bring you a new Instant Pot pressure cooker (or have a stovetop pressure cooker hidden away in the back of your cabinets?) Bust out those guys and get acquainted. The crock pot is an amazing little machine that can slowly and without any supervision cook for you while you go about your day. There are SO many amazing crock pot recipes out there, so get experimenting. Likewise, the pressure cooker is another amazing machine that does what the crock pot can do and then some, and in a fraction of the time. I'm an Instant Pot newbie myself, so I'm still experimenting but in my few interactions with the IP, it's a pretty slick piece of machinery. There are also a ton of recipes and fan groups around the IP that are a great resource for recipes, tips and tricks.

Make it fun

You probably work 40 hours a week and certainly don't want your food prep to feel like just another job you "have to" do. So make it fun. Find recipes for something you absolutely love but have never made, try new foods, experiment with appliances, be prepared to fail. Blast music! That's my go-to. Have a cooking buddy (or dish buddy in my case, thanks to the ever patient Steve). Coordinate with your friends for a food swap where you each prepare something in enough quantity to swap with your friends, so you all get a little of everyone's dish. Schedule potlucks. Just have fun with it. Cooking is an incredibly creative expression, where you get to eat your art, and it doesn't taste like crayons! What is better than that?