So you’ve decided to meal prep. What next?

You’ve ordered the groceries you’ll need for the week and bought matching tupperware. You’ve made a calendar of all the dishes you plan to eat for the whole week. And made note of what you need to do to prepare for it during the weekend. You’ve exhausted yourself with non-stop cooking on Sunday, and come Monday, all you really want to do… is order pizza.

Sound familiar? 

When it comes to meal prep, one of the biggest mistakes you can make – especially when you’re just starting out – is to over plan. 

I’ve written about being flexible with your meal prep in a previous post and I’ll say it again. When you over plan, all that enthusiasm and organisation can be quite overwhelming when it comes to actually following your plan.

I have made this mistake in the past and I’ve come to realise that while on some weeks my plans work just fine, sometimes I just don’t have the physical and mental energy to deal with elaborate planning. That’s just how it goes and that’s fine. But I still want to meal prep so I can minimise my time in the kitchen.

On such days, I depend on the one-and-half meal prep strategy. What’s that? It’s a way for you to meal prep on the go. So instead of planning your whole week in advance, you just think one meal ahead. 

Here’s an example. 

If you’re making dal and rice for lunch, think about what you could do if you doubled the quantity of the dal and/or the rice that you’re cooking now. Could you use it differently for another meal? 

You have two options: 

Option 1: You could eat dal & rice for another meal. 

Option 2: You could use the extra dal to make parathas. Or serve it with puris and use the extra rice to make fried rice for another meal.

The first option is a no-brainer and totally respectable. A ton of families cook double the quantity of what they need at one meal, and eat the same thing for the next meal. Executing the second option might require a little more effort from you. But you will get 3 different meals out of it in the end, and who doesn’t love some variety?

It doesn’t matter what option you end up choosing. The point of this exercise is to just plan for one other meal while you’re in the kitchen cooking one anyway. This way, you’re getting more meals out of the same amount of effort. It’s just efficient!

I still use this technique to plan my meals depending on how my week is going. I do some level of planning over the weekend if I’m up to it, but if I just don’t have it in me, the one-and-half meal prep technique really saves me a lot of stress during the week. 

Make your time in the kitchen more efficient.

Here are some examples of how I use the one-and-half meal prep strategy to make my time spent in the kitchen a little more efficient: 

• Always double the quantity of any dough I’m making, whether for phulkas, puris, or parathas. So when I’m preparing my next meal, I just need to focus on the subzi. 
• When chopping veggies, chop extras and store them in boxes for my next meal.
• Make extra rice so I can use it for pulav, fried rice, biryani, or even just as is. This way, I reduce the final cooking time for my next meal by almost half. 
• Make extra dry subzis that can be eaten as is with a different carb, or stuffed in a breakfast sandwich or omelette with some cheese. Paneer bhurji grilled sandwich is my ultimate favourite leftovers breakfast.
• Make extra gravy subzis for another meal served with a different carb, e.g. rice one time and parathas another.

Whether you want to try your hand at meal prep for the first time or you’re a seasoned meal prepper, the one-and-half meal prep strategy will not disappoint. Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you. You can write to me in the comments or DM me on Instagram.