Cooking all of your meals for the next two weeks or month ahead of time is a wonderful way to save time and money.  If you are trying to keep track of what you are eating, this also is a great tool because it can be used in conjunction with a menu planner.  

  1. First of all, pick a time to cook your food.  If you are cooking food for the whole month, try using a Saturday to get all of the cooking done.  If you don’t have this kind of time, or if you are only cooking for a few weeks, try cooking at night or with a few spare hours.
  2. Plan out the meals you are going to cook.  Use a month (or week) view calendar that you can tape to your fridge and fill in the foods you want to eat.  Make sure to go through coupons before doing this to take advantage of grocery store sales.  Also, make sure to include the correct servings of vegetables, fruits, grains, etc.  Include rows for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and dessert.

    Print off this meal plan, write in your food choices, and tape to your fridge.

    Print off this meal plan, write in your food choices, and tape to your fridge.

  3. Go to the grocery store.  Take the list (made directly from your meal planner) with you and don’t get anything more or less.  Don’t forget freezer bags or your choice of sandwich bags, tupperware, wrap, etc.
  4. On your cooking day, get everything out and organized.  Cook in as big of batches as possible to save time.  
  5. Let food cool to room temperature before freezing or putting in foil/reynolds wrap.  Try dividing up food into correct portion sizes, then freezing (put the food for next day in the fridge).  It will be much faster to prepare when already divided into the right amounts.  
  6. Write the date, contents, and simple cooking instructions on the freezer bag in permanent marker.  When cooking in batches, you want to make sure you remember exactly what is what, when you made it (for expiration purposes), and cooking instructions will eliminate the need to go back through recipes.  For example, say “bake at 350 for 10 minutes” on a lasagna and getting it ready for the night’s meal will be a one-step process.