WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

25. Meal Prepping: 6 Unexpected Ways to Get It Done

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 25

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Discover the transformative power of meal prepping strategies tailored to fit your hectic life and wellness goals. I'll reveal how ditching the one-size-fits-all mentality has opened a world of possibilities, from the convenience of grab-and-go rotisserie chickens to the personalized touch of meal delivery services.

I take the stigma out of ordering in, advocating for it as a legitimate and strategic move in your wellness toolkit. Plus, I'll let you in on how to harness the power of leftovers and bulk cooking to maximize your time and minimize kitchen stress, transforming the way you think about feeding yourself and your loved ones.

Wrapping up with a ton of practical advice, I'll guide you through simple ways to embrace the diversity in meal prepping. From accepting generous food offerings from family to stocking your freezer with pre-prepped ingredients, I cover the full spectrum of strategies that can simplify your life. And for those who feel like they're in over their heads, worry not—I'm here to offer one-on-one consultations. Don't miss the chance to connect with me for tailored meal service recommendations or to dive into enriching conversations on social media. Join me in celebrating the many paths to a well-fed, well-nourished life.

Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hey friends, welcome back to wealthy generation podcast, that is WELTHY. Today's episode is going to be all about meal prepping. I actually promised a friend a very long time ago who asked me about meal prepping, and I was just Just just launching this podcast and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna make a podcast episode for you. So here we are today, but before we get into the episode, I just wanted to give you a Huge thank you for being here, for listening week after week and if you were just finding my podcast and who I am. Thank you so so much for being here. I would appreciate it if you share the episode or my podcast with anybody who you think Will find this useful and will help them create more wellness in their life, help them spread wellness in their life. And Also, I wanted to share a little bit about what has been going on this month of March. We are already through mid-March and this month I dedicated to going to a lot of in-person events.

Speaker 1:

In the past, earlier in the year, in 2024 and towards the end of 2023, I had been feeling Down. I had been feeling Uninspired, like I was stuck, and there was, like this, one huge thing that I had to really Pay attention to and focus on in my life, and that was my business finances and a little bit of my personal. But as I've gone on in my journey, it has been more of my business finances, not necessarily the numbers being a problem, but my mindset being a problem. So, as you can see, I too am working on Myself, I'm working on my mindset, I'm working on a very crucial piece of holistic wellness, which is finances right, and it's something that has shifted in my life as my journey goes on and I've kind of had to relearn how to do some things and I've had to Learn how to do new things, like how to run a business. I am almost I am nearing four years in business, so Very appropriate that things are shifting and growing and I need to pay attention to certain things that I had been Avoiding for a very, very long time. So that's been part of it, and also I don't know if it was winter time, where I always have a much more difficult time.

Speaker 1:

Nonetheless, throughout, like the beginning of this year, I just had this really big calling to meet people in person, like to be in physically in community again, and I launched my business during the pandemic and obviously everything turned virtual and I had been really good about being Present in virtual events. There were a ton of virtual events happening because that's what the world shifted into, but now not so much like there's not that many virtual things happening and I just really felt called to Be in person. So with that, I had already signed up to go to the dream lab way way back when they announced that they were doing the conference again and in Just by me putting the energy out there, I found Two other conferences that were happening in March. One was the luminary conference that happened at the beginning of March and the other one was the Hispanic women Conference that happened just last week. From when you're listening to this episode, and in both conferences I Immediately Saw and felt what I went there to receive and it was something really special. I've been talking about it often on Instagram as I post about my experiences at these conference and what I got from them and how special they have been. It's been amazing to grow my community. It's been amazing to meet people in person who are in my community and Just learn about new resources, see new faces, so on and so forth.

Speaker 1:

So this is to say that, if you feel it in your heart to do something, to try something new. And it might be a little scary, because I Decided to go by myself to these places now with a friend, now with a buddy, now with a colleague nothing appear, just alone, and I got To build that community there, which was really nice. So, as things keep happening, I'll keep you posted. I just wanted to give you an update on what I had been have been doing. The dream lab conference is happening this Saturday, from when the podcast episode comes out this Thursday or on Thursday today, and If you're gonna be there, come by and say and say hi. I'm gonna be a vendor, so I'll have a table and, as always, I'll be floating around the conference. So let's meet and say hi so we can continue to Meet each other, get to know each other, grow our communities, right? It's so, so, so important.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's get into meal prepping. I Always feel like there's this one way that people, even myself, had assumed meal prepping was or needs to be, but I have identified like at least five umbrella topics for meal prepping and then a bunch of little bullet points that would go on to that. So if you want to get a pen and paper to take some notes or, if you want to listen carefully, there are so many different ways that we can meal prep. It does not have to be there's one way what people, I think, assume the most is spending an entire day in your kitchen cooking and putting separating each meal, like full meals, into little containers that are divided and then you stick them all in your refrigerator and then you eat the same thing every single day for like seven days or more. Sure, that's a way to meal prep, but I have found that there are so many more ways that we can meal prep or prepare to eat meals that you might not be thinking about or you might not have made the connection with. So I'm going to share with you ways that I have meal prepped myself, which I like to keep it wide open as to what I'm going to do in terms of strategy and and other things that have other strategies that have worked for my clients.

