Cook in Advance

Why is it so important?

I believe that if you are part of this community you care about being healthy as much as you can. It’s not only because we want to look fit, but mainly because we want to enjoy our life as much as possible. Just as we care about sleeping well, exercising, and having relaxing moments, we need to take care of what we introduce to our body as well. Planning our meals in advance can really improve our lives. If we set a meal plan, we can balance our diet between protein, carbs, fats and fibers. It’s also less stressful because we don’t have to think about what to eat anymore. Most importantly, we can have healthy meals even when we don’t have time to cook. 

Design your 2 cooking moments of the week

If you are reading this article, it’s because you are an ambitious and busy person. In your daily life you work hard, you take care of kids, you have a lot of friends who you want to spend quality time with, and you also want to make space for yourself to preserve your mental health. So, you don’t have a lot of time for cooking! Whether you enjoy it or not, you want to eat healthy. Meal planning is the solution, and to do it properly you need to plan your meals in advance and find 2 moments in the week to dedicate to cooking time.

I usually cook twice a week, on Wednesday and on Sunday. I don’t need more than 3 hours a session to make something for breakfasts, most of the sides, some of the lunches and the main courses for the dinners. 

On Sundays I prepare everything for Sunday’s dinner, Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, I cover the rest of the week.

The other good strategy is to always have a backup healthy option. 

For example: you like eating homemade pancakes but you are running out. You open your cabinet and you have healthy cereals. Awesome, pour some milk on a cup and enjoy some milk and cereal. Definitely better than chocolate chip cookies and sugary juice! 

What can I store it in the fridge for 3 days?

My answer is everything! 

In the next edition of the Meal Plan I will share my best time-saving recipes, but feel free to experiment with all foods and let me know if they worked! 

The only thing I don’t recommend cooking in advance are thin steaks, beef or pork. They need to be cooked right before they are consumed otherwise they become too chewy and tough.

This is my list:

Breakfast: pancakes, muffins, pies

Snacks: fruit salad, cookies, vegetable chips 

Lunches: grain based meals, vegetable salads, pasta 

Dinner: frittata - eggs, polpettone veggies and/or protein, chicken, roast, savory pie

Sides: vegetables, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, peppers, onions etc + don’t forget about the frozen or cans as a backup plan. 

Let me know what you’re most interested in starting with and I will show you how to store it!