Category: Free Inquiry

The time has finally come to wrap up my Meal Prep Journey. Over the past two months I have made, frozen and reheated five different recipes that I had never tried before. These recipes were all evaluated for how easy they were to prepare, how long they took to prepare, how tasty they were (including whether it received toddler approval), and how much it cost per serving. In addition, I froze a portion of each and evaluated how tasty each recipe was after being reheated.

Overall, this was quite a fun challenge and a tasty one too! I can see myself making all of these recipes again and this project has been inspiring and really shown me the benefits of prepping larger quantities that can be stored for rainy days. Without further ado, here is the final scoring for each dish progressing from lowest total score to highest:

Recipe	Final Score	Notes
Turkey, Tomato & Butternut Squash Cannelloni	67%	Most difficult & most expensive
Mexican Lasagna	78%	Least affected by freezing
Folded Crispy Buffalo Chicken Wraps	83%	Most affected by freezing
White Chicken Chili	89%	Tastiest
Hearty Corn & Potato Soup	97%	Least Expensive

If you would like to see more detail for my evaluation of each recipe, you can see the final, fully completed tables for each dish, which now include taste results from freezing, here (with links to the corresponding post if you would like to try out the recipe yourself!):

Turkey, Tomato & Butternut Squash Cannelloni:

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	2
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	1
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	2.5
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	3
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	1 ($6.83)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	2.5
Total Points	Fresh:	9.5/15	Frozen:	12/18

Mexican Lasagna:

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	1
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	2
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	2 ($3.10)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Total Points	Fresh:	11/15	Frozen:	14/18

Folded Crispy Buffalo Chicken Wraps:

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	2
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	n/a
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	2 ($3.89)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	2.5
Total Points	Fresh:	10/12	Frozen:	12.5/15

White Chicken Chili:

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	2.5
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	3
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	2 ($3.75)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	2.5
Total Points	Fresh:	13.5/15	Frozen:	16/18

Hearty Corn & Potato Soup:

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	3
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	3
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	3 ($2)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	2.5
Total Points	Fresh:	15/15	Frozen:	17.5/18

According to the Spanish saying, “Quien come con cordura, por su salud procura” which translates as “Who eats with sanity, provides for his health”, we are what we eat. Now that I have made and enjoyed a few servings of Mexican Lasagna, I have to say that I really enjoyed this recipe! I found this fun recipe on Simply Recipes and other than substituting fresh Anaheim peppers for canned, I followed it exactly. I even had a last minute run to the grocery store when I discovered that I was running out of chili powder! I chose to double the recipe and as a result my proportions were gargantuan. This didn’t seem to effect the end result, but it definitely added to my overall time. For this recipe, since it was a layered dish that went in a casserole dish, I decided to try making a timelapse of the assembly which went pretty well and can be found below!

As you will see in the table below, this dish rated fairly well overall, but lost some points for taking over two hours from start to finish. I really enjoyed the taste, finding it to be another mexican-inspired comfort food that is something I will absolutely be making again. The combination of refried beans, tomato and pepper sauce, and spiced ground beef with the corn tortillas were all very familiar tastes and it was basically a soft taco casserole. My son was a bit picky with this dish the first two nights, but on the third night he was stealing it off of my plate so I gave his score as in the middle range. My husband also really enjoyed this, but commented that he wanted it to have more heat (it is not spicy, just flavourful) and so in the future I would increase the cayenne peppers and possible add something else to boost the heat. In the meantime, he found a dash of hot sauce was enough to appease his palate. Doubling the Mexican Lasagna made a whopping 24 portions and cost $74.42 in total, which worked out to $3.10 per portion, which I consider relatively reasonable in cost.

