Meal Prep!

[bright sparks]

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!!