How are you able to cook while working full time through the week? Do you have some kind of strategy? How do you plan your food?
We want to break out of this cycle of ordering delivery but at the same time, cooking everyday has been a challenge. We also have been trying to develop some sort of routine where we meal prep on the weekends but we live in an apartment with a really small kitchen so cooking and storing food for 5 days doesn't seem doable. Maybe cook for 3 days and then prepare the ingredients to cook again on Wednesday?
I'd appreciate if you could share your strategies and experience. The goal here is to eat healthy and good food.
Edit: Thank you everyone for all your contributions! I am a little overwhelmed by the number of replies so I if I do not reply to you please do now feel bad!!
Sustainable cooking is a function of the amount of time you're willing to commit to cooking and the tools you have at your disposal. A slow cooker, for example, can involve almost zero prep and very little time actively spent cooking (you toss it all in the pot and hit go). A much more involved meal which requires regular attention, on the other hand, might take less total time to cook, but more active time cooking.
I think the best way to provide advice is to get a grasp on a few important factors:
I don't know how I forgot to mention the slow cooker! We used a large crock pot to cook days worth of meals...It's an enormous hands-off time saver.
I am not great at this, but I find these things helpful:
Cook before you're hungry. That's kind of a Captain Obvious line, but sometimes a meal can take more than 1/2 hour to cook and that's a long time when you're starving.
Have a limited menu. Find a few things you can stand eating on the regular. Example, I could probably eat meatloaf once every couple of weeks till I die. I keep a list of things like this so if I'm drawing a blank, I can look at it. It's funny how you forget.
Figure out how to make leftovers not be awful. Example, make meatloaf on a day you don't work so there's no time crunch to get dinner on the table. The next day a slice of meatloaf (microwaved or not) with toasted bread and mayo or whatever sauce you like makes a good sandwich with a salad. The salad doesn't have to be fancy. It can be lettuce and dressing. No time crunch if you rinse the lettuce while the bread is toasting. The next day you could make spaghetti. It's easy and cheap and you can throw cubed meatloaf into the sauce to be "meatballs". If you have two days off in a row, make two different meals those nights and rotate the leftovers to last a week without getting bored.
Make a Taco Bell system. By this I mean think about the Taco Bell menu. Most of their menu items are made from the same ingredients, but are prepared differently.
I make something called burrito soup which is browned ground beef, undrained canned green chilis, taco bell sauce (you can buy it bottled at the store), undrained ranch style beans, undrained black beans, undrained canned corn, and whatever else is in the fridge that would work. Seems like it's all cans, bottles, and beef, but it's really good. Sometimes I'll throw in fresh bell peppers or other veg. Anyway, a batch of this is great for burrito filling, served in a bowl with tortilla chips for scooping, in a bowl with extra milk to make a soup, on top of rice, on top of a salad to make a "bowl". All of these are heated up, btw. One thing is used in a bunch of different ways. Sour cream and guac make this extra special.
Find a "burrito soup" that fits your tastebuds and run with it.
Keep "fast food" in your freezer. It's no big deal to keep a pizza in the freezer (or something else you know everyone will eat) for when you're too sick to cook or just aren't feeling it. It beats eating just chips for dinner or calling for food. I also try to keep the fruit bowl full for snacking. Being hungry will make you quit before you start. Go ahead and eat an orange while you're making dinner.
Bonus tip If you're cooking something that can be frozen, double it and stash some for another meal when you aren't in the mood to cook.
I doubt most people are good at this. Anyway, good luck.
For me, cooking at home is less about finding the time and more about decision fatigue. I still fail at this a lot, but on the days I’m successful it’s because I planned ahead of time what I’d be cooking for dinner. That way when dinner comes around it doesn’t require thought, just a bit of chopping.
I'm far too lazy to meal prep on my weekends. But I will choose 3-4 dinners for the week and write it down like a menu and get the ingredients I need for them. If I know it's going to be a crazy week, I will cut the vegetables immediately after grocery shopping that way I can just dump them in the pan or bowl or whatever when I'm cooking. Then I have options to choose from several different foods over the week.
