I think you may in fact have more spices than I do, which I never thought I’d get to say! That is quite the impressive collection. What made you start collecting spices? Are they all individual spices or do you have blends in there as well? How do you handle one-off spices that you got that you just wanted to try out or that you needed for a particular recipe? Do you separate out any of your other spices (grill seasonings, baking spices, etc)? I have so many questions. :)
For me, I feel like when I am meal prepping on the weekends I always have the best of intentions. In my head I’m thinking these meals all sound healthy and great. Then it gets into the middle of the week and stress happens and you don’t care what you made, you want carbs. When you are meal planning it really helps to think about what you’ve got going on that week and what you like to eat in different moods. I will try to explain what I mean by that.
Consider what types of cuisine you like (italian, indian, chinese, mexican, etc) and when you typically want that cuisine (could eat it every day, only when I’m having a bad day, once a week, as a celebration, etc). Write that down on a piece of paper.
Next, what does your week ahead look like? Is it just an average week? Do you have exams and are going to be stressed? Once you know that you can add up the number of meals you will need based on the categories you wrote down for “when you typically want that cuisine.” To give yourself some grace, always try to plan for at least 1 “had a bad day” meal.
That will in turn give you an idea of what types of things to cook, and you can google recipes based on that. It helps if you pick recipes that use similar ingredients, as you only have to prep that thing once.
From a prep perspective, look at the recipes that you selected and see what commonalities they have. You can prepare those common ingredients ahead of time. For example, lots of recipes I make use rice so I can make a bunch of rice at the beginning of the week and then have it for multiple meals. I’ve also found it helps to prepare sauces for recipes and put them in mason jars in the fridge. Trying to follow a list of ingredients for a sauce when you only have 5 minutes always just leaves me frustrated.
The end result is that you won’t have a full meal prepared ahead of time but you’ll have as much done as possible beforehand. Definitely saves time if you can start on say step 5 of a recipe instead of step 1.
This looks amazing, I will have to try this recipe. Thank you for sharing!
If you are looking to try another recipe, one of my current favorites from The Woks of Life is https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/sesame-crusted-tofu-with-spicy-dipping-sauce-recipe