Case Study: A Week’s Menus

In this 4-part series, I’m exploring “rolling food prep” as a strategy for pacing: preparing extras of one or two ingredients each time you cook for use in future meals, so that you prepare about half of each meal fresh and assemble the rest from previously prepared ingredients. Part 1 introduces the basic concept. Part 2 shows my typical weekly template for meal planning, which focuses on one type of food a day: beans, perishable produce, meat, “sturdy” produce, grains, and condiments.

In this post we’ll look at how this routine played out in last week’s actual menus in my one-spoon kitchen. Even if the foods aren’t suitable for your diet (or tastes), I hope this “real-world” example is helpful in showing the general balance of fresh effort to re-assembly, and how that balance can help you create tasty, nutritious meals with real variety.

I’ve underlined ingredients that I prepared extras of that day, and italicized the foods I had already made (sometimes weeks before). I’ve also noted how much active time each meal took—not the start-to-finish time, but the time I was actually on my feet doing something—and estimated the time needed if everything were prepared from scratch instead.

Thursday
* Cannellini beans with kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, and lots of finely chopped fresh parsley; tossed with oil and red wine vinegar
* Roasted, chopped cauliflower and carrots with balsamic reduction sauce
* Pita toasts with basil oil
Active time: 15 minutes (35-40 if all ingredients are prepared fresh)

Friday
* Baked sweet potatoes topped with slow-cooked jammy onions, red peppers, and cherry tomatoes and shredded smoked mozzarella
* Sautéed baby spinach with crumbled bacon
Active time: 15-20 minutes (25-30 if everything is prepared fresh)

Saturday
*Cannellini and summer squash soup (cooked in bean broth)
* Arugula salad with sliced pear, toasted pecans, and lemon-orange dressing
* Pita toasts with basil oil
Active time: 25 minutes (30 if everything prepared fresh)

Sunday
Leftovers

Monday
* Whole-wheat pasta tossed with arugula-poblano pesto and feta cheese
* Tomato-onion soup
(Since I had the food processor out for the pesto, I also shredded carrots for Tuesday)
Active time: 20 minutes (40 if everything prepared fresh)

Tuesday
*Shredded carrot salad with lemon-orange dressing and fennel seed
*Poached chicken breast and rice with sautéed onion and New Mexico red chile sauce
Active time: 15 minutes (45+ if everything prepared fresh)

Wednesday
* Sautéed red cabbage, onion, and apple, with cider vinegar and caraway
* Cannellini beans with sage oil
* Baked sweet potato
Active time: 20 minutes (25-30 if everything prepared fresh)

These were not complex meals (if by some chance they sound impressive, then trust me, they weren’t), but they each had a protein, starch, and three vegetables,* beautiful colors, balanced flavors, and varied textures. If I had tried to prepare every ingredient from scratch each day, I would have had to settle for much less.

Rolling food prep can save anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes of active effort each day, usually averaging half the time it would take to prepare the same meal fresh. It also puts a lot of ready-to-go components at your disposal for no-energy days.

There are alternative strategies for low-energy cooking, of course, from batch cooking to meal services to once-a-week prepping. In the last post of this series I’ll talk about some of them and why rolling food prep has worked best for me.

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* Note: Red chile is a vegetable here in New Mexico rather than a condiment. It is the food of the gods, and we eat generous portions!