Speaker 1:

So, get ready to take notes, get your mind blown and just this mental, this idea that you have to do something you absolutely hate to prep your meals, because there's just a ton of different ways to do it, to think about it, different tools you can use for the time that you have, because oftentimes that's the most pressing like aspect of meal prepping time. And Another thing that is rarely spoken about is your mental capacity, because it is work to some degree and Sometimes we don't have the mental capacity to go ahead into that. Okay, let's get started with number one of what I consider meal prepping, and this one is just gonna be bombs thrown At you because you not at you. Well, you know, just like I want to blow your mind. This is what I mean. No violence over here of what meal prepping might it look like.

Speaker 1:

So the very first thing I consider as meal prepping and as you, deciding how you're gonna Eat right, that's basically it. The first thing is Having a list of restaurants. Yes, having a list of restaurants it has nothing to do with your kitchen, it has nothing to do with groceries is Literally having a list of restaurants, whether that's around your home, whether that's around your job, that are aligned with your health and wellness journey. That's like the asterisk here. You want to make sure that you can get food from these restaurants that are in line with your wellness journey and they're not gonna make you feel sick, they're gonna make you Feel bad, anything like that, because there can be a ton of variety. So it's not like any restaurant is having a list of places that you can go that is aligned with your journey.

Speaker 1:

So the very first thing that you can do with these lists of restaurants is you can dine out, you can eat out. You don't need to eat in your house, you can eat out. And the reason why this is important is because it takes away a lot of the other responsibilities that come with making a meal, which is cleaning up, right, prepping, cleaning up. So if you're totally eating out, even if you bring food home that you bought outside, sometimes there is a certain level of cleanup that takes place. But if you're exhausted, if you just want to be fed and you have your list of restaurants, you just want to be taken care of, then you go totally eat at that Location and you come home and you don't need to think about cleaning your kitchen, you don't need to think about throwing out your trash, you don't need to think about wiping out your counters, cleaning up a spill, like none of that. You can just Relax when you get home. Hopefully, right. So that's number 1a. That's under your list of restaurants. The other part of it is ordering in you can get takeout, or you can get food delivered to your house and you can eat at home. Again, you're cutting down on prep time, cook time, a lot of cleaning time where you Can just spend eating your food and then moving on with your day.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it comes to ordering food at restaurants, whether at the place or takeout and this is a strategy I used with one of my very first clients. Where we would do this, it was during the pandemic, and she was absolutely tired of cooking every single meal, as was I, and she had a restaurant or two that she felt comfortable ordering from. So what I would tell her to do and what I do a lot of times is order extra food. Order extra food so you have an extra meal, or order part of a food. So, for example, if you're ordering pizza, instead of ordering a small pizza, maybe ordering a large pizza, that way you have a few slices left over. When we order Mexican food, I order an extra burrito bowl, or I order a few extra tacos. That way, there is part at least part of a meal at home.

Speaker 1:

Something that I would do often was to pick up a rotisserie chicken, whether that was from the supermarket or from a restaurant. Just having the rotisserie chicken alone can save a lot of time with a lot of meals, because all of a sudden you can, you know, throw this on pasta, make it into a sandwich, put it on salad, make quesadillas, eat it with crackers, have it with bread, have it with cassava, like. There's just so many different ways that you can take a rotisserie chicken. And If it's just you or you have a small family I know, at least with my family of four there's sometimes Leftovers from the chicken, so you get to at least have one other meal with it. So that is number one, just like Getting takeout or going to eat at a restaurant where it's gonna save you so, so, so much time, especially if you're just so physically and mentally depleted. All right.

