First, I can assure you I did not look as cute as my cover photo for these food prep days. This was about efficiency not amazing pics by Abby Barstow. For those following me on instagram, you saw some of this. But here is the run down of the food I prepped and did for food prep week. My friend Rachel also came up one day to help me get even more done. I seriously have the best group of friends.
The week prior I went through my saved recipes on Instagram and Pinterest. Yes, I DO actually go back and look at things I save. Below is everything we did, more or less in the order we did it in.
- I roasted 2 whole chickens with vegetables. Before they were fully cooked, I transferred both chickens and the vegetables to our crock pot, filled it with water, and cooked it overnight on low. The next morning after it cooled I strained the broth for 4 containers of broth and stripped the carcasses. I got 2 small bags of meat to freeze individually, and split the rest of the meat between 2 large bags for dump-bag soups.
- Chicken & gnocchi soup with vegetables, 4 heavy cream ice cubes
- Chicken, potato, & leek soup, with additional vegetables, and 4 heavy cream ice cubes
- After cleaning out the crock pot I moved on to beef. I roasted 2 packs of bones, along with 2 London Broil steaks. Transferred the bones to the crock pot, and topped with water. I cubed the steaks and added those in as well. Let them cook on low for the day. The next day I pulled it out of the fridge and did the same thing that I had done with the chicken, strained the broth for 3 containers.
- Vegetable beef stew
- 3 bags of prepped meat plain
- Next, I broke down a loaf of bread that I had made in the food processor. Those got dumped on a baking sheet and tossed with olive oil, onion and garlic powder. Once they were toasted, I removed them from the oven, put them back in the food processor with some of my fresh dried basil, oregano, and parsley, and gave it a few pulses to break down some of the bigger crumbs and incorporate the herbs for homemade bread crumbs.
- In the evening I made 2 batches of cookie dough. I pre-scooped them into dough balls for the freezer and got 48 cookies.
- Before Rachel arrived on Thursday morning, I prepped mashed potatoes for pierogi filling and puff pastry dough. While she was here, we made:
- Homemade pierogis- filled, boiled, and frozen. I will pull them, boil & sauté when we’re ready to eat them
- Homemade biscuits, mixed, precut, and frozen.
- Gnocchi- mixed, precut, and frozen
- After they were frozen, I added a portion of the batch to my bag for Chicken & gnocchi soup. The rest I bagged for a quick side.
- Chicken Crust Pizza Kits- I ground whole chicken breast in the food processor with some of my homemade bread crumbs and one egg. That went into a freezer bag. To that I added fresh sliced mozzarella, regular & turkey pepperoni. To bake, all we have to add is sauce.
- Chicken Parm Dippers- I again ground chicken breast like the chicken crust pizza. We got mini mozzarella balls, skewered a few on the skewers, and then covered them in the ground chicken. Freeze. You can bake these as is, or you can dip them in egg and breadcrumbs before cooking. Great as they are, or you can dip them!
- I also prepped a few bags of vegetables so that we can pull, mix & match, with basic carrot, celery, garlic, and onion, with any of the pre-cooked meat, left over meat later, etc….
- 1 dozen croissants rolled and frozen from the puff pastry dough
- I used some of the puff pastry dough to cut into strips. These are great to bake and use as soup dippers!
I figure these few days of meal prep will carry us through most of September. We have a busy season coming up with both of the girls being in dance, teaching 4 days a week, co-op, Bible study, plus Ethan’s schedule mixed in there, I wanted stuff either of us could pull and dump in the crock pot, even as late as lunch time, or at least pre-made stuff that we could easily reheat and pull together a REAL meal, with very minimal effort. It also makes for easy entertaining. We can throw together a full dinner AND dessert, all homemade, from scratch, right out of the freezer.
I’m hoping as I start to feel better over the next few months, to make meal prep weekends a monthly or so thing. Start Friday evening with roasting the chicken, cooking in the crock pot over night, and being able to more or less get everything done by Sunday evening. We have also talked about rotating with the group, helping each other with food prep days. It’s not that any of us are incapable, but it’s certainly more efficient to assembly line some things, and way more fun to do it with a friend!
One of the best things I did was pre-cook the meat and prep the mashed potatoes before Rachel got here! We didn’t spend time waiting for meat to cook, or potatoes to boil, cool, etc….We were able to really be productive and get whole meals done because we had no wait time between everything.
The Nurtured Bee 