I always make enough to have leftovers so I don't have to plan for lunches too.
Best of luck
A mix of limited menu during the week, and food prepping are the biggest things.
If I know the upcoming week will be busy, I’ll batch cook on Sunday and just reheat the rest of the week.
Otherwise, learning simple recipes I can whip up quick. Practice makes perfect after all, and the more I cook, the faster I get.
Honestly, this might be a hot take but when it comes to food in the modern western world, people are really privileged lol. Why is the expectation that you eat something different every day for every meal?
I don’t cook much. I’m chronically ill, but if i were working full time I imagine the same problem would come up - it’s too labor intensive to do all of the time. Switching from “is this a real meal” to “is this something that i enjoy eating and will it provide me with enough energy” has made me a lot less miserable about it. What I’ve done for myself is find out which foods are simple, good, filling, yummy, and don’t take a lot of effort for me, and then eating those throughout the day while cooking bigger batches of things throughout the week . It takes a minute to find out which foods are good for this, but once you have a few “i know i can make this and i know i will want to eat it” foods in your back pocket, it gets easier. Some of my faves are premarinated cuts of meat which can be baked and then cut up later, fried up bell peppers onions (eat them with toast or goat cheese!), bean salads or chillis, roasted potatoes, and baked patties of hot sausage with a bunch of oatmeal mixed into it (good on toasty bread or alone). You can also pre-cut or pre-prep things like veggies and spice mixes so that you have them already ready to go when you’re hungry. I also eat a ton of stuff that people don’t consider real food- oatmeal, fruits, nuts, cereal, english muffins with avocado, cheese and crackers, peanut butter, baked beans, toast, banana breads, bread and olives, etc. I find it helps to plan “laziness” directly into the process. Doing what you can to minimize dishes can also help a lot, as can trying new foods. You never know what thing is going to become a go-to.
When my wife and I were both working we faced this challenge. We meal prepped on the weekends, portioning the meals out and storing them in our freezer. You could, also, just cook 3 days worth of meals to be frozen and have grab and go type stuff in the fridge (like salads, sandwiches, etc.). We, also, would choose Saturday to have our main meal out and Sunday we would make a pizza (My wife made a crust from scratch or sometimes we would use a pre-made store bought crust) with fresh ingredients.
I loved the pizza day idea! Last week we made japanese curry and ate it at least 3 more times.
I'm a big fan of instant pots. chili, curry, risotto, etc all without any prep other than chopping.
I cook 6-7 nights a week for a household of four adults. I work a full-time job, but it's WFH so I don't have commute time. This is part of the strategy, but I could do and have done it while commuting to and from work each day as well.
Each Monday, I plan out the meals for the week. I write them down. The meals are based on ingredients we have on hand as well as things which are on sale from the local ads, or which someone from the household has requested.
If any ingredients are needed for the week which we don't have, they are added to a mutual shopping list and someone picks them up while they are out.
When I'm done with work, I relax for 30-60min and then it's time for cooking. I bring out all the ingredients for the meal and get them set up near my cooking station. I bring out pans, cutting boards, utensils - whatever I feel I will need.
I try to fill "dead" time with prep for other parts of the meal - that way time is used efficiently. Sometimes I'll rope one of the others into cutting veggies or doing other prep, but i usually like to fly solo. Just some music to keep me moving and maybe a beer.
As I'm cooking, I'm also cleaning up. Utensils which are no longer going to be used are getting rinsed and put into the dishwasher. Pans are getting rinsed and set aside for washing up later. Counters are getting wiped down as needed. The idea is to have as little to do at the end as possible.
After the meal is ready, if stuff needs to cool, that's a great time for a smoke out on the porch. Then back in to eat.
Rinse and repeat. I enjoy cooking, it keeps me centered at the end of the day, and a good meal at least once per day is important. The key things I have learned are mainly to prep everything in advance which you can, to clean as you go, and to buy ingredients which overlap for multiple meals in a week.
