In addition to making sure you take care of your long to-do list, you still need to nourish your body and eat. Yet, most people don’t want to spend hours preparing a meal each night. Thankfully, with intentionality and effort, you don’t have to spend more than thirty minutes on meal preparation. If you want to experience convenience, know that it’ll require a lot of planning on the back end. When you find a groove, the planning part will feel effortless. In order to bring convenience into your daily routine, consider the following five meal plans.
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1. Frozen Meals
Consider how large your family is. Whether you’re cooking for one or for five, your amount of food will need to match. You can make a large casserole of lasagna, and freeze it into portions. If you’re cooking for a large family, one casserole might only last one night. However, if you’re cooking for yourself, one casserole can easily last five or six nights. When the day arrives, pull out a frozen portion of the lasagna. Along with a piece of garlic bread, allow the frozen lasagna pieces to bake in the oven. While it bakes for 20 minutes, prepare a frozen vegetable mix on the stovetop. If you live by the frozen meal plan, you’ll only need to prepare one large casserole once a week.
2. Salads
Health is wealth. In order to improve your own health, vegetables are necessary staples in a standard diet. Salads are really easy options that allow you to squeeze in as many vegetables as possible. At the start of the week, simply clean and chop the ingredients for your daily salads. Depending on your diet, you can add a piece of lean meat, fish or a vegetarian option (tofu, vegetarian meat). If you’re following a custom keto meal plan, you’ll want to be mindful of the ingredients you use in a salad dressing. Your best bet is to make your salad dressing from scratch. This will help you know what’s going into your body as you work towards optimal health. Salads are easy to store until you’re ready to eat them. Just be sure that you don’t douse them in salad dressing until you’re ready to eat.
3. One-Pan Meals
One-pan meals are great because they don’t make a huge mess. As a result, they don’t require a lot of clean-up. Start by sauteing garlic, onions and mushrooms in a pan. Then, add your choice of lean meat or vegetarian meat. You can also add vegetables, pasta and a tomato-based sauce or a cream sauce for a full meal. One-pan meals rely heavily on well-seasoned ingredients so don’t forget to add items like garlic powder, cajun seasoning or Italian seasoning. Once you get the taste you’re going for, it’s easy to serve for a quick and delicious meal.
4. Crockpot Meals
Whether you love a creamy pot of macaroni and cheese, pot roast or a hot bowl of broccoli cheddar soup, all of these meals are easy to prepare in a crockpot. Just by perusing sites like Pinterest, it’s easy to find a myriad of crockpot recipes. Crockpot recipes are convenient because they only involve throwing a bunch of ingredients into a crockpot. Once you put it on the lowest setting, you can leave it to cook. Whether you let it cook overnight or throughout the entire day, you can easily enjoy a home-cooked meal that didn’t require a lot of labor on your part.
5. Subscription Meals
In recent years, meal subscription plans continue to increase in popularity. Subscription kits are convenient for a number of reasons. Most meal kits promise that you won’t spend more than 30 minutes in the kitchen. The kits usually come with high-quality ingredients and the right portions. They’re easy to customize with food sensitivities and household preferences. They’re also great because it’s easy to pause a subscription when it’s needed. Plus, the ingredients come straight to your front door. You won’t even spend hours in the supermarket.
Conclusion
At the beginning of the meal planning process, give yourself a bit of grace. When you’re getting started, you might take a lot longer than usual. This is because you’re learning and experimenting with what works. This process is necessary and important. When you find a rhythm that works for your household, convenience will feel like a natural occurrence in the kitchen.
