How is everyone going?
Last year, you might remember the giant meal prepping Tara & I did? If not, check out the blog here. Essentially, for the last 3 years, Tara & I have meal prepped together, to save time & money, whilst also ensuring we eat a healthy meal for lunch or dinner each day. Even when Tara moved to Melbourne, we still kept it up! Which is insane, I know. But it is so good!
Our last cooking day was in January of this year so, yep, that's right, another meal prepping series is coming your way.
This cook was actually the biggest one to date!
Last time, we made 312 portions of food - so 78 days worth of food for 4 people... which actually fed Mack & I for 6 months (factoring in eating out, takeaway, camping & other days we were out of the house). I literally didn't cook between March & September 2018!
This time... well... perhaps we went a little overboard... Haha. We made 93 days worth of food for 4 people. That's 372 portions of food. If we were cooking for 1, we would not have to cook for more than 1 year. Outrageous!!!
This cook almost found max capacity of my freezer!
Now, last time, I went through how the weekend looked for us & our processes, so I'm not going to talk about that again, because we have a pretty good routine & we did it basically the same again!
Below is the list I curated last time, of the things we have learnt from our time meal prepping:
- set timers for each of your slow cookers!
- use ziplock bags (or vacuum bags) where possible to save space in the freezer
- clean as you go
- make some kind of plan at the beginning of the day of what order you will make the recipes in
- have labels ready to go for the Tupperware/bags - you think you will remember what everything is, but I promise you you won't always be able to tell what it is once it's frozen.
- MAKE SURE YOU ACTUALLY EAT FOOD!
What is interesting to me is that, this time, we didn't set timers & we didn't have a plan at the start of the day of what to do first. But everything went super smoothly. I can only put this down to experience! Tara & I have such a great rhythm when we meal prep together & I think a lot of the processes are second nature now. That being said, I would still recommend doing these things haha.
A few new things for this time around.
1. Why on earth were we spending money buying label tape for a label maker when we could have been using a roll of masking tape & a Sharpie this whole time. Seriously. Haha.
2. I curated our shopping list on a Google doc for Tara to take shopping before our weekend began (when we go to Melbourne, she shops, when we cook in Sydney, I do it). Turns out a consolidated list is much easier than 16 different recipes & adding things up on the fly. Who knew. #amateurs hahaha
3. We dabbled in the idea of filming our cooking days. Now. I am no video editor. But I do think that vlogging our meal prepping & starting a YouTube channel could be a thing for us. We filmed a couple of things this time around just to test the water... I didn't hate it, but we definitely need practice haha. Also... this was our tripod...
4. A fast slow cooker (Choice review) is a game changer. I bought one of these for Mack's parents for Christmas last year & I borrowed it for the weekend. So impressed. We whipped up some Mongolian beef in one hour. ONE. A recipe that took upwards of 4 hours to make previously. I am aware that pressure cooking is different & results in different food qualities than slow cooking, but the difference with this was so minimal, I don't think it matters at all.
So.
What did we make this time around?
We made 16 different recipes.
Some of them we have made before, some were new to us. I have linked the ones you have seen before below; the rest will follow, every week Sunday 9am (AEST) :)
Lamb Rogan Josh
Butter chicken
Mongolian beef
Vegan chilli
Minestrone soup (note: we put the pasta in before freezing this time... it might have been a mistake)
Chicken & mushroom rice
Chicken & chorizo risotto
Roast veggie bowls
Chicken spring rolls
Garlic, chicken & veggie pasta
Tortellini primavera
Beef ragu
Moroccan spiced chickpea bowl
Chicken schnitzel (was also supposed to be veal but I forgot to add veal to the shopping list...)
Marinated chickens
Pulled pork
Apple pie bites (such a delicious snack!)
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And that's it! Welcome to another little insight into the crazy that is our meal prepping system.
Before I go.
Something that comes up every time we cook like this is people asking us to teach them how to do it. I love that. But I think that is hard to grasp just how much of a system we have in place. This isn't normal cooking, it's a lifestyle. One which I love to share with other people because it literally changed my life.
This outrageous cook sparked a conversation of just how we would like to share our prepping world with everyone.
We have narrowed it down to a few things (that's not really narrowing it down is it...):
- a YouTube channel (which I already talked about)
- A meal prepping app (there are already lots of these, but none do what we do...)
- A website (this is probably the pre-cursor to an app if I'm honest, based on the tech skills Tara & I have)
- Sessions & workshops (wouldn't it be cool if we could make a business doing this?)
I think all of them are awesome ideas. They all just require a lot of time & energy & patience to set up. So keep your eyes peeled for some of these ventures!
In the meantime, Sunday 9am, Sydney time. Recipes from this year's first meal prep.
See you there!
Hx
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