Meal Prepping is single handedly the most effective money saving and healthy living skill you can learn. Done right, meal prepping will ensure your body receives the proper nutrition required for you to maximize your efficiency, and will allow you to control your expenses. Below are some tips on how to master your meal prep:

  1. Shopping & Meal Decisions: meal prepping doesn’t have to be time consuming. Plan your meals and head to the grocery store with a comprehensive grocery list to save you from those dreaded mid-week, last minute shopping sprees.
  • To minimize waste, make sure to check your fridge and pantry first, you might find that you already have most of the ingredients you need for a certain recipe.
  • Save your favorite “go to” recipes in a binder to make your decision on what to cook easier.
Meal prep recipe binder tabs
  1. Overlap your ingredients:  If you make a plan of the meals you would like to eat throughout the week, you can make sure most of the ingredients overlap, hence cutting your meal prepping time. Cut a bunch of carrots and use them in more than one type of meal for the week. The same applies for all other ingredients. Not only will you spend less time cooking, you can then also cook most of the ingredients together, and mix and match them for your meals.
  2. Pre-prep ingredients in advance: I personally dedicate one day a month for ingredient prep. This includes: chopping onions, crushing garlic, baking the chicken, frying the meat, cooking the quinoa or rice ahead of time, chopping some parsley and coriander etc.. Once you pre-prep your ingredients, freeze them, and take out the portion you need for your meal prep. That will drastically cut your meal prep time, and make cooking easier.
  3. Prepare bigger portions than you’ll need: feel like some lasagna? Make 2 trays and freeze one for future use. Before you know it, your freezer will be full with some prepped meals for the lazy weekends.
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  1. Invest in quality meal storage containers, or good quality ziplock bags: That will ensure a longer shelf life for all your meals. Most frozen meals last from 3 - 4 months if they’re properly stored and frozen.