After our son was born, my life got a little bit more hectic. With our daughter still very young and our new baby very colicky, I quickly realized that I was going to need to live a different lifestyle to maintain my sanity. The next couple of days I will posting a small series on "Making my Life Easier". Today: Make ahead meals.
Inevitably right around 4:00, which is when I used to begin preparing dinner, my toddler has a melt-down, and my infant who was playing happily on his play mat up till 3:59 all of a sudden has urgent need of being held. Urgent. Dire. Life-depending need. So I end up holding an infant while stirring spaghetti sauce and bribing a toddler with pre-dinner snacks all the while crying and wishing I could relocate to Hawaii. Alone. Also? If I didn't have a meal planned for that day and was just hoping to wing it, that contributed to the stress as well as sometimes meats weren't defrosted or I didn't have the ingredients I thought I did. Yes, dinner prep/eating time used to be INSANE around this house. It was I could do to not order a pizza everyday and then lock myself into my room to let my husband deal with the chaos that is preparing and feeding my family.
Not so much anymore. For now? I prepare make-ahead meals. Oh the joy that is the make-ahead meal! Here's how it works:
1. At the beginning of the month, I make a meal plan for my family either for the next 2 weeks or for the entire month as our budget allows. It really doesn't change the process at all and you'll see why. The meal plan contains not only the meals to be made, but also the dates on which we will eat them.
2. I shop for the ingredients and cook in the same day or two consecutive days (usually a Saturday and a Sunday.)
3. If I am cooking just for 2 weeks, I make 8-10 different meals, cool them, package them in whatever packages best suit them, and freeze them all at once. If I am cooking for the month, I prepare the same 8-10 meals, but I double the recipes so I that I really have 16-20 meals in the freezer. I write the re-heating directions directly on the packages so I don't have to look up recipes again.
4. Then, each day, when it is time to begin dinner prep, I check my menu planner to see what meal I planned for that day, take it out of the freezer and follow the prep directions (sometimes it needs to be defrosted which I do by: letting it sit out- I know- genius). And then I pop it in the oven so that it will be hot and ready to go by dinner.
5. Then I rejoice for the ease of it all!
What's that you say? Could it really be that easy, Latrice? Yes, Daniel, it can. :)
My time has been freed up immensely using this method! I have less dishes to wash daily because I only reheat in one pan or sometimes not even that depending on how the meal was packaged. I don't spend time daily stressing over dinner and preparing dinner. 4:00 to dinner time now is a great time when I spend time with my little ones coloring or dance partying- ANYTHING but preparing dinner. Even when I have the time to cook dinner daily, I'm not sure I'll go back to that. And this method works great for people in all types of situations: young married couples who work full time and don't have a lot of time to prepare meals daily, single people who don't often cook because portion sizes are too large (just halve the recipes, or make the whole recipe but freeze it in smaller portions), and of course, for families like mine with two young children who have a sixth sense for knowing when to start acting up.
Intrigued about this Make Life Easier Strategy? Tomorrow I will post our March meal plan with links to our favorite recipes and other resources! Stay tuned!
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