Food Prep and Batch Cooking

Sorry for the poor quality of photo, but by time I got to photograph everything it was late.

I'm heading back to work in just over a week after 11 months off on maternity leave. And in order to get organised and not let being back at work seem too much of an ordeal we had a productive weekend batch cooking and prepping food. We made roughly enough food for dinner and lunches for 2 weeks. There's some spare as we made extra mince bolognese, but that will just go towards the next batch cooking.


I made a food menu up for 2 weeks. I originally had a menu for a month, but that was just too difficult and time consuming to make the shopping list. I then went through all the ingredients and made up a shopping list for everything we may need in those 2 weeks. If we find this is success we may double our ingredients next time to make this for a month. Its a lot of hard work at the time, but will save a lot of stress and hard work when I'm dealing with the change of being back at work.

Some of the meals have been cooked and just needs to be heated up, a couple of meals just need finishing in the oven, while others are all raw ingredients and will be placed in the slow cooker for the day. We generally make enough to feed us dinner and lunch the next day. We started this when sticking to Slimming World earlier in the year and it really helped towards us loosing weight and avoiding eating sandwiches. Plus our evenings are consumed with so many other things that we didn't want to add on another task of preparing another meal. The only meal this may be a problem for is Toad in the Hole, but I could switch that to the weekend when we have more time to prepare lunch the next day.

Our menu for the next 2 weeks

Week one menu tried and tested

Week two menu tried and tested


Week 1

Monday - Chicken, bacon pasta with veg (0 syns on SW) - chopped in the fridge ready to be cooked

Tuesday - Stew - chopped in the fridge ready for the slow cooker

Wednesday - Shepherds Pie - Assembled and in the freezer ready to be finished off in the oven

Thursday - Coke Chicken (0 syns on SW) - Raw ingredients in a freezer bag in the freezer ready to be put in the slow cooker, just need to add coke and water

Friday - Pizza - We need to buy the pizza, hopefully we will see some in the discounted section to go in the freezer

Saturday - Spaghetti Bolognese (0 syns on SW) - cooked and in the freezer, just needs defrosting, reheated and pasta cooked

Sunday - Mexican wraps - Filling cooked and wraps assembled. Just needs defrosting and reheating

Week 2

Monday - Pesto Chicken (0 syns on SW) - Raw ingredients in a freezer bag in the freezer ready to be put in the slow cooker. Just need to add potatoes and a veg.

Tuesday - Toad in the Hole - will make this from scratch but any left over batter will be frozen

Wednesday - Mushroom risotto (0 syns on SW) - mushrooms and onions chopped and in the freezer

Thursday - Sausage Casserole - cooked and in the freezer, just needs defrosting and reheated

Friday - Chicken Korma (0 syns on SW) -  Raw ingredients in a freezer bag in the freezer ready to be put in the slow cooker. Will also cook rice.

Saturday - Jacket Potato - We need to buy our potatoes and decide on toppings, but will keep it simple.

Sunday - Lasagne (0 syns on SW) - Assembled and in the freeze ready to be finished off in the oven. Just need to top with cottage cheese and some reduced fat grated cheese.

I will update you on how these meals work out in the next 2 weeks.

See my batch cooking video over on YouTube