Bonus: Make a few extra helpings and freeze them. Freezer containers are cheap, and it's generally only a small extra cost for the additional food. Then you have ready to go meals when you don't feel like cooking.
Our primary motivation was weight loss ahead of our wedding, but the guiding principle should transfer: make it super easy. We’ve found that the lowest effort method will win out over all our intentions, so we’re rolling with it.
An example: chicken curry with rice. Also a disclaimer, we have a couple of appliances that make stuff slightly more convenient but I’ll put the alternative down too.
It takes around a minute to wash the rice then chuck it in the rice cooker. you can get microwave rice cooker pots or just use a pot on the stove. Once you’ve got the weights and timings dialled in this produces perfect rice just as you’re going to serve with no interaction during.
Then cook the chicken breast and set a timer for when the rice will be ready. We use an air fryer, but used to use the oven.
5 minutes before the chicken is done whip up the curry sauce.
Then it’s just serving - rice goes in the bowls, slice the chicken and put on top, then pour on the sauce.
Whole process looks like this:
Total cook time is around 26 minutes. Total interaction time is around 10 minutes.
It’s also super cheap.
Edit: forgot to mention that you can cook whatever veggies you want in the same thing as the chicken and don’t need to adjust your timings
Yeah, we use a rice cooker and an air fryer. Both are huge time savers.
We got a rice cooker that can also be a slow cooker, which is another useful strategy. Chop stuff up in the morning, chuck it all in, set it going then eat whenever you want.
Another good strategy.
This is a great way to think about it! I also like to include the cleaning time when considering cooking. Thank you for your perspective!
I dunno if my life is easier because I'm a vegetarian or what but we mostly make our food and most of what we make is not time consuming. Steamed greens and carrots with boiled potatoes. Roasted veggies in the oven. Stir fries. Beans and whatever stewed in a crock pot with canned tomatoes.
For breakfast, oatmeal with chia seeds, hemp hearts, flax meal, sunflower seeds, peanut butter and fruit goes together real easy. Alternatively, frying some eggs and having the above things on toast instead of oatmeal.
Usually we make a bunch of stew or soup that will be used for lunch over several days. Cook like 4 cups of rice to go with it. Then for dinner, usually steamed stuff or perhaps roasted veggies or a stirfry with rice or noodles.
Homemade pizza is also pretty easy. It takes about 5 minutes to throw the dough together, then you can prepare whatever toppings you want while the dough rises for 45-60 mins. Takes ~10 min to bake when ready. I can post the recipe if anyone wants it but I'm sure you can find stuff online.
We eat yogurt marinated chicken breast pieces cooked on a frying pan with curry sauce, alongside rice-cooker steamed veggies. We usually get 6 lbs of chicken, chop and marinate in an evening, then eat that for ~4-5 days; also keep on hand things like pasta and frozen meatballs for the days where we’ve run out of chicken but haven’t shopped yet. We allow ourselves to order food once or twice a month but no more; this usually happens on days where we’ve run out of chicken.
That both of us are totally cool with eating the same thing for months on end really helps cut down on cooking time. 😅
We usually cook a large meal or two during the weekend. And will generally get two to three meals out of the dish.
My fiancé and I both work and we usually get groceries for 1-2 days at a time and cook for the two of us most days of the week. For us there have been a few key elements to being able to cook after work:
Hope some of this is helpful!
This is something I relate to. It's a workable system. A good base and throw whatever you have on top.
I'd add a bread to that list. Something over rice one day seems totally different on toasted sourdough (or whatever flavor of bread you like) and when you have part of a loaf that is going stale, you can put it in the freezer for that.
We've got a tiny kitchen and a ¾ fridge - it can fit a pizza box if nothing's in the door. We'll do things like casseroles, or make enough pasta to fill a casserole dish just small enough to fit in the fridge for leftovers after meal 1. Salads can stretch them further and make each one different enough, and meals of something else in between switches it up quite nicely. A few minutes with some sealable bags and some dressings/condiments around can make marinades easy to make and to store in the freezer. Sunday is our usual meal prep day to prep some containerized lunch for the week while the other gets a dinner made to make leftovers ready to cook.
