In this week’s episode, one woman shows how meal prep can be used to keep your food spending low, even if you’re super busy. Click here for more grocery shopping tips:
A few months ago at the dinner table after eating grilled chicken sweet potatoes and broccoli for the third time that week we were desperate for change my boyfriend and i made it our mission to find a way to stick to our food budget yet also eat delicious meals each night the problem was that we haven’t eat out every night at a different restaurant taste on a boxed
Mac and cheese budget in the past when we would try to eat a variety of interesting foods throughout the week the recipes would call for many ingredients that were only used in small amounts these largely unused ingredients were then found moulded in our fridge two weeks later was a waste of money and food and also a massive waste of time making a new recipe from
Scratch every night this is when i stumbled upon a magical concept of prepping once and eating all week i was skeptical at first thanks to many other failed attempts at other a life-changing meal prep strategies surely there had to be a catch but we were desperate to find something that worked the promise is picking a protein starch and vegetable to prepare in
Bulk at the beginning of the week then use them in different meals each night using the ingredients in your pantry now that boring meal of grilled chicken sweet potatoes and broccoli turns into a mexican-style casserole buffalo chicken stuffed sweet potatoes and italian chicken lasagna there are many food bloggers who’ve created their own versions of this meal
Prepping strategy but we live and breathe by cassie joy garcia her book cook once eat all week has lived up to its name and then some we’ve now made it through half the cookbook and have learned some tips and tricks along the way we keep our grocery bill to $70 a week total even if you piecemeal your own meal plan together these seven tips could save your wallet
Time and tastebuds number one slowly build your pantry the key to saving your budget in the long run is building a pantry full of essentials for all cooking styles this is the difference between boring ground turkey every night and never getting tired of a meal again eventually when you get to the grocery list for your weekly recipes you will only need to buy
The protein and fresh produce we budgeted for slowly building our pantry items by shopping at count grocery stores number two set aside an hour on sunday to plan out the week and prep your main ingredients every sunday my boyfriend and i have a family meeting to discuss our schedules for the week and plan out how much time we have for dinner each night this helps
Us pick specific recipes for based on how much time we have to actively prepare or cook each night for instance one night we might have a lot of work to get done around the house so we would pick a recipe that only needs less than five minutes of active preparation but 20 minutes in the oven one night a week we play in a kickball league and only have 10 minutes
To prep dinner after work so we’ll pick a recipe that fits planning out your meals realistically is the number one way to be successful in actually sticking to meal prep number three use a pressure cooker whenever possible i swear by my pressure cooker and if i was only given two items to bring with me on a desert island one would be my instant pot and the other
A solar-powered outlet so i could take it anywhere using only the oven to prepare your ingredients can mean a lot of temperature changing cleaning of pans and most definitely time i have found the easiest way to bulk cook my main ingredients is by cooking the meat in the oven starch in the pressure cooker and vegetable on the stovetop all at the same time number
Four buy premade sauces some of the recipes call for making your own sauces for recipes which can be healthier but also wastes ingredients and take up too much precious time the back of the book has a list of packaged sauces you can buy instead of make many of these sauces slash dressings can be reused week after week and i always feel a silent victory when i see
That the main part of the meal prep for the week includes making a sauce i already have sitting in the fridge number five use pre minced garlic i absolutely despise doing mincing garlic the peel never seems to come off as easily as those cute cooking videos make it seem and my fingers smell like i’ve been trying to fend off a vampire for the rest of the week i
Just recently discovered that stores sell pre-minced garlic in a jar which has saved me time and money from not wasting the rest of the garlic cloves but mostly my sanity has been spared number six skip the guard a real talk the chopped parsley and green onion that gets sprinkles on top of a finished dish only make a small impact on flavor the instagram of your
Dinner is not worth throwing away the other two-thirds of the bag number seven pick one recipe to pack for lunch we started this meal plan idea for our weeknight dinners but quickly found that each week had a casserole recipe that yielded more servings than the rest we now use these casserole recipes as meal prep for lunches to bring to work each day they’re easy
To divide into containers and serve as a delicious hot meal in the middle of the workday oh not again is no longer uttered at the dinner table and my boyfriend no longer has to lather his food in barbecue sauce to make it palatable whoo we continue to challenge ourselves to push our savings goals while also feeling like we live on a restaurant every night budget
And ramen cup timeline
Transcribed from video
How We Stretch Our $70 Weekly Grocery Budget By Only Cooking Once By The Financial Diet