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	1
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	2
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	2 ($3.10)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	TBD
Total Points	Fresh:	11/15	Frozen:	TBD/18

Over reading break I tried another instant pot soup: White Chicken Chili once again from “The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook” by Coco Morante (p.110). This soup called for lots of peppers (Anaheim, Jalapeno, and Cayenne) so I was a little apprehensive that it would be extremely spicy, but to my relief it was perfect! I learned from the small last soup that I made and doubled the recipe, but otherwise followed it almost exactly. I opted to use canned beans since I was unable to find white kidney beans dried at my grocery store and I also used cheddar and mozzarella to top the finished soup rather than Monterey Jack cheese. Had I used dried beans, this recipe would have taken much longer since I would have needed to soak the beans over night and then briefly cook them in the instant pot before starting the soup. The doubled recipe made 12 servings which just barely fit in my instant pot (I did not actually take this into account and was relieved that it did, indeed, fit). Overall the recipe was easy to follow and, while you will see in my time-lapse video below just how much chopping and prep there was, it didn’t actually take very long even though the prep was effectively doubled.

Once cooked, I topped the soup with grated cheese and green onions and served it with a side of well-buttered Portofino Peasant Loaf. It smelled divine and tasted just as good! Both my husband and I loved the soup and found it to be a wonderful balance of the butter-smooth beans, various peppers, chicken, spices and a creamy tang lent to it from the sour cream. I would describe it as Mexican-inspired comfort food and I will definitely be making this dish again. Moreover, my toddler loved it, eating his entire bowl and asking for seconds!

This delicious soup also didn’t even break the bank, costing about $45 in total which works out to $3.77 per portion. As you will see from my score table below, this soup has rated quite well and I anticipate that it will also rate well after freezing – stay tuned to find out!

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not Bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	2.5
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	3
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	2 ($3.75)
Taste After Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	TBD
Total Points	Fresh:	13.5/15	Frozen:	TBD

On the menu this week was the Hearty Corn and Potato Soup, from “The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook” by Coco Morante (p.87). I also chose to pair this soup with a jalapeno cornbread mix that I received as a stocking stuffer this past Christmas, which is shown in my pictures, but not included in my pricing or ratings. Since this recipe was from a cook book that I have at home, I created the following Sketchnote documenting the ingredients and recipe steps:

The finished soup was a luxuriously rich and creamy comfort-food of a soup (which is surprising given the actual quantities of butter and cream added are not much) with a texture that was smooth, but still had enough substance to give your mouth something to do while eating. It was sort of like a vegetarian chowder, or at least what I imagine a vegetarian chowder would resemble since I have not actually tried one. The only modification I made to the original recipe, was substituting chicken stock for vegetable, and this was only done because it turned I was out of vegetable stock. I do realize that this means my soup was not vegetarian, but I don’t think the change in stock would dramatically affect the resulting soup. In the future, I would be interested to try adding leeks to this, as I feel these would pair splendidly with the celery, potato and onions. I would also like to make it with the correct, vegetarian, stock and compare if this changes the overall taste.

As you will see from my scoring table below, this soup recipe was super easy and fast to make and, as mentioned, was very delicious, receiving praise from my husband and requests for seconds from my toddler! As an added bonus, the entire pot of soup only cost about $10 to make and, as this resulted in five servings, this meal came to under $2 per serving which I consider very affordable. My only real complaint is that the recipe only makes five to six servings so next time, I will double it so that I have enough for a few dinners and still be able to set some aside for freezing. For this first attempt, I set aside about 2 servings in the freezer and will report back in a few weeks on how they taste.

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	3
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	3
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	3
Taste after Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	TBD
Total Points	Fresh:	15/15	Frozen:	TBD

For this week’s meal prep challenge I decided to streamline our morning routine by pre-preparing our lunches. I found inspiration on the Half Baked Harvest website and chose to make their Folded Crispy Buffalo Chicken Wraps. These may not be the healthiest wraps around, but they looked super tasty and there were some healthy substitutions such as Greek yoghurt for the standard buffalo sauce cream cheese.

I decided to approximately double the recipe in order to make enough for the upcoming work week for both my husband and my own lunches. For the buffalo sauce I rather conveniently had some buffalo spice mix on hand (woot!) which I mixed as directed with ketchup etc. To prepare the shredded chicken I simply boiled the chicken breast for about 30 minutes until fully cooked and then shredded with two forks in a bowl. I have used this method before and it is very effective and ensures the chicken doesn’t dry out too much. I also chose to simplify my life by using the remainder of a jar of Jalapeno Ranch sauce (convenient again I know) rather than making that from scratch as the recipe suggests. Over all, the recipe took about 1 hour 15 minutes and while the chicken boiled I had time to prep everything else, before assembling the wraps using the four quadrant method shown in the picture below. The trick with this triangular wrap is the small slit that runs from the center of the circle outward between the cheese and chicken to the edge. When you are ready to wrap it up, you simply fold the chicken onto the greens, then onto the sauce and then onto the cheese forming a triangle. The resultant package is then fried in a bit of olive oil on the stove and then I packaged them up for storage in the fridge.