Speaker 1:

Moving on to number two is Meal delivery services, where the meals are either fully cooked and delivered to you that are pretty much like home cooked, or they're fully prepped for you. That means everything is Coal, I like, cleaned and chopped. All the vegetables are cleaned and chopped, everything is pre-portioned out for you. You get all the seasonings, you get all the toppings and they usually deliver to you in a box. You get to pick a few meals a day and you don't need to do a lot of the extra work cleaning vegetables, chopping vegetables, portioning things out. They give you normally like a recipe card that's really easy to follow, normally with photos. There are services that have really really clean options and they're also like fully prepped meals, like the priority is to feed yourself and to feed yourself in a way where it has some sort of nutritional value and it prevents you from skipping meals. It prevents you to, it helps you feel your body. So there is absolutely no shame in any of these ways of meal prepping.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of people feel some sort of way because they feel like everything needs to be from scratch. If it not, it doesn't count. Everything needs to be beautiful and be long in a magazine and you need to pluck the carrots from your garden or whatever for it to be an Effective, nutritious meal. And that is not the case. It can be you and can be you sometimes, it can be you never. It doesn't matter what. The most important thing is that you are feeding yourself right at some capacity and that you're feeding yourself Nutritiously most of the time. So number two is, yes, picking from either a fully prepared meal service or a Meal delivery where everything is prepped for you and you get to cook it at home. This version where things are prepped for you, got to cook it at home Is also great. In case you want to switch some ingredients out because it's not fully cooked already. You can tweak things if you choose to do that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so number three is groceries, and next to know I'm sorry I put be realistic. All right, be realistic as to what would you like? Food don't like, how much time or you have to cook that week. What might you need? A pantry? What might you need in your freezer? Will you go and pick up girls who use yourself at the supermarket? What will you do shopping for them yourself? Will you work them for delivery Sometimes? What yet a lot of my clients Frustrated or Making it hard for them to make it at some point, is the fact that they don't have groceries at home. All right, it makes a lot more difficult to either eat balanced, or to eat at all, or to not be stressed out. How many of these different things.

Speaker 1:

So just see, when is it that you can get groceries, whether that's on a weekly basis when you're grabbing fresh vegetables and herbs and fruits and things like that, is it on a monthly basis? You're going to wholesale stores like Costco or BJ's and you're getting things in bulk which they last you for a while. You're growing every other week because things last you a little bit and it can look different. So if you're buying things for your pantry or your freezer which have like a much, much longer shelf life and you're not consuming this within the week or within the month, then you might have extra food options there for you, as well as some fresh fruit food options, that that you're going to go ahead and cook. So, for example, with this At whole, like the wholesale places, I buy things like a box of pizza which brings four pies, a bag of Nuggets, right, or like chicken tenders, things like that which lasts a long time, a bag of breakfast chicken sausages Me like frozen, not frozen, it doesn't come frozen, I freeze it.

Speaker 1:

I think of as a chicken thought and things like that. So those things for later last a long time or longer than just a week because we're not eating it. Often we're not eating on a week basis, but I love to have such a fair because there are time for I sauce it and I don't cook and just throwing a pizza. The oven is super simple, and then maybe I want to go to a restaurant or I want to order a teacup. I have my own little beef fast food section in my own home right.

Speaker 1:

In addition to the pantry, I have pasta, I have pasta canto and the cans of sardine, ramen noodles, bone broth. I can quickly throw a bowl together without really having to do anything from scratch, right, and then you have frozen tenders. Sometimes I've done chicken nuggets with pasta from kids for like, and also my kids are at an information app where they do some of these things themselves, so they can put chicken tenders in the poster and they can put a pizza in a pizza maker right here or whatever. So this is me time. It gives them something to put themselves with. It's just a lot simpler when you plan a little bit ahead four times where you might not have the time or the energy to make something to eat, all right.

Speaker 1:

So another thing with groceries is what are you realistically going to use, because sometimes we let things go to waste. I know what's happened to me every once in a while where is one of those weeks where nothing goes as planned and then I bought like vegetables that go bad because I didn't have time to use it, because things just happened throughout the day or throughout the week that I did not get a chance to make this food that I had purchased, and and then I have to resort to tip number one, where we have to order takeout or go eat at a restaurant for whatever reason, and I want you to let that be okay. Remember, the most important thing is for you and your family to be fed, and cooking sometimes can be taxing. So what are you going to have in your fridge? I like to also have quick things in my refrigerator. So, for example, I always have like plain Greek yogurt. I'll try and always have cups of plain cottage cheese. Those are very high protein options for me to help me feel full and even for the kids, right? Um, that doesn't have to be cooked. You can just grab it and eat it. You don't have to do anything to it. If you want to add some toppings to it, that's great.

