How To Meal Prep & Shop (Corona Virus Edition)

I would have never thought my first post about meal prepping would be because of a global pandemic. As a registered dietitian, I’ve talked meal prep for years. And not the ‘cook 10 pounds of plain chicken breast, 5 heads of broccoli and a 5 lb bag of rice and portion it all into nice neat containers and eat the same thing for 12 days in a row’ kind of meal planning but how to actually plan out healthy meals for your family that are well balanced, affordable, tasty and somewhat easy to make.

But here I am. Last week I took the better half of a day to go through all my pantry items, dig through my deep freezer and the back caves of my refrigerator and make a list of everything I could make with what I had in my house. I then planned out a whole month of meals based off of that and made a list of the ingredients I needed to fill in the gaps to make that happen. I set out to plan and shop for 1 whole month of groceries at one time. It was a serious undertaking. In addition to shopping for my family for a month, I also shopped for my parents for the month as well. Needless to say, I got a lot of nasty looks in the grocery store as someone who was potentially hoarding/stockpiling food. For me, it made more sense to go once in the month than once a week and expose myself to more people. I was, of course, respectful of how many things I bought and truthfully I don’t typically buy the common things in the grocery store that most people buy anyway so I wasn’t too concerned about that. I was believe, it or not, able to get pretty much everything on my list except for eggs (as those are of course limited). Thankfully though something I can get from the locals here.

The whole excursion start to finish to shop, check out, unload, sanitize all the packages, wash all the produce and take a shower took me a little over 3 hours. Here’s the thing, the last few weeks for me have been relatively normal, I work from home primarily so the staying put has been a piece of cake, except the grocery store. I really really miss the grocery store. Like, it’s my favorite place to be. It’s my version of Target so I was really excited to finally venture out after being home for 3 weeks. Needless to say, I’m good for a while and have no desire to go back anytime soon. The actual shopping experience was fine. Eerily quiet. There were more people in the store than normal for a mid-morning on a Friday but no one spoke. It was like people thought somehow if they talked they would get sick. There were, of course, some people rocking gloves and masks and being super weird about people passing them down an aisle and then there were people in the store with their kids like it was a regular day. Overall a very somber experience in a way I’ve never experienced. For those of you who have ventured out, I’m sure you get what I mean.

*I would like to preface this too before someone totally beats me up that yes I could have done an instacart order but someone is still in the store touching things that are coming in my house and I wouldn’t have been able to get everything I needed and make substitutions for things they didn’t have. I had also considered that maybe the instacart person wasn’t feeling 100% but perhaps they went to work anyways because their family needed the money. Or maybe they shopped for 15 other people that day and had been to the store 15 times and other people’s doors 15 times that day. It seemed safer for me to go for myself. And again, planned for a month so I don’t have to go back.

So, what does planning for a month really look like? First off I think it’s important to note a few things:

-In general, I keep a lot of basic kitchen staples in my house fully stocked all the time. Everything from spices to flours to oils, frozen meats, and everything in between

-I cook pretty much everything from scratch with the exception of mayo, ketchup and mustard and a few dairy products. I only buy foods that are a single ingredient and make everything myself from almond milk to salad dressing to teriyaki sauce. There are basically no convenience foods in my house. While that sounds daunting I actually think it made this much easier for me. Also, while the rest of the world is freaking out that they are having to cook every single meal straight for over a month, that’s a normal occurrence for me.

-We typically eat our dinner leftovers for lunch the next day (most days) so one less meal to consider. And while I’m a big breakfast eater Kevin could live off of bagels and peanut butter so we’ve been rationing our eggs and eating cereal some mornings too.

-I’m also ok to eat a few vegetarian meals within the week so stocking up on meat wasn’t a major concern and I know how to be creative with what I’ve got.

-What I had in my freezer ( thanks to my awesome soon to be in-laws that placed a Costco order in addition to what I had already frozen) -5 portions of chicken breast, 4 portions of ground beef, 3 portions pork tenderloin, 1 portion ground turkey, 2 portions tofu, 1 portion turkey breast, and 2 portions for fish. In addition to proteins, I also had a bag of onions, bag of potatoes and multiple heads of romaine and again tons of pantry staples.

-I cook things in batches and freeze a lot so there was everything from homemade bone broth to pesto in my freezer ready to go.

Here is what my grocery list entailed:

Some things to consider: While we typically eat a ton of fresh veggies including salad every night we have had to adjust since that is just not possible right now. We are having a salad every other night to every third night to ration our lettuce to get us through the next few weeks when the lettuce we have growing in the yard will be ready for the first harvest. I did buy some frozen veggies which I don’t normally just to have in the freezer for when we run out. The beans purchased were all dried beans since beans are actually super easy to cook and buying dried beans is WAY cheaper. While bread and lunch meat aren’t on my usual grocery list those were purchased for this month since we are both home and needed a few lunch options to fill in the gaps when we don’t have dinner leftovers. Butter, heavy cream, sugar, vanilla, and yeast also not normal things I buy but I’ve been doing more baking this month for sure. Coconut milk goes a long way in this house for multiple dishes. Garlic pretty much goes in everything I make and anything can be eaten on a tortilla.

And here is my menu for the next month:

Now today begins the fun part of taking all of these meals and making out a rough schedule of when each will be eaten. I’ve never been someone who plans to the day what we will eat. I typically plan a few dinners for the week and then base what we actually eat off of what I’m in the mood for but in this case, there has to be some strategy as some foods are frozen and some will last longer than others. I made the Thanksgiving Casserole last night because I had been craving it when it really should have been made towards the end of the month since it didn’t require anything fresh except carrots, but oh well. 

Here is my thought process when I meal plan whether for a week or a month. 

-I typically plan only 5 dinners for a week. One night out of the 7 will be a leftover night where we eat all the random things in the fridge and one night is a toss-up, either breakfast for dinner or something I can make easy with all the things in the house or if we splurge on takeout or food truck night. 

-Each meal has a protein, fat and carbohydrate source. This is something I will really dive into in another post but in the meantime check out this post from the favorite nutrition team over at PreviMedica that gives you the basic rundown. 

-We usually have at least one night of fish, one chicken, one red meat, one or two vegetarian and then wing the rest depending on the week. 

-We are a family of 2 and a half so a pound of chicken, for example, makes dinner for both of us and leftovers for at least one for the next day and a few scraps I can make into baby food for little man. 

-Lastly, normally we eat about 80% organic in our house, we aren’t at 100% just yet and I eat primarily gluten-free by choice, not a necessity, but both of those things pretty much went out the window this month to utilize everything in the house and because we were limited as to what we could purchase at the store and I’m ok with that. 

As the month plays out I will be sharing our day to day meals over on instagram stories if you’d like to follow along and will for sure be sharing some of the recipes on here over the next few weeks. I promise to circle back around after the month with what worked, what didn’t, the order I made everything in and why, and lastly…whether or not I actually made it through a whole month without going to the grocery store. We shall see, wish me luck! 

Update: To read Part II click here.