Meal Prep Takes Time But Also Saves Time

Have you ever taken a closer look at meal prep? It’s the process of planning menus, shopping for groceries, and preparing meals and snacks. Use meal prep to get an entire week’s worth of meals for your parents planned and prepared in advance.

Meal prep does take time. You’re starting the steps for up to seven days of meals at once. However, it saves time.

Say your parents live with you, but you work full-time outside of the home. While you’re at work, your parents have breakfast, lunch, and snacks already set for them. When you get home, everything needed for dinner is sliced, diced, and marinating. You just need to cook the meal.

How do you get started? Take a closer look at the best ways to handle meal prep.

Create Your Menu

Sit down with your parents and come up with the menu for the week. You want to cover all three meals and add snacks. Once you have the menu, go over the ingredients you need. Anything that’s not already in the kitchen should go onto a shopping list to buy before you get started.

Gather Your Packaging

You have all of the ingredients. You need the packages you’ll be using. Food storage containers and freezer-proof bags are helpful. Aluminum foil is also useful.

Prepare the Food Items

Cut up all vegetables that won’t turn brown or start to rot once they’re sliced or chopped. If you have four dinners calling for sliced zucchini, you want to slice enough zucchini for all four meals. Foods that go brown quickly, such as bananas or apples, should be prepared the day they’re needed.

If a meat calls for a marinade, make that and toss the meat in it. If you move the meat to the freezer, the marinade will work its way deep into the meat for optimal flavor. Thaw the meat in the refrigerator the night before it’s needed.

Carefully label the packages so that you know which meat or vegetable goes which meal. Organized packaging makes it easy to grab the right ingredients when you start cooking.

Talk About the Benefits of In-Home Care Services

With in-home care, your mom and dad have a caregiver available to cook meals for them. You don’t have to spend your weekends taking care of meal prep. You can let someone else do it and spend weekends doing fun activities with your parents.

In-home care services cover many aspects of daily living. In addition to meal prep, ask about light housekeeping, laundry, transportation, and companion care. Talk to an in-home care specialist to learn more.