Speaker 1:

But having things like Greek yogurt, having things like eggs in the refrigerator um, we do use cold cuts here. I try and manage. Like, which ones do we buy? But sometimes it's just so easy to make a sandwich that it's super helpful to have those things available in the refrigerator. And then I also have to think about what foods do I want, especially for my kids. I send them to school with fresh fruit every single day and a few vegetables for dinners, for lunches. I usually always have this sandwich because it's easier for my kids to eat, and properly, and these are my go-to veggies. And aside from that, I'll either have green beans or brussel sprouts. Those are also go-to.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I buy kale, sometimes I buy cabbage, and I always have onions, almost always have mushrooms, and sometimes again I get to buy them and then reintroduce and peppers right, because you just add them to whatever you're cooking as a seasoning, but they still kind of add veggies, right. So I think I like to talk about my refrigerator in those that way it's like for something like that. I can grab yogurt, what's the thing? Easy to make and, um, what is the end of the season? And then it comes as veggies, onions, what's one or two vegetables that we can eat and you take from there. Oh, another thing for groceries. I'm done. I'm looking at my notes. Um, one nice thing with grocery is you can also use the pre-chopped vegetables. They're pre-chopped cleaning vegetables. Those are such in the supermarket and oftentimes we feel a great kind of way being an extra dollar for them or however much it is, or feeling guilty for not fully cooking or doing something ourselves. I just want yourself, you give yourself permission that you are deserving of these pre-chopped vegetables, this pre-chopped fruits.

Speaker 1:

I have a client who she loves pineapple but she couldn't find out if you've ever got a pineapple. This is a whole project, like I have to be prepared. So bye, pre-pineapple, cleaned, chopped. That is so irreserving of that. We chopped watermelon, sometimes watermelon during the summer. I don't mean that in the entire watermelon, because the rest of it will go bad. So sometimes we're not buying pretty chopped veggies and fruit because we think that paying unnatural drugs for the service of getting it done for us too much and then we buy the whole fruit and then it goes bad. So you're always money.

Speaker 1:

I called another one of my clients. She said that her dream is to have a personal path. Right, like I'm freaking out about that too. I like to put some of my meals, but sometimes I wish somebody could cook for me. That's really good, right? So I told her I was like, well, you can start living out that dream now. Like you can think of the people in the supermarket who are very kindly cleaning and chopping these vegetables and these fruit for you as your personal chef. Like that's what they're doing. You are purchasing pre-chopped or pre-made meals and instead of thinking of it like, oh my gosh, I'm spending so much money look at me, I'm not doing it myself it's like I am so lucky that I have these personal chefs. And you go in with that attitude and with that feeling inside of your heart when you walk into these places and it's like, yep, thank you so much. And even thank them. You don't need to see them in the face, like thank you so much to the person who chopped these fruits, who chopped these vegetables that are allowing me to make it a little bit more easier for me to feed myself, all right. So don't shy away from either frozen options in the supermarket that have vegetables and fruits in there Depends on how you want to use them to, like when they fall they're a little funny or like the fresh frozen and not frozen the fresh vegetable section where you're going to see them there also. All right, let's move on to the more obvious. The more obvious thing, like strategies.

Speaker 1:

When people think of meal prepping, like, what does that actually look like? Oh, I was just drinking some water, so that one is actually cooking and preparing your meals at home, right? Some people like to plan out a home menu. They like to plan out a home menu for the week that they do their groceries it's kind of a little backwards and they do, or like for me, because usually I get groceries first. They plan out the menu for the week, they go ahead and then buy groceries based on that list. They cook everything in one day.

Speaker 1:

And now there's a few ways to store this food. Right, there is number one some people like to pre-portion all their meals out in separate containers, where it becomes this grab and go situation. Or number two, which is something I like to do, is store everything separately, like, if you cook rice, all the rice goes in one container. If you cook chicken, all the chicken goes in one container, because then what that allows you to do is mix and match your food so you're not eating the same exact thing every single day. There's only so much of that. I'm sorry, I was working corporate but I would only make three meals for the last three. Most of them are exactly the same and I got to eat it whenever I wanted for the five days of work in office and the other two days I could either have something outside or take some other leftovers for dinner or have a meal. So if that works for you, plan out a home menu, cooking and having that in the fridge, that's all for.

