Pros and Cons of Other Strategies

In this series, I’ve explored “rolling food prep” as a strategy for pacing: preparing extras of one or two ingredients each time you cook, so that you prepare about half of each meal fresh and assemble the rest from previously prepared ingredients. Part 1 introduced the basic concept. Part 2 showed my typical weekly template for meal planning. Part 3 looked at how that template turned into a week’s menus.

In this final post we’ll consider some other strategies—ones that have real strengths but that did not work for me. Of course, they do work well for many—we all have different abilities, resources of time and money, and interest in food and cooking. I’m certainly not preaching against these strategies! But if you’re new to life with an energy-limiting condition, this post may save you some trial and error.

The Strategies

Batch cooking—making one huge meal on Saturdays, say, and eating the leftovers for the rest of the week. Batch cooking does make most of the week easy, but cooking day can be intense. If you have limited or highly variable energy, this may not work for you. On the other hand, if you are working, batch cooking can guarantee you a healthy meal even when you come home from work exhausted.

For me, cooking day was overwhelming, and by the fourth day of leftovers, I dreaded the food. If I didn’t have the energy to cook on the designated day, then I didn’t have meals prepared for the whole week—especially a problem if I had several low-energy days in a row. Lots of ingredients spoiled when I couldn’t get to them on time.

Once-a-week food prep—pre-chopping or cooking lots of foods to combine throughout the week. This method has many of the strengths of batch cooking while making it easier to vary your meals. Still, I ran into the same problems: food-prep day was often intense enough to provoke crashes; if I couldn’t prep I had nothing to eat; and I wasted food.

30-minute meals from cookbooks. Most of the brain-work, from making the grocery list to integrating the steps for multiple dishes, is done. The ingredients are usually few and flavor-packed. The meals are likely to be tasty and (reasonably) nutritionally balanced.

I enjoyed this option most—even more than rolling food prep, just because the recipes were reliably good. Since I’m cooking for one, I could cook 3-4 times a week and have leftovers to freeze or mix around for variety or to keep in reserve for no-energy days.

30-minute meals, though, use time efficiently—not energy. Every one of those 30 minutes is jam-packed with activity, and that doesn’t include the time to get ingredients out, wash produce, and put things away. Factoring in my slow-moving mind and body, I needed at least 60 minutes to cook a 30-minute meal. It was exhausting, exacerbated my POTS, and pushed me out of my “energy envelope.”

Convenience foods like take-out, frozen pizza, or TV dinners, supplemented with salads or quickly prepared veggies. For zero-spoon days, this is certainly the easiest option—and far better than going without food! Even the healthiest convenience foods, though, are not nutritionally balanced. They often contain ingredients that don’t work with special diets, and they are expensive. I was priced out of this option. I do turn to these foods in a pinch, but not as a standard part of my diet.

5-ingredient “meals.” Simplicity is the best feature of these meals. They often rely on store-bought sauces or mixes for flavor, though, which pose the same problems as convenience foods. And no matter what they call themselves, they aren’t usually full meals, complete with protein, carbs, and three vegetables—when I tried them, I usually found myself preparing other dishes to round things out, which defeated the purpose.

Small-batch cooking—only chopping enough vegetables, etc., for one serving at a time. This lets a solo cook do smaller amounts of work per day, which can help with pacing. It can be a relief only to chop one carrot, or half an onion—I liked that, when cooking my vegetable-heavy meals. The inefficiency of getting out the same bag of carrots EVERY DAY to prepare one carrot, though, drove me up the wall and cost me more energy overall. This method also creates no leftovers to have on hand for no-energy days.

Meal Kit Services. These services deliver all the pre-chopped and measured ingredients for several meals to your door. All you have to do is open the packaging and follow the cooking directions. Nutritious, “foodie-friendly” options are available for many special diets.

I have not tried these kits, but friends have found that just opening the packaging (and then recycling it when done) challenged their energy; the meals also still took them at least 30 minutes of active time. In addition, these services are not budget friendly for those with limited means.

Rolling Food Prep to the Rescue

Rolling food prep keeps many of the strengths of the above methods and solves many of the problems:

• You can stay within your energy envelope, doing small amounts of work often rather than huge amounts at once.
• You always have a range of prepared ingredients on hand, even on no-energy days.
• You get plenty of variety.
• Frequent food prep minimizes waste.
• All ingredients are known to you and can be safe for your diet.
• Meals are budget-friendly.

This has been the most sustainable method I have found so far—the best combination of gentle on the body, affordable, and satisfying to eat, while still making provision for no-energy days.

Resources

For more ideas, see:

• Naturally Ella on component cooking
• Pam Anderson, How to Cook Without a Book, especially the chapter called “A Little Mise”
• Ronna Welsh, The Nimble Cook, especially the introduction