I'm committing to doing one large meal prep at the beginning of each month. I did the shopping Thursday and Friday afternoons, dealt with the rotisserie chickens on Friday night, did the stove and oven work this (Saturday) afternoon, and will finish tonight.
I will end up with (in freezer unless noted):
– 6 six ounce containers or vacuum sealer bags of diced cooked chicken, 2 of which will have rice and TJ's Yellow Thai Curry Sauce
– 3 containers of steamed and then glazed carrots with butter and diced peaches (side dish)
– 4 containers of dark meat quarter chicken with sauteed zucchini+squash with feta cheese and a little bit of pasta sauce
– 4 containers of rotini with doctored up pasta sauce (ground beef, onion, garlic, green pepper, spices) (3 in freezer, 1 was my late lunch)
– a 2-meal container of potato salad with olive oil and malt vinegar-based dressing and a little diced onion (refrigerator)
– a 2 meal container of rotini salad with olive oil, red wine vinegar, diced chicken, leftover grape tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese (refrigerator)
I am going to go run some errands and then finish off the potato salad and the vacuum sealed diced chicken portions. I live alone and eat breakfast out most days, so 21 meal components will last me most of the month.
I don't have photos of everything, but I have attached what I did shoot.
Primary ingredients and notes will be in a response for the benefit of the TLDR folks.
by nc-retiree
1 Comment
Hmmm. I thought I uploaded more photos than that.
Ok for the folks who want to know the details. Not a lot of real recipes here, just assembling. But I took notes so I could review when I plan out the December day, and the relevant parts are below:
Main ingredients were:
– 2 rotisserie chickens from Costco
– a 1# box of rotini
– a one pound bag of frozen crinkle cut carrots
– half a pound of 90/10 ground beef I had in the freezer and put in the refrigerator on Thursday morning
– a pound and a half of red potatoes
– a jar of pasta sauce
– a yellow squash and two zucchini
– some cooked jasmine rice
Total food cost was about $26, with half of that for the protein.
Last night, I diced all the chicken breast meat and whatever meat I could scrape off the carcass. I got about 3.5 pounds, put it in a gallon Ziploc bag overnight in the refrigerator. I then split the dark meat into four quarter-chicken portions in Hefty freezer plastic containers from Sam’s Club and put them in the refrigerator as well.
Today I used my big pasta pot to cook the rotini, put it in a bowl to cool and then the refrigerator Then I used the same pot with fresh water to boil the potatoes (about 30 minutes).
While that was going on, I used a 3 qt pot with a steamer insert to steam the frozen carrots, which took about 20 minutes. I put 1/2 oz of butter and the juice from the little snack pack of peaches in the microwave to melt, then added the carrots, let cool and to the fridge as well.
As that was winding down, I diced the zucchini and squash and added olive oil and spices into a foil roasting pan. 350 for 30 minutes, then added 3/4 cup of pasta sauce and 3 oz of crumbled Feta, back in the oven for 15 minutes, take out and let cool. Divide and add to the four dark meat chicken containers, back into the refrigerator.
I took a quarter of the now cold cooked rotini, added stuff to it, made a pasta salad. Put that bowl back in the refrigerator for tomorrow and Monday night.
Put the pasta pot away, took out a saute pan. Sauteed diced onion, garlic, and a little green pepper, with spices. Meanwhile, used the steamer pot base to heat up the majority of the pasta sauce (about 3/4 bottle). Transferred the veggies into the sauce, used the saute pan to brown 1/2 pound of ground beef, added that to the sauce and let simmer for 20 minutes. Added to the rotini and divided into three freezer containers and the fourth portion was my lunch.
Took some of the chicken, some leftover jasmine rice, and some Trader Joe’s Yellow Thai Curry sauce and mixed it up, split it into two containers with about 5 oz of chicken and 4 oz of rice each.
Left to do after I post this: make a potato salad out of the red potatoes (olive oil, malt vinegar, salt, dried mustard, diced onion), and vacuum seal the rest of the diced chicken into 5-6 oz portions.