Busy Girl’s Guide to Meal Prep (printable guide)

Hi Busies!  The biggest reason I’m writing this blog is to share my meal prep ideas with all of you, in the hopes that sharing my ideas can help make your busy life a little more manageable.  Included below is everything you need for the first round of meal prep:  my meal plan, shopping list, and links to each individual recipe post.  Warning, this isn’t just “meal prep Sunday” where you make 1 dish and eat it the whole week.  This plan takes it to the next level – you prepare 2 months worth of meals at once, so that you can have more variety throughout each week and spend less time in the kitchen! Think about cooking a full YEAR’s worth of dinners in just 6 weekends, spread throughout the year.  That’s 46 weekends that you’re now free to do whatever you want, not to mention regaining lots of Sunday and weeknight time!

Why meal prep?

The short answer – so that you can make healthy, delicious meals while saving time and money!  With a little upfront cooking, these meals are even more convenient than picking something up on your way home from work or trying to throw something together at the end of a long day.  You can make satisfying, varied meals that don’t compromise on quality or nutrition, and cooking ahead saves you valuable time during busy weeknights.  I don’t know about y’all, but most of the time my afternoon snack just doesn’t cut it and by around 5pm my stomach is begging for dinner.  Add in the drive home during rush hour and then having to spend an hour cooking dinner…let’s just say I was spending a lot of nights as a very hangry cook.  Just imagine regaining all that valuable weeknight time, and having a hot meal just minutes away from when you get home!

How do you meal prep?

For each round of meal prep, I try to use ingredients that I can buy in bulk, while also varying each individual week’s worth of meals so that we don’t get tired of eating the same thing over and over.  There are websites that will sell you shopping lists and recipes and plans, but I’m going to provide you all that for free, in the hopes that we can forge on this journey together!  I’ll be sharing with you the same lists that I use to do all my shopping, cooking, and planning, and I can’t wait to hear how your rounds of meal prep go and talk about how the meals turn out!  It takes some practice to shift your methods from cooking 1 meal at a time to cooking a bunch of different things at once, but with this guide you’ll be chopping, sautéing, baking, boiling, and roasting all at once in no time.

I know this can seem a little overwhelming at first, but I promise, you can do it!  The most time consuming part of this is the planning, and that’s why I’m here – I’ve done all the planning for you!  Just print my Busy Girl’s Guide to Meal Prep (this includes my shopping list and recipe plan) and head straight to the store.  And if you look at the meal plan and have commitment issues (after all, sometimes at the end of the day all you want is a big slice of pizza, and there’s nothing wrong with that!), just start small.  Meal prep just 1 or 2 weeks worth of meals, and build up from there.  You can always shift around meals or keep them in the freezer for an extra week if your plans change (or if that pizza is just calling your name).  

The Tools

Aside from basic kitchen equipment (a few pots, pans, and cooking utensils), the most valuable tools you can have are:

• a good crock pot, which will help you do double duty by “prepping” 2 meals at once
• gallon size freezer bags or freezable plasticware that will hold ~4 servings of each meal
• a permanent marker for labelling your meals before freezing
• Recipe and shopping list (see my printable version at the bottom of this post!)
• A mascot to cheer you on while you’re prepping away!

Watson, always keeping an eye on me in the kitchen!

How do I start?  

After you’ve downloaded my free Busy Girl’s Guide to Meal Prep (printable guide), and done all of your shopping, pick a time you can start the cooking process.  I like to pick a weekend and do a little bit of cooking on each day, starting Friday night.  Take a read through the recipes and check out my quick tips page for how to make the cooking process go as quickly and smoothly as possible.  Lastly, check out each individual recipe post, which are linked below, or you can find them tagged as “Round1” using the search bar on the right. I make 4 servings of each meal since it’s just Drew and me, and we eat the same meal twice during the week I make it.  The recipes are easy to adjust to a family of any size and can also be packaged into individual portioned bags/containers for great ready-to-go lunches. 

• Seared Chicken with Couscous and Blood Orange Sauce
• Turmeric Chicken Kale and Brown Rice Bowl
• Slow Cooker Cream Cheese Chicken Taquitos
• Crispy Parmesan Crusted Pork
• Slow Cooker Beef Pot Roast
• Chicken Parmesan Meatballs
• Peanut Kale and Brown Rice Bowl
• 2 Ingredient Pesto Chicken
• Quick & Easy Beef Stir Fry
• Note:  a couple of meal prep meals don’t have separate posts (grilled chicken and pork loin).  See instructions in the Meal Prep Guide for these!

The Results

If you follow my plan, you’ll spend between $300-350 on food, some of which (spices, sauces, etc.) you’ll still have extra of to re-use for the next round.  If you make 4 servings of each meal, this comes out to 80 servings, at around $4 per serving.  When you compare this to a meal delivery service ($10-15 per serving) or eating at a quality restaurant ($15+ per serving for a dinner entree), you can see how the savings add up!  And y’all, imagine it with me:  coming home from a busy day and having a healthy, home-cooked meal ready & waiting for you!

How did your bulk shopping go?  How did your first round of cooking go?  Have you ever meal prepped before?  How did this version compare?  Let me know in the comments below, or share the results with me by tagging @busygirl_bites and #busygirlbites on Instagram!

Happy meal prepping, Busies!