Everyone around us raises chickens so eggs are easy to come by. There's usually a quiche or two in the freezer in case we need a quickish meal and are both feeling too lazy for anything else.
Have really appreciated this thread and reading everyone's different ideas 😊
My schedule is basically a 60 hour week most of the time, so there are days when cooking a big dinner is just not in the cards. I am single so it is a lot easier to prep and make food for one vs a family so there is that at least.
My routine for many years now has been evolving around a commitment to organic produce and better nutrition. I don't have anything boxed, canned, or frozen in the house; I guess that sounds weird but where I live it's easy to get fresh produce so I usually stop by the store every few days on my way home from work and get whatever looks the most yummy and plan from there. Menu during the week (especially in summer) tends to revolve around lot of salads and veggies and adding a chicken breast or fish to go with it, since it takes very little time to cook those additions. I save part for lunch at work the next day.
Weekends are when I have more time to get more creative, so I prepare a couple dishes I may fancy and make sure I cook enough to have leftovers so that I can add those into my week along with the above. In winter, I occasionally use a slow cooker for beans and soups, which makes it nice to come home to ready warm food.
That was the idea of the post. I wanted to create a post that would have different perspectives and that could help other people having the same issues, being for lack of time, ADHD, etc. Thank you for your contribution!
By cooking meal types that are fast, like stir fries.
We use and sous vide or the instant pot. I can throw a steak in the sous vide we I leave in the morning and then finish it in the cast iron pan when I get home.
What does “working full-time” mean for you?
How many hours are you away from home each day? I suspect everyone is answering with their view of what working full-time is, but it can be different depending on where you live, how long your commute is, if you work shifts, overtime, etc.
Just for reference, between last Monday and Tuesday I spent 90 hours at the office. Luckily exceptional, but no, I didn’t cook.
Also, leftovers can be great.
Using some prepared ingredients like already marinated chicken or precut veggies can help if you have a small kitchen. Also things like frozen pizza and bag salad is great when you don't feel like cooking and much cheaper than takeout. As far as meal planning I decide what I want to cook for the week and write it on a whiteboard on my fridge.
We usually go out for food once a week (unless we're having a hard month). Beyond that, it's usually the same 5–6 dishes over and over again.
I used to love cooking, but have not had the time lately. I bought an Instant Pot and have been pleased so far. As other commenters have said, a pressure cooker is the magic solution here, but I do appreciate that mine also functions as a traditional slow cooker and air fryer. I live alone, so cooking once a week is normally enough to last most of the week (or more), so I usually find a recipe I like (usually just by searching "Instant Pot [whatever food sounds good]") and cook it on a weekday. I end up eating a lot of soups. I like soups.
As someone else mentioned, decision fatigue is so real for me. Millions of recipes out there, everyone recommends cooking a given meal a bit differently, and then reviews online have further suggestions. I cook enough to follow a recipe well but not enough to know how to cut through the noise.
I started out bouncing around to all the meal delivery services when they’d offer discounts. Try it for a bit, swap to another when the discount ended, swap back when they gave me a “come back” discount. All those services come with recipe cards so I’ve kept those and curated a little recipe book with our favorites. All the info for shopping and prep is right there for me. I guess it’s like a regular recipe book with extra steps, but it sure beats what I used to do with scouring the internet for too long and trying to read my phone while cooking.
You can also create something similar with index cards and an index card holder. Whenever you find a recipe you like, write it down and put it in the card holder, preferably with some dividers for alphabetizing them. I take cards out of my recipe box and arrange them into a meal plan that I just stick to my fridge with magnets. It serves as a meal plan and grocery list all in one, since you can easily see what you will be making for the next 5-7 days or so.
It would not work for grocery shopping or sticking to the fridge like your idea, but I bought a blank recipe book and I've been writing in recipes I like with whatever modifications I make so it's the version of the recipe I like and it's great. I don't need to do a meal plan though because I just meal prep one thing for the whole week.
