Want to save hours of your time and dollars on your budget? Planning your meals ahead of time is a well-known but massively under-appreciated hack. Batch your meal prep to save extra time!
How often do you just stare into the fridge? You’re hungry, but there’s “nothing” to eat. Your pace around your apartment, roaming from the refrigerator to the cupboard, to the pantry, over and over again. Grumbling and sighing to yourself, unable to make a decision. Finally, you pop a bag of popcorn and wander back to studying or watching a show on Netflix.
It’s a couple of hours later now, and you realize you are starving all over again. But now it’s too late to cook. You can’t just start rattling around in the kitchen. So, what are you going to do?
Do you order in? Do you drive to McDonald’s? This time you just make a bowl of cereal.
We need to break the cycle of spending hundreds of dollars a month on fast food. It does nothing for your energy levels and depletes your bank account. Instead, we are going to make a plan and, we’re even going to save time and money just by doing it.
The best way to do this is to batch and plan our meals. Choose recipes with similar ingredients over the week to save money on groceries and avoid wasting ingredients.
Planning your meals for the week can be as simple or complicated as your cooking skill. If you enjoy cooking and do it all the time, you probably have a lot of great recipe ideas on hand. Plan out 5 to 7 meal ideas for the week and list all of the ingredients you’re going to need.
If your culinary skills are somewhat lacking, you can also go on the web and look up some easy recipe ideas. There are tons of different ways to search. You can find five recipe ideas or even 30-minute recipe ideas. Whatever suits your time and budget restraints.
If you are coupling meal planning with budgeting, try to pick recipes with similar ingredients.
Buying fewer ingredients and learning new, creative ways to use them is fantastic to cut costs. This can be a fun activity, especially if you are adventurous and like to try new things.
Not only have you now committed to a menu for the week, but you also have your grocery list. Doing one grocery shop weekly will save you time from making multiple trips to the store throughout the week. It will also save you money from the impulse purchases you would rack up on these extra trips. A chocolate bar here and a bottle of Pop there really add up over time, especially when you’re trying to save.
From here, you have a couple of options, you can go on to grocery shopping, return and put your supplies away, or prepare your ingredients. Upon arriving home and unloading your groceries, decide if you want to advance to this second stage of planning.
Preparing everything ahead of time will save you time daily.
Batching the prep time also might give you a little more flexibility regarding what you want to eat on which night. Having many prepped meals can also save time overall on cleaning and dishes since you won’t have quite as many each night. Just be sure to safely store the ingredients to avoid spoilage and cross-contamination. Freezing portions will give you extra flexibility when you do not have the time to cook.
If you have the available time, you can also cook and freeze portions for use throughout the week. This allows even more flexibility because you can just pop a serving in the microwave. Batch cook intricate meals like lasagna or shepherd’s pie that require you to make larger portions and freeze them.
Having one batch cooking night weekly, and stocking up, will save even more time and dishes day today. The only limitation to this process is has enough freezer space. This is also a great option if you just need a few emergency meals on hand for days that you are super pressed for time. Having some meals frozen in the freezer can take the weight off.
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