As you can see from the image above, these wraps looked quite tasty and I was able to make 10! I only froze four as I am extremely skeptical about how well the lettuce will freeze. I was able to make more wraps than expected, and so I am also a little concerned that even in the fridge, the lettuce in them may not be very tasty by midweek. However, I can confirm that fresh these are fantastic. They have a nice mild heat from the peppers, onions and spices and are very satisfying. The cost was also very reasonable, coming to $38.85 for the entire batch, or $3.89 per portion. We will definitely be making these again!

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not bad	Easy	3
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	2
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	3
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	n/a
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	2
Taste after Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	TBD
Total Points	Fresh:	10/12	Frozen:	TBD

Alright my foodie friends, I am (finally) ready to report on making my first meal prep dish! With the lovely assistance of my dear friend Ève who was conveniently in town visiting from Edinburgh, Scotland, I prepared and indulged in “Turkey, Tomato & Butternut Squash Cannelloni” from delish.com. We followed the recipe almost exactly, except for reducing the sundried tomatoes since I am not super keen on their flavour (a change which turned out to be a mistake – see below).

The recipe took about 3 hours to make, from start to finish, although almost half of that was cooking time and waiting time. It wasn’t a terribly complicated recipe to follow and it was clearly written. Our biggest complaint was that it called for one large butternut squash, which is rather subjective. As the recipe gave much more specific measurements for all the other ingredients, it would have been nice to know how many pounds of squash to buy. This was my first time working with cannelloni and I had to get creative with trying to fill them, ending up with a precarious system of holding a cannelloni on a flat wooden spoon, filling it with another spoon and tamping down the filling with the end of the second spoon before quickly transferring the filled tube to the baking dish. This step was time consuming and, as the turkey and tomato filling was still a bit hot, periodically painful for my fingertips.

Once the casseroles were out of the oven (whew!), we let them cool for about 15 minutes and then dug in as a family. The overall taste was pretty good but, as I mentioned above, I do not recommend reducing the amount of sundried tomatoes since without them the dish was lacking in depth of flavour. The butternut squash added a lovely, smooth sweetness and the lemon zest was very present and zingy. The dish calls for heaps of milk, mozzarella and parmesan so it was very creamy and decadent (the lactose-incompatible will want to stock up on lactase before eating this dish). What appeared to be missing unfortunately, was some kind of acidity or heat. When I make this again, which I definitely will, I will increase the herbs (thyme and parley), up the seasoning, use the full amount of sundried tomatoes and possibly add some hot peppers to the turkey at the start of the recipe. I would also look into whether I could find larger cannelloni pasta tubes since the ones I used were hard to fill and err on the side of larger-is-better with my casserole dish (the one I chose was a little small).

	1 Point	2 Points	3 Points	Points Awarded
Difficulty	Difficult	Not bad	Easy	2
Time	2 hr +	1 – 2 hr	Under 1 hr	1
Taste	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	2.5
Toddler Approval	Thumbs Down	Meh	Thumbs Up	3
Cost Per Serving	Expensive $$$	Reasonable $$	Inexpensive $	1
Taste after Freezing	1 Star	2 Star	3 Star	TBD
Total Points	Fresh:	9.5 / 15	Frozen:	TBD

In order to put some of this dish aside for freezing, I doubled the recipe which made 9 portions. The supplies, other than herbs, olive oil and milk, cost $61.44 so this recipe is on the expensive side at $6.83 per portion. Overall, while this dish does take some time to prepare, with minimal modifications, I think this could get full points for tastiness. Stay tuned to find out how it measures up after living in my deep freeze for a few weeks and being reheated!