Food is something you simply can’t live without. No matter how hard you try, it is impossible to live without food to sustain you, and people often throw huge amounts of time into making sure that they eat properly. Of course, though, for those short on time, spending hours in the kitchen each day isn’t going to be an option. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring two methods that will enable you to prepare all of the food you need for the day in advance, taking as little as half an hour for the whole thing. There are two different ways to approach this.
The Morning Route
For most people, spending half an hour in the morning to work on the food for the day is a small price to pay to have the evening completely free. With this approach, you will have a simple breakfast, a larger lunch with more ingredients than breakfast, and a hearty dinner that will taste like it took hours to make. You will need a slow cooker for this option to work, but these are inexpensive nowadays.
- Breakfast: In this instance, you will want a breakfast option that can either be put together right away or be made as other food is prepared. Oatmeal can be excellent for this, as you only need to heat some oats with milk or water to get started. You can learn how to make oatmeal taste good without any real effort, with most people finding that they can throw together a delicious porridge in a few short minutes.
- Lunch: Lunch can be trickier than breakfast, as you are likely to want more variety with this meal each day. Choosing bases like rice and pasta is a good start, as these can be made more interesting with some chopped vegetables and a little bit of meat. For example, you could cook some rice for 10 minutes with some spices, chopping up vegetables and meat that can go into both lunch and dinner. Your veg and meat can be fried for the same amount of time as the rice, and you need only pop them both into a box to take out for the day.
- Dinner: If you plan your lunch and dinner well enough, you can often make both of these meals with the same ingredients. For example, a lunchtime rice dish would be delicious with carrots, peas, sweet potato, and some pulled chicken, but all of these ingredients could also go into a dinnertime stew. Adding your vegetables and meat to a little bit of stock/gravy and popping it all in your slow cooker will give you the chance to get home to a meal that is ready to eat. A little bit of sourdough bread would be lovely with a stew like this.
This sort of method enables you to chop all of your vegetables and meat for two meals at once, with different cooking methods making the end result unique. It also limits the amount of money you have to spend on each meal and can be particularly useful for those who live on their own and end up wasting a lot of food because they can’t find uses for it. It should only take about 10 minutes to chop your vegetables, 10 – 15 to cook your rice, and 5 – 10 to make your oatmeal. Of course, though, this ignores the time that the slow cooker will be working.
The Evening Route
Rather than working to make all of your food in the morning, some people will like the idea of making everything in the evening. This will mean making your breakfast and lunch for the next day as you prepare dinner for the current one, all without forcing you to adopt a new morning routine.
- Breakfast: Oats are great sources of nutrition and one of the best breakfast foods you can buy. Overnight oats are similar to oatmeal, only you will leave your oats to soak with other ingredients overnight, allowing them to form into a delicious mess. The fruits you use for this can also be used for your lunch, if you like to eat something sweet.
- Lunch: Next up, it’s time to think about lunch. If you’d like to have something fruity, spreading your ingredients from breakfast can work, with things like waffles and pancakes making nice lunches. Alternatively, though, you could combine this meal with the dinner you’re also making, using leftovers as your food for the day.
- Dinner: In this case, dinner can be pretty much anything that takes 30 minutes or less to cook. Your overnight oats will only take about 5 minutes to make, and your lunch is going to be the same as dinner, giving you plenty of time to make something nice. Spaghetti bolognese, fish and roasted vegetables, and pizza are just a few examples of the sorts of foods that can be kept overnight and eaten the next day.
Using a method like this will usually limit your time a little more. The morning route enables you to use the time while you’re at work to cook dinner, but the evening route means that you will have to cook your dinner there and then. Of course, this shouldn’t be too limiting if you’re willing to be creative with your food, and most people are able to find dishes that they like when they spend enough time on work like this.
With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of preparing a whole day’s worth of food in advance. This can be a great way to make your culinary life easier, freeing up time, and enabling you to make full use of the time you have available. Of course, though, you will have to be creative to find options like this that will work each and every day.