I’ve had success with something: meal prepping a bunch of food and freezing it.
I want to write a blog post about it—describing what I’ve done, discussing it, and recommending it as something that will quite likely be worthwhile for others as well—but I don’t think I’m ready. I did one round of prep that lasted three weeks or so and was a huge success for me, but I don’t think that’s quite enough “contact with reality”. I think there’s a risk that, after more “contact with reality”, it proves to be not nearly as useful as it currently seems. So yeah, I think I’m gonna wait at least another month or two and see how it’s going then.
Why do I think it’s working well now though? Previously I’ve tried meal prepping. Y’know, the type of thing where you cook in bulk on Sunday and have meals for the week. One issue though is that I somehow just never end up with enough food. Only a few days worth of food, maybe. Part of it is because it’s hard to genuinely cook that much, but another part of it is not wanting the food to sit in the fridge for too long and go bad. Idk.
Another thing is that the traditional meal prep requires you to cook pretty frequently. Every couple of days. Maybe once a week if you’re good enough at it. But I just have a ton of trouble with this. I cook on Sunday. Wednesday rolls around. I notice I’m getting low on the food and need to prep more. I have stuff going on though so I postpone till Thursday. More stuff going on. More postponing. It’s Friday. I have something else going on. So I make whip together some pasta (unhealthy). Or go out to eat. Something like that ends up happening. But when I can cook for weeks or months at a time, I dunno, somehow it kinda solves that problem.
I also think there are like real time saving benefits. Ie. cooking 20 portions of chicken doesn’t take 2x the time as cooking 10 portions. Maybe it’s like 1.3x the time.
And I get into a nice groove when I’m cooking a ton of food. I know I’ll be in the kitchen for many hours. I put on some podcasts. Idk. I’m more able to work that way.
There’s also something psychologically very nice about knowing that I have weeks and weeks of food in the freezer. In portion-sized containers that I can microwave whenever I want and start eating in minutes.
And, uh, I’m kinda proud of myself for being self-sufficient.
One hangup I previously had was uncertainty about “Can I freeze this ingredient? What about that ingredient?”. I think that’s a big reason why I never tried cooking crazy amounts of food in bulk and freezing it before. But then I realized, “Y’know what, why don’t I just try it? Cook a small portion, freeze it, warm it up, see how it tastes. Google for food safety things. If it works out, try a big portion.” In retrospect it’s pretty silly that it spent so much time hitting the Think About It button instead of the Try It And See What Happens button.
I’ve had success with something: meal prepping a bunch of food and freezing it.
I want to write a blog post about it—describing what I’ve done, discussing it, and recommending it as something that will quite likely be worthwhile for others as well—but I don’t think I’m ready. I did one round of prep that lasted three weeks or so and was a huge success for me, but I don’t think that’s quite enough “contact with reality”. I think there’s a risk that, after more “contact with reality”, it proves to be not nearly as useful as it currently seems. So yeah, I think I’m gonna wait at least another month or two and see how it’s going then.
Why do I think it’s working well now though? Previously I’ve tried meal prepping. Y’know, the type of thing where you cook in bulk on Sunday and have meals for the week. One issue though is that I somehow just never end up with enough food. Only a few days worth of food, maybe. Part of it is because it’s hard to genuinely cook that much, but another part of it is not wanting the food to sit in the fridge for too long and go bad. Idk.
Another thing is that the traditional meal prep requires you to cook pretty frequently. Every couple of days. Maybe once a week if you’re good enough at it. But I just have a ton of trouble with this. I cook on Sunday. Wednesday rolls around. I notice I’m getting low on the food and need to prep more. I have stuff going on though so I postpone till Thursday. More stuff going on. More postponing. It’s Friday. I have something else going on. So I make whip together some pasta (unhealthy). Or go out to eat. Something like that ends up happening. But when I can cook for weeks or months at a time, I dunno, somehow it kinda solves that problem.
I also think there are like real time saving benefits. Ie. cooking 20 portions of chicken doesn’t take 2x the time as cooking 10 portions. Maybe it’s like 1.3x the time.
And I get into a nice groove when I’m cooking a ton of food. I know I’ll be in the kitchen for many hours. I put on some podcasts. Idk. I’m more able to work that way.
There’s also something psychologically very nice about knowing that I have weeks and weeks of food in the freezer. In portion-sized containers that I can microwave whenever I want and start eating in minutes.
And, uh, I’m kinda proud of myself for being self-sufficient.
One hangup I previously had was uncertainty about “Can I freeze this ingredient? What about that ingredient?”. I think that’s a big reason why I never tried cooking crazy amounts of food in bulk and freezing it before. But then I realized, “Y’know what, why don’t I just try it? Cook a small portion, freeze it, warm it up, see how it tastes. Google for food safety things. If it works out, try a big portion.” In retrospect it’s pretty silly that it spent so much time hitting the Think About It button instead of the Try It And See What Happens button.