Meal Prep!

I wanted to share a great resource I stumbled upon online today for meal prep.

I meal prep for my daycare every nine weeks. I spend the majority of a weekend cooking. I make 12 meals, 4 for each week, and each of my recipes makes enough for 3 lots for 5 children so that gives me 9 weeks of meals and a 3 week menu that repeats in total 3 times. I had tried different methods so many times but it resulted in almost daily cooking of an additional meal or every weekend or at least Sunday spent shopping and cooking and it was to much. This is how I've done things for about 4 years now and its great. Everything goes in to foil trays with lids and is labelled and marked with cooking guidelines. Or, Ziploc bags for soups or slow cooker combos.

Unfortunately I do not eat well enough myself as I just can not be bothered quite frankly to meal prep for myself too. The last little while, 4-6 weeks I have been meal prepping, but I make 2 meals for lunches and 2 meals for dinners but then I end up cooking separately for our kids and it's just not sustainable.

Well I found a great website that would work for daycare meal planning and prep and also for families. The website is http://5dinners1hour.com

The website swears that you can prep 5 meals in 1 hour and after reading through it all, I think it could be close. I don't personally use much processed foods so frozen veg wouldn't work for me or frozen patties etc. I'd have to invest a little more time to chop and blanch veggies and freeze them myself and then make patties from scratch which I typically do and have on hand anyway.

Added bonus...the site has menu options which cover all types of eating restrictions. There is the classic version-standard versions of recipes, a clean eating version-no processed foods, a gluten free version and a paleo version.

You can also create your own menu by adding meals to "your menu" from all of the different plans. It automatically works out your shopping list and once you have finished adding meals you scroll down to the grocery list and "shop your kitchen" checking off any items you already have.

It isn't a free service. $20 for 3 months and $72 for the year I believe. I just signed up for a 14 day free trial and thought this would be a great tool for daycare with not a lot of associated costs but would take a lot of the brain work out of planning and you could write the cost off as 100% daycare.

Just thought I'd share because it is great!!

Stupid question but why don't you work your suppers into your 9week rotation? Thaw the meal in the evening, eat and save enough for lunches the next day? Essentially making more of each meal so you have enough for supper?

I assume you have a good reason for not doing this but thought I'd ask in case you somehow didn't think of it!

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Originally Posted by Lee-Bee

Stupid question but why don't you work your suppers into your 9week rotation? Thaw the meal in the evening, eat and save enough for lunches the next day? Essentially making more of each meal so you have enough for supper?

I assume you have a good reason for not doing this but thought I'd ask in case you somehow didn't think of it!

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Not as straight forward...as a family we have a combination of eating differences.

Son is vegetarian
Daughter is gluten free
I am entirely dairy free, refined sugar and gluten free

Way too complicated lol I like this idea because I can figure it out just for the four of us without placing those kinds of restrictions on the daycare kids too. They are egg free and one little guy is lactose intolerant so anything cheese is on the side or just not there and nobody misses it.

If I don't meal prep, I don't eat or I eat out, have take out and make myself very poorly. My kids are always well fed because I put them first. Don't ask why I sabotage myself, it isn't a rational reason so can't be rationalized. It's just ridiculous....I need to look after myself so I can do a better job of looking after people in my life but I can't just change when I've never done things any different. I like so many others was raised with the core belief that we shouldn't think of ourselves...that is selfish. How wrong is that!?! I do constantly try to though.....says I who has eaten out 3 times this week and it's only Thursday afternoon...yes I have issues!

Dinner tonight is already prepped thank goodness...scalloped Yukon golds and sweet potatoes to be roasted along with home made blackbean burgers and turkey cilantro burgers and steamed green trees and carrots.

hmmm maybe i'll try for 14 days too...

Holy moly! I can't imagine trying to cook not only for daycare but also for a vegetarian a glutein free and for yourself!!!

Kuddos to you for having such a great system down for the daycare meals!

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Originally Posted by Lee-Bee

Holy moly! I can't imagine trying to cook not only for daycare but also for a vegetarian a glutein free and for yourself!!!

Kuddos to you for having such a great system down for the daycare meals!

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My son is 12 and has been vegetarian for 2 1/2 years...fortunately he will at the very least try anything that is put in front of him.

