10 Things To Do On Weekends To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier

The perfect button-down shirt, pair of jeans, black dress, maybe your uniform shirt or scrubs. We all have wardrobe basics.  You wouldn’t start your week out without your basic clothing essentials slightly ready for the week.  I’m talking basic wardrobe prepping here.  Uniform shirt actually in the house, maybe washed, ironed if it is a good weekend.  At minimum, you know where it is and if it is slightly clean. Time to start thinking about your kitchen like your closet. These 10 Things To Do On Weekends To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier are what I actually do every Sunday here in the MVF kitchen to avoid the weeknight dinner chaos.

So often I hear people looking for pre-packaged or prepped meals to get them through the week.  Others resort to takeout because they get home from work on a weeknight and the kitchen is empty.  No thought or planning has gone into what they will eat when they get home tired and hungry so they throw their hands in the air saying they don’t have enough time to pull together a healthy meal.  Stop right there.  Think of my clothing analogy.   Monday morning you wake up tired, maybe a little late, maybe you hit the snooze button one too many times.  What if you have given zero thought to where that button down shirt is.  Are you going to go to the store on Monday morning (late + tired) to buy a new shirt? NO!

So stop doing it with your food!

If you want to make your weeknight eating easier (and healthier), spend some time on weekends making sure you have the building blocks for building healthy weekday and weeknight meals.  There are quick + easy things to do on weekends to make weeknight cooking easier.  Similar to waking up on Monday and when your favorite dress is already clean, pressed, and smells good, you thank yourself for putting in that few minutes on Sunday.  Same goes for your meals.  You will look back and thank your weekend self when your weekday self gets home tired and hungry and a healthy dinner option is ready to go.

Confession: I’m Not A Meal Prepper

I’m going to avoid the term ‘meal prep’.  I just don’t like it.  I might possibly be the only food blogger on the planet to ever say that.  It’s scary.  Meal Prep. It makes me feel like I need an engineering degree to get it right.  With fancy containers, color coded labels or jars, and a whole lot of foresight to know what I am going to eat for several days in a row.  Not this girl.  Nope. I prep my kitchen and my pantry but not the glitzy fancy stuff that goes along with it.

Confession: I am a Meal Investor

The type of planning/prepping I do is something I like to term ‘investing’ instead of planning.  You invest an hour in yourself and your health on a Sunday afternoon and you reap the benefits of that investment for the next week.  More like a meal savings account than ‘meal prep’. Not as scary, am I right? So lets learn the MVF way to meal invest not meal prep.

Tara’s Tuesday Tips:

10 Things To Do On Weekends

To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier

1. Organize + Clean Your Refrigerator

On Sundays I clean our fridge out.  Anything not eaten that won’t make it through the week gets cleaned out.  I also group together ingredients for meals making ingredients easy to grab when you are distracted by the family commotion in the kitchen or your own hunger. You don’t need any fancy supplies for this but you do need a routine.  Figure out a refrigerator layout that works and stick with it.  That will make lots of things easier for grab-and-go.

2. Make ALL Of The Lunches on Sunday

For us, we eat oatmeal for lunch. Therefore, I cook a big batch of steel cut oats and measure 10 one-cup servings.  This takes the guess work out of portions and ideas for lunch.  I also measure the accompanying berries and nuts and have 10 of each ready to go.  Boring lunch eating is ok.  Check out my article here if you don’t think so.  It won’t spoil by being in the refrigerator for just a few days. If you aren’t into oatmeal, portion out the salad or the soup or whatever.  Lentil soup works fabulously for lunches, so does Kalamata Olive Hummus, or Instant Pot Mexican Quinoa.

Sandwiches might not stay for 5 days pre-assembled but you can portion out what is going in between the bread and then just assemble the sandwich when packing the lunch bag. Dedicate a shelf or a drawer in your fridge to lunch items making everything easy to grab on busy mornings. Your Thursday self will thank your Sunday self! This gives you more time and headspace in the morning to take dinner items out of the freezer, or toss something in the Instant Pot or slow cooker.

3. Pre-Cook One Meal On Weekends To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier

When I create a recipe, I will often write something like, “ready in 30 minutes!”.  Sounds fabulous but some nights even 30 minutes is 30 minutes too many.  I get it,  I raised 2 busy kids and worked a lot, I know how it goes!  I am here to tell you, on nights like that, you call fall back on your weekend planning. If you do any one of the items on this list of 10 things to do on weekends to make weeknight cooking easier, do this one!

If you know Tuesday is the busiest night.  Well, Tuesday you eat what you fully pre-cooked on Sunday.  That chili or soup or tofu still tastes and smells yummy by Tuesday.  Pop it in the microwave or reheat it on the stovetop, and there you have it, faster than take-out. The best part? You know you and your family are eating something healthy that YOU made! I do this with Easy Vegetarian Tempeh Chili, Instant Pot Sweet Potato Corn Chowder, or Easy Vegan Taco Pasta. 

4. Think About What You Will Make For Dinner

You don’t need to spend your entire weekend stressing over full-blown ‘meal-prepping’.  Remember the wardrobe analogy from above? I know you at least think about what you are going to wear on Monday. So, take a few minutes to think about what parts of a recipe will take you the most time.  If that is chopping onions, then chop the onions on Saturday or Sunday.  If that is making a sauce or a dressing, make it on the weekend.  Maybe for you it is cooking the rice or beans or pasta that goes with a recipe, make it on Sunday! It’s so much simpler than we make it out to be.  I know that you do actually make sure the work scrubs are in the house and maybe washed?? Then actually buy the onions and maybe chop them. On weekends, I make a big batch of Basic Instant Pot Quinoa making it easier for me to toss it in a bowl with other goodies because it is already cooked.  I do the same with Instant Pot Black Beans, Instant Pot Vegetarian Refried Beans, and even a few batches of Air Fryer Tofu.

