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This summer, I went on an unintentional cooking strike. My mind was on cooking vacation and, for some reason, thinking about what to cook was extremely challenging. After work one day I went to the grocery store and my only thought was I will not cook a chicken salad. Guess what I cooked for dinner? A chicken salad. And, it was one of the worst chicken salads I’ve ever cooked. I wouldn’t classify myself as a bad cook either. I’m not going to say I’m a great cook, but I can get around the kitchen alright. It was at this moment when I realized I needed some HELP.

Other than aimlessly wandering the grocery store, the other thing I noticed was that we were eating out a lot more. Not only were these meals not high on the healthy list but it starts to add up as well. Our son was doing swim lessons, golf, and soccer after school and it made getting a meal together pretty tough. When I was cooking and going to the grocery store I wasn’t being intentional about what I was buying either. Again, this was more expensive and also lead to us wasting a good amount of food every week.

With Kindergarten starting, I knew it was time for a change and decided to invest in Cook Once, Eat All Week: 26 Weeks of Gluten-Free, Affordable Meal Prep to Preserve Your Time & Sanity by Cassy Joy Garcia. The book has 26 weeks of meals. Each meal from the week contains the same base ingredients. For example, rice, ground beef and carrots. One of the great things is you don’t make the same meal for the entire week – boring! You actually make 3 totally different meals which really helps give some variety. Here are 11 things I’ve learned from the weeks I’ve cooked:

1. Set aside time on Saturday or Sunday to do your cooking. I would not be able to do the prep work during the week. Depending on the week, it probably took me two hours to prep the meals.
2.  I’ve gone to the grocery store then cooked but I’ve also used Amazon Prime Now to deliver groceries from Whole Foods. Doing grocery delivery was a far better option especially if I was cooking the same day. Whole Foods is notoriously pricey but I’ve found because I’m only getting what I need for the meals it’s actually not much more expensive than the regular grocery store. (Did you know that if you have a prime membership Whole Foods delivers $35+ orders for free?} I do highly recommend Costco for your meat. I’m able to get organic meat for the same price per pound or less than non-organic meat in the grocery store.
3. If you’re a super chef, this is not the cookbook for you.
4. Look ahead at the recipes when you’re buying your groceries. Sometimes, I would buy an ingredient and not realize what it was being used for. Garnishes are a good example (I can skip the parsley decorating my dish). This week, I made taco salad and realized it called for thinly sliced onion on the top. I love onion but it really wasn’t necessary for the dish. You may also want to add ingredients or substitute ingredients but you don’t really know until you see what you’re cooking.
5. Modify to your taste and preference. Here’s what I know now: I don’t like my potatoes mixed in my dishes. I’ll take my tacos potato free.
6. Some meals aren’t heavy on the veggies and I had to add a salad or vegetable to the dish. This one was one thing that surprised me about the book. I think that they were trying to make the recipes straight forward and without a million ingredients. One of our favorite meals was a potato\bacon\ranch casserole (pictured below). It was a crowd pleaser but needed a side salad added.
7. I enjoy making my own sauces but when you’re doing a lot of cooking sometimes buying is much easier. Take a look at the sauces to see what you can buy vs what you should make from scratch.
8. While the title is cook once, eat all week, there is still some cooking that you’re doing mid-week. You generally have everything prepped and some things cooked so it’s not hard. It’s still easy to get a meal on the table in 30 minutes but know that not all the meals are fully prepped and ready to go after your prep day.
9. Taste! See #5. There were some meals that I wasn’t thrilled about but my husband and son ate no problem. Some have been really good and some have been alright. For a few meals, I think if I had modified slightly, I would have enjoyed them more. Overall, I’ve been happy with the flavors delivered.
10. Do you have an instant pot? Some recipes provided instructions for using your instant pot for ingredients, some didn’t. I found it particularly helpful when cooking potatoes or rice.
11. Speaking of rice, I believe the majority of the recipes call for white rice. I swapped the white rice for brown rice and, as I mentioned above, used the instant pot for the brown rice. If you haven’t cooked brown rice in an instant pot – do it, you’ll thank me later.

If you’re curious about what the meals look like, here was Week 11 from the book. The base ingredients were green beans, potatoes and roasted chicken. Rotisserie chickens were on sale at the grocery store so I opted to purchase them instead of roasting the chicken myself. This was one of those weeks where I was too late to do the grocery delivery and went to the grocery store instead.

This is the majority of the ingredients. It’s actually not a huge amount of food when you plan well. I found this allows you to spend a little more on organic because you’re not buying a lot of extra food you don’t need.

Meal 1: Chicken rice and green beans

Meal 2: Chicken bacon ranch casserole

Meal 3: Chicken vesuvio

Meal prepping has been a totally new experience for me. I’ve prepared meals in advance but this is the first time that I’ve prepped so many different meals for an entire week. It can feel like you’re cooking for a long time when you’re prepping but once I remember the time I’m saving during the week – it’s totally worth it. I also forgot to mention that all of the meals are gluten free! They also have instructions for how to modify to be dairy free and paleo, depending on your preferences.

All and all, I really feel like Cook Once, Eat All Week has helped us get back on track!