Food Prep Friday – Where to Start!

Ready to elevate your kitchen skills? Join me as I unveil the secrets behind my food prep Friday! 🍴✨

#FoodPrep101 #KitchenHacks

Have you ever wondered how to save time in the kitchen or save money on your grocery shopping or how to stretch your food to the next grocery shop? I’m so excited to share with you the introductory post of the first of my NEW series: Food Prep Friday! I’m aiming to share my weekly Food Prep days every Friday over on my YouTube channel. I can’t wait to share every week how I save time in the kitchen daily by bulk preparing foods on a food prep day, save money in my grocery food shop and make delicious food that lasts our family of five till the next grocery shop. The key is always planning, having options and being prepared which is why I love food prep days – where I can spend time in the kitchen bulk stocking up food and cleaning items that benefits our family and lifestyle!

I chose Fridays as a day that suited my family to replenish our food supplies to carry us over for another week, top up any supplies for upcoming dinner recipes and also stock up on food for the weekend. So far it’s working so well for lunch box items, breakfast foods, pantry and freezer essentials.

Food Prep Friday is essentially my weekly food prep batching day vlog about how I save time in the kitchen, save money, tips and tricks as well as the delicious recipes of what I create! Some of the recipes I use for Food Prep days will be recipe testing for the blog or if they are not my own recipes I will link them in the accompanying blog post.

I hope this helps inspire you in the kitchen to create and food prep for your family! If you want to get started on the food prep journey, learn new recipes or tricks, or get ideas on delicious food for your family make sure you subscribe to my channel and watch the series every week on YouTube.

About food prep Friday

I’m a foodie and I created this series for people who love creating food for their families, being organised, wanting to save time and money and struggle with coming up with ideas, inspiration and passion for feeding their families.

The cost of food in our country (and others) is out the gate and no joke!  I froth over the opportunity to save money and make use of what I have but still create delicious food and I mean delicious not yum this looks gross and only some people will like it, I mean uber tasty is my jam!

Food prep for me covers a few things that I love: 

• Being organised and less overwhelmed.
• Knowing how much food I have on hand to last to the next grocery shop. 
• Having enough food to last for example lunchboxes that my kids won’t just eat in 3 days.
• Saving money.
• Saving time and my energy.
• Utilising the food we have and getting more confident in making different foods.
• Not wasting food.
• Have food options in the freezer to keep it interesting.
• Eating less processed foods and takeaways.
• Learning to be smarter with storing food
• Saving effort with cleaning up from preparing different foods each day, you can do it all in one day.

Where to start – Some things to consider before you food prep…

Think about how your family eats, and what they prefer for breakfast, lunches, snacks and dinners.

What kind of dinners do you eat as a family: meat and vegetables, one pot meals, salads etc.

What foods could you prepare to make life easier for your family life e.g work lunches for the week in the fridge, cookie dough in the freezer, homemade granola etc

How to food prep

• Thinking about what your family eats and your lifestyle (as mentioned above) write a list on a spreadsheet or book (which you can easily access weekly) of your family’s favourite foods broken down into meals (and seasons if you prefer as this is helpful).
• Write down some goals you would like to achieve e.g. save $50 a week in groceries, eat less sugar, have healthier options on hand, make homemade lunches instead of buying lunches, saving time cooking dinner.
• Do a stocktake of your pantry, fridge and freezer items (this is also a great opportunity to have a cleanout of expired foods).
• Write a list of ingredients you need to purchase and a list of food you need to make to stock up of e.g. breadcrumbs, taco spice mix, pizza sauce.
• Work out a day/time you can dedicate to preparing food for the week, consider your grocery day and where you realistically can spare the time.
• Write a list of food you would like to prep on this day, considering what you might need for meals for the week ahead e.g. bulk grated cheese.
• Write a pre-prep list e.g. pick herbs, defrost meat, bring butter to room temperature etc.
• Work out the order in which you will prepare the food considering using the oven at the same time, preparing dough to rise, making similar foods at the same time, keeping the least important food last in case you run out of time etc.
• Just give it a go! I’m not the best with my time management so can be pretty unrealistic when it comes to planning. I try to be chill about my expectations of what I produce because essentially every time I’m going to get more efficient and smarter each time I have food prep days! I honestly do not know what has taken me so long to get started on food prep days but it’s actually very rewarding!

Tools I love: Thermomix + Instant Pot (I will be using this more during winter)

Link to my (The Style Aesthetic) Recipe Ebook Bundle.

Today I prepared:

2.5 cups Dishwasher powder – 2 cups baking soda, 1/2 cup citric acid

X8 Breakfast Smoothie packs – ½ banana, mango, blueberries – TO MAKE ADD: 250ml milk and 1 tablespoon yoghurt.

X12 Banana chocolate chip muffins to freeze for lunch boxes – The Style Aesthetic Recipe

368g Grated zucchini to freeze

Zucchini cake – I’m recipe testing

Chocolate brownie – I’m recipe testing

480g Grated cheese – mix of edam and tasty cheese

X40 pizza pastry scrolls – x5 pastry sheets, pizza sauce, Italian herbs, salami/ham and cheese.

Naan bread for dinner

Food Prep Tips

• Buy cleaning ingredients like baking soda and citric acid etc in bulk from bulk bin stores, Gilmours or Indian supermarkets.
• Create a planner of your food prep ideas to keep record of meal ideas, recipes, costs etc
• Keep a stash of baking soda for baking and another for cleaning (I keep mine in a container under the sink as well as one in the pantry).
• If I use mango in smoothie packs, I find the smoothies don’t need ice.  If you’re not using mango you can add ice to your smoothie packs.
• Make sure you have plenty of snack lock (reuse these) or reusable bags for freezing foods, and label them for what you will be re-using them for.
• Download my FREE weekly meal planner/grocery list.
• Have a piece of paper to write notes and your grocery list on the bench to add ingredients that are low to purchase for your next shop.
• Listen to an audiobook or podcast, I find this makes the process so much more enjoyable!
• Eat before you food prep or else you’ll be eating everything you make haha.
• Make sure you do your pre-prep to make your food prep day run smoother.
• Start of list of foods to make for the next food prep if you notice things running low.

I would love to hear about your experience with food prep and what do you love about food prep?? Let me know in the comments below…