5. Simplify Recipes

Save the extensive ingredient lists, long cook times, and fancy-gourmet-chef-type recipes for days when everyone isn’t as busy.  Weeknights are for short ingredient lists, quick cook times, shortcuts, and building meals out of staples + sauces you prepped on weekends.  It is ok. This one on the list is my favorite and my main objective when sharing this list of 10 Things To Do On Weekends To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier. Easy + healthy + attainable + faster than takeout.

6. Freeze + Freeze + Freeze + Freeze!

I love the freezer! Freezer meals are my jam.  Yep. My jam.  If you have ever been in my kitchen, and are lucky enough to go in my freezer, I probably offered you a take-home container of something awesome.  I ALWAYS have a meal ready to go from the freezer.  When I cook, I siphon off a freezer container of whatever I am cooking and stock it away for busy nights. There are always containers of Lentil Curry, Chana Masala, Black Beans, and Refried Beans.

I strongly believe that homemade freezer meals are one of the main reasons why we are able to be healthy + control our weight.  Anyone in the MVF house can pull a container of something healthy + filling out of the freezer when in a pinch of hunger.  No need for high sodium freezer meals in plastic wrap from the freezer aisle at the grocery store, no expensive pre-packaged meal plans sitting on the porch in a box, no delivery, no takeout.  Simple, homemade meals found in our very own freezer! I even use this trick for sweets.  I make a batch of Edible Cookie Dough, or Brownie Batter Hummus or Cake Batter Dessert Hummus and scoop it into these handy ice cube trays, store them in my freezer and pop one out when I need a healthy treat.

 7. Go Shopping!

I’m going back to the work wardrobe example again! You would not start the work week out without the suit being IN the house.  Get the groceries IN the house.  Sometimes the only thing standing between you and a healthy dinner on a random Wednesday night is an empty refrigerator (or freezer or pantry!).

Weekdays are crammed packed full already.  Admit it on Sunday before you put the guilt trip on yourself on Wednesday.  You don’t have time for the grocery store during the week! Stop feeling bad about it and go shopping on the weekend. Again, you don’t need to mimic the perfectly flawless person with the amazing Tik Tok video of their ‘meal prep.’ Just a simple thought of what you will make and then go shop for your building block ingredients. Amazon is perfect for pantry items that you can stock up on.  For a few extra bucks, you can have any grocery store deliver your perishables too. Check out What’s In My Pantry to get an idea of the building blocks I keep in the MVF pantry.

8. Wash + Dry + Chop

As soon as the weekend groceries make it in the door, wash them! This is another habit I can thank for us maintaining a healthy weight.  Our veggies and fruits are always washed and ready to eat.  Make the healthy foods easier to grab than the packaged junk and they will eat it! Chop things that are building blocks for your meals.  I use a mini electric chopper to chop onions, tomatoes, and peppers and have them ready to go. Saves me TONS of time! Wash all of your herbs as well (parsley, cilantro, basil) but make sure you fully dry the herbs! Then, wrap them in a paper towel or dish cloth or herb keeper, and store them in the refrigerator.  Building blocks!

9. Invest In Cooking Your Grains + Beans

On Weekends To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier

Remember when I called it investing not prepping?  Investing time and effort into cooking a grain and a bean that can be tossed into multiple recipes during the week will reap lots and lots of reward! This one is worth the time investment, I promise! In the time it takes you to watch a show on Netflix, you could have a healthy batch of oatmeal, quinoa, or rice cooked in your Instant Pot. You can toss everything in the Instant Pot and when the steam releases your show is done and guess what?!?! You just ‘meal-prepped’!

10. Make A Sauce-Of-The-Week

One sauce, many meals.  It can be Asian Ginger Dressing, Creamy Avocado Dressing, Tahini Dressing, Peanut Sauce, Marinara Sauce. Whatever you want to make on the weekend and spread out over multiple nights, make it on Sunday! Again, there are wardrobe staples just like there are kitchen staples.  The navy-blue pencil skirt might get worn this week 3 times but looks like a different outfit because of what you pair it with.  Well, then why can’t that peanut sauce be eaten 3 times but be 3 different meals? Ha! It can!!!!

Food For Thought

Dinner needs to be simple not stressful. Looking for a meal prep delivery service that you overpay for might not be the answer.  Alternatively, investing in yourself is always a good idea.  This list of things to do on weekends to make weeknight cooking easier is an investment in you.  You don’t need to feel guilty that you didn’t have time on a busy weeknight to go to the grocery store.  Invest in yourself, give yourself the gift of a guilt-free week and do the grocery shopping on Sunday, wash + chop the veggies just like you wash + iron your blazer for work.  Above all, ditch the term meal prep (unless you are the flawless Tik Tok star with amazing hair and those awesome color-coded meal prep containers).  For everyone else, make meal investments like I do!

All the best,

Tara 💚

⭐Do you know other Things To Do On Weekends To Make Weeknight Cooking Easier? Leave a comment below! ⭐

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