I feel that. I occasionally get myself to try something new. I'll just keep cooking the same few things I know over and over lol. I definitely need to branch out more, and my food can get really boring to my taste buds, but I've survived this far! I do still tend to eat out more then I should though.
I think prior posts cover things pretty well, but I wanted to add a couple of ideas/thoughts:
I'm a confident cook making food for two people in a small kitchen.
I wing it, but I'm making choices so that everything fits together and I have some recipe patterns that work well. I don't do meal prep. Most dinners double as a lunch.
A lot of what makes my cooking efficient only comes with practice. I know the timing of different things and cook accordingly to line stuff up. Rice in the pressure cooker takes 30 minutes. That kind of thing. Make choices so that stuff goes in parallel, or make one pot dishes.
I generally try to have a main dish, potentially a starch side if the main isn't, and a vegetable.
Some example meals:
Meal prep! I cook once a week, enough to last me most of the week.
I'm terrible. If I'm cooking for myself? I won't make anything that takes longer to prepare or clean up than it takes to eat. LOL.
Breakfast, generally, is a small can of whole kernel corn mixed in with a can of chowder.
Lunch is a couple of sandwiches.
Dinner maybe a couple of burgers. Sometimes a big salad.
Now, cooking for OTHER people... that's a different deal. :) But, yeah, it takes planning, sometimes a week in advance.
https://imgur.com/uGoBsq9.jpg
Poorly. There's a reason so many people are either malnourished or obese.
Frozen Costco foods heated up and put together. Put some (heated) frozen broccoli in a box of mac and cheese. Eat fish sticks with a bagged salad. How about a pre-prepared frozen Asian noodle dish with veggies? If you’re careful about the nutrition stuff, it’s a real step up from takeout in terms of health and saving money. I know because I only stepped up and started doing it a few months ago. Good luck.
I just buy premade meals from Trader Joe’s. Not necessarily their frozen foods, but their salads, wraps, and burritos.
If I actually wanted to make an event out of it and didn't have plans for Sunday, then the classic Sunday meal prep strategy applies.
But many times, I also feel lazy or have stuff going on so I try to find one day in the week where I can cook some type of larger effort item that takes more than a couple hours and do the rest on other days. Mind you, I live alone so YMMV. But for example, I could spend one day with the high effort portion of a main dish. This would classically be some type of protein but I don't always want to limit myself to that mentality. Just anything that I'd be most excited to eat.
If I don't have the time to make any other sides, I won't. I'll have a partial meal that day and do other stuff while I put the rest in the fridge. Then the next day I'll cook a different side or two. If I do it right, I'll have a rotating menu of options in the fridge where I cook new dishes to replenish ones that are about to be gone.
This way, I don't need to dedicate a whole day to cooking, and I can still have fun with cooking in smaller portions and still have the evening to do other things. My meals can also be a mix of various sides which can stagger. This is not always the case as I do find myself just clearing things out frequently to start from a fresh palette of foods. But just a different take on the meal prep that I personally find is manageable.
I relied a lot on using a slow cooker. I planned out what meals to have each week and I planned to make enough to have leftovers. I often made a new meal on Mondays and Wednesdays, leftovers on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I meal prep on Sunday but I'm also ok with eating the same thing 4 or 5 days in a row. If you aren't ok with that then meal prepping is going to be a lot more work. I also strongly suggest making extra and freezing some in individual portions so if you do run out of food, or just really aren't digging what you made, you can grab something out of elthe freezer.
And let's not underestimate the power of making your own frozen junk food. Like frozen burritos? Make a pile of burritos (which is great because you can put exactly what you like and make them healthier) then wrap them individually in tin foil and freeze. Make a frozen pizza in a square casserole dish and freeze pieces. Lasagna also freezes really well. It's a lot of work up front but it will keep for months so you have something easy to grab when you want it.
You can also precut things like vegetables if you will want to eat veggies later in the week, or if you'll want to cook something fresh later but know you won't do it if you have to spend a lot of time on it.