Make Meal Prep Easier and Less Boring With This Trick

If you’ve read any of our articles on saving money on your grocery bill, you know one of our favorite methods of saving is to meal plan ahead of time so you only buy exactly what you need at the store. Not only does this save you money, it also tends to be healthier. 

However, if there’s one downside to meal prep, it’s that you tend to end up eating the same meal for several days straight. This isn’t necessarily appealing, which means you end up wasting food or simply not bothering with meal prep. That’s understandable! It’s hard to get excited about eating increasingly wilting leftovers every day.

Instead of eating the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week straight, try this instead: Make use of your freezer. This way, you won’t have to eat the same soup, chicken and veggies, or burrito bowls and your meals won’t be a monotonous experience. Plus, you’re less likely to want to swear off of a dish when you’re not forcing yourself to eat it four days a week.

When you batch cook and portion out your meals, freeze some of the leftovers. (This also works for huge holiday meals, too!) Now you can enjoy that lentil soup for a dinner and a lunch, and the rest of it can go right into the freezer. Just don’t forget to label them with the date! (You don’t need anything fancy for this, just use whatever tape and markers you have on hand to label.)

The other benefit is that a freezer stash will help you in the long run. You don’t have to eat that curry because you’re worried about it expiring. Instead, you can pull it out from the freezer when you feel like enjoying it again. Though it might be more cooking, you can also think of it as building up your stash of healthy meals while cutting down on prep time in the future.