My daughter is grade 8 and turning 14 in a month. She has missed more days off school in the current school year than the rest combined and it is nuts. My kids were sandwiches 5 days a week kids, and my son still is, but through the summer they hardly touch them. Once my daughter entered grade 8 they had a microwave in the classroom and she started using that to have leftovers for lunch a day or two a week and sandwiches the rest of the time. She was so ill almost daily. I always knew she had a sensitivity because you can visibly see her bloat up after eating gluten but she never complained of pain or nausea and I always stuck with complex ancient grains like kamut etc which she seemed good with. I think because she was close to GF over the summer and then had this sudden onslaught of sandwiches it hit her like a ton of bricks. I eliminated the gluten and wheat and voila, totally better. I actually think she has a wheat intolerance not gluten because she can have rye and barley and I buy GF oats anyway. GF is easy to accommodate these days.

I need to eat an anti-inflammatory diet and if I don't it's a viscous cycle for me. I don't eat well because I'm tired and run down. I'm tired and run down because I don't eat well...and so it goes. I have endo so dairy causes me chronic pain. and its getting progressively worse meaning gluten and refined sugars irritate me....even wine...which is criminal :-(

I have another idea how this would be great....I am not good at delegating. I am all about the...If you want a job done right, do it yourself....I know, I know...not good. It's the control freak in me that has developed over the years of doing everything, for everyone. Trying to change that is tough. With this, I can pick the meals and print out. Then pass it to my husband who will have a grocery list and then a step by step "idiot's guide" for meal preparation and cooking for each and every meal. He isn't stupid but as a result of me being the doer, he automatically asks me questions which make it not worthwhile...in some ways...to even ask someone else to do it. This way he could totally get on with this independently...I swear I'm talking about a grown ass man lol not a child. I'm liking this more and more!

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Originally Posted by bright sparks

I have another idea how this would be great....I am not good at delegating. I am all about the...If you want a job done right, do it yourself....I know, I know...not good. It's the control freak in me that has developed over the years of doing everything, for everyone. Trying to change that is tough. With this, I can pick the meals and print out. Then pass it to my husband who will have a grocery list and then a step by step "idiot's guide" for meal preparation and cooking for each and every meal. He isn't stupid but as a result of me being the doer, he automatically asks me questions which make it not worthwhile...in some ways...to even ask someone else to do it. This way he could totally get on with this independently...I swear I'm talking about a grown ass man lol not a child. I'm liking this more and more!

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Totally get this. My husband is a smart, bright completely capable man but I dread asking him to do stuff because it just SEEMS easier to do it myself. To ask him to put groceries away means him asking me where each item goes as he does it (that's NOT helping me). We got a decent system down now where the shelves in the pantry and freezer are labelled so he can read where things go. When I explain that it isn't helping me any when he asks me a million questions...his response is along the lines of wanting to ensure he does it right. Ummmm just throw it randomly in the cupboard and we're good!

Love your idea on helping him manage cooking on his own. My husband once tried to help prep food for a party. I asked him to take on baking a tray of frozen appetizers. Box had clear directions. While I was working in the kitchen he came in, took the tray out of the oven and rotated it 90degrees. I was like WHAT are you doing. He showed me the box that said to turn after 10min. he was SERIOUSLY upset when I took the tray back out and turned each appetizer over with a spatula. In his mind he was doing EXACTLY as the box stated. My husband is an engineer...yet he totally didn't see that simply turning a pan around did nothing to help the appetizers bake through evenly. His mother proudly tells the story of when they had him cook a pizza from a box when he was a teenager. he set the timer and went to read on the couch. They came home to a kitchen filled with smoke and yelled at him that the pizza was burning...his response "it's not done yet the timer says another 5minutes".

Needless to say we have a fire extinguisher in our kitchen and he is banned from cooking unless I explicitly request him to.

Lee-Bee. LMAO! My brother is an engineer. I can totally see this. He once tried to reheat cold mashed potatoes by putting them in a pot on the stove. In his mind, they were originally cooked in a pot so why not reheat that way too? Hahaha :laugh: no:no:

LOL, that is awesome lee bee! I read it to my husband and he thought I was just reading a joke!,