Meal Prep Sunday - by GE Appliances

10/22/17

Shared from our friends at GE APPLIANCES.

Meal Prep Sunday:

How Your Kitchen Can Help

·         Plan, plan, plan. Make a list, figure out what you need, and put time on your schedule to stock up on groceries.

·         Search for recipes that share a main ingredient. For example, if you find casserole and pasta faves that feature noodles as a main ingredient, it's easy to cook that ingredient all at once.

·         Work your freezer. The freezer is a meal-prepper's best friend. Choose recipes that can easily double, and freeze the extras for super-busy weeks.

·         Give your fridge an organization makeover. Designate a dinner-prep spot for chopped-up ingredients, storage containers, and extras. Stash things using the front-to-back method: First part of the week goes up front, last part of the week goes in back.

·         Mark it up. The worst thing is forgetting the day or the recipe of that cute, stackable container in the fridge. Mark zip-top bags and containers and group them in the fridge by day or meal.

·         Become a pre-cooking master. Soups and pasta sauces are simple to cook on a Sunday and reheat on a Wednesday. Fillings for burritos? Prep them on Sunday, too, so you can focus on assembly.

·         Find some love in the container aisle. If ever there were a reason to revamp your storage containers, Sunday meal prep is it. Find super-efficient containers (some might share lid sizes) that stack. Clear is better, too, so you can easily grab what you need.

·         Chop, wash, stash. Gather all the fruits and vegetables you need and separate them into appropriate containers. While you're at it, cut extra and stash them for healthy snacking. Also be mindful of those that you can wash, but need to leave whole, such as strawberries.

·         Roast with the most-est. Roasted veggies are great to toss into weeknight salads (and lunches, too).

·         Make it manageable. In an ideal world, everyone would sit down to dinner every night—napkins on laps, conversation convivial. But in the real world, eating in shifts happens. Scale down your recipes so you can cook in shifts—say, a meatloaf in muffin tins—and serve meals just-from-the-oven, no matter the time of night.

·         Get out your owner's manual. How much do you really know about what your appliance can do while you're not even home? For example, delay start is a good way to give a casserole some safe cooking time before you get home. Check out any utilities and master them for smarter time and meal management.