Intro to Meal Prep

For my free inquiry project I have decided to explore the yummy world of efficient cooking: Meal Prep!

Each week I will try a new recipe and evaluate it for how easy it is to prepare, the time it takes to prepare, how tasty it is (including whether it receives toddler approval), and how much it costs per serving. In addition, I intend to freeze a portion of each meal and follow-up one to two weeks later with how tasty each recipe is after being frozen and reheated. I will calculate a final score for each recipe using the table below:

I have chosen this topic for a few reasons. Most importantly, I enjoy cooking and I love trying new recipes and learning new tricks and flavour combinations. Less importantly, but still a major factor in my decision-making, I am a mom to a toddler and a full-time student so dinner is often a rushed affair where I fall back on the ‘usual’ while missing out on precious family time to play with my son in the evening. I hope that by prepping some meals (ideally calmly, while he is at daycare) I can both free-up time to spend with my son and explore some recipes I might not have tested (or tasted) otherwise!

For my first recipe I reviewed a multitude of meal prep recipes on delish.com and selected “Turkey, Tomato & Butternut Squash Cannelloni”. Because this recipe only makes four servings (an amount that seems rather skimpy for a meal prep recipe in my humble opinion) I will be doubling the recipe in order to freeze half. Stay tuned to hear how my first recipe goes!

If you have any suggestions on highly recommended big batch meal prep recipes that you think I should try, please share in the comments 🙂