Speaker 1:

Another thing which should have been referred to is not your go-to meals? Right? This way, if you don't necessarily need to plan out a home menu, you can. If you know your go-to meal for the week, it becomes easier to also do your groceries to know what's making. So, for example, almost on a weekly basis more or less, our dinners include taco. So for the taco night there's a pasta night. There's another night where I make like hot dog with chicken. There's another night where we get to take out like just various. Another night where I make rice with chicken. Sometimes I plan to go ahead and be designer and leave it in the fridge over there and cook it later. So those are go-to meals. So I do have similar foods that I'll have for home working and for outing in the freezer Easy go-to for pasta or for easy go-to for tacos right, they're one. I'll have chicken in the freezer and I'll have rice in the pantry and I'll have some sort of vegetable in the fridge. So all of a sudden it's chicken rice and salad, chicken rice and green beans.

Speaker 1:

Another form of meat prep that I sometimes do is only cleaning and seasoning the meats at the time. Just today, I have two different kinds of meats that are out and going to season them both and I'm going to cook one, leave the other one in the fridge. That way, just cleaning and seasoning the meats takes a lot of the time out of your meal prep time or your upper crunch. So the days where I have a little bit more time, I tend to make a bigger meal so that there's more left over. During the week the pasta makes a lot of the time out, which is kind of like rice soup, and it's been so long before I actually have something over the fridge Because I eat it from there. I have more time to make it. And then during the week when I don't have time to we've mostly been having a flood to make lunch I could just eat something and I have a warm back in it and get very cold to go for it. So just cleaning and seasoning the meats is a form of meal preping. You don't have to go ahead and cook it, especially if you can brush a lot of people. I just want to make that fresh, just cool.

Speaker 1:

And a good one is cleaning and chopping vegetables. Sometimes I have my kids help clean and chop green beans because, as much as I love them, they're annoying AF to clean and trim and all that. Same with Brussels sprouts because that's kind of like just like a one by one thing almost. So I'll clean them ahead of time and that way when I'm ready to cook them they're just ready to throw in the pot. In the pot, okay, and I kind of mentioned this a little bit but having your meals where you can make big ones and you can make like big ones, let's say like a soup or a big pot of rice or a lot of ground meat, or usually vegetables that can stand up to being reheated, is green beans. I like green beans, mushrooms, things like that. You get to reheat them pretty well or just like cold salads, especially now going into spring and summertime, in the winter time and the fall time, roasting vegetables is really, really, really awesome. In one big pan you can just throw them all in the oven.

Speaker 1:

I also like to have no cookmeal options like salad and sandwiches, yeah, and then you use your freezer stash like nuggets or whatever it is or some vegetables, or you'll use your pantry where I'll do a can of tuna, fish or something like that. Sandwiches is also an option. Sometimes with the Rotisserie chicken, I'll make a sandwich or I'll make a salad yes, for the kids. And we keep it rolling. And oftentimes my clients come to me and I've had this happen, like a lot of them actually have come to me and they're like I just opened my refrigerator or my pantry and I have no idea what to make, and that's just building a skill of creativity with your food. That's all. That's all it is. So it's practicing these things and by the time we're done working together, it's like, oh yeah, I know exactly what to get, because they start to understand what their goal to meals are. What's faster than to make what they enjoy eating? That's something you learn along the way in the process, and then it just becomes very easy for them to open up the fridge and be like oh yeah, I have my seetha wrap with my chicken that I threw in the air fryer because it was already cleaned in season and I threw some spinach on top with some hummus. That's literally the meal of one of them. I had another client who would make broth ahead of time and she would put it in mason jars and then she would throw in some ramen noodles at the end whenever she was ready to eat the broth. I have another client who would make little charcuterie boards for herself. They started using their crock pot a lot more often and started experimenting just one or two things at a time.

Speaker 1:

And I want to mention something about new recipes. Do not put the pressure on yourself to be doing a new recipe every single day and sometimes every single week. New recipes take a lot of mind space and mind capacity to do that, because instead of being kind of on autopilot making a meal and choosing a meal, you have to be very present and you have to be very engaged, and sometimes you might not have the capacity to do that. So I love trying new recipes, trying longer recipes and playing around when I don't feel pressure of time, because let's face it and let's be real, like during the week, you just don't have that much time, and it becomes very frustrating when you're trying to create these recipes from scratch that you've never tried before and you have to pay a lot of attention after a full day and you're exhausted. So I love to try these kinds of recipes out on the weekends, during holidays, where I might be home for a long time during the winter time, when you're stuck at home more so, these things are just so much, or like trying new recipes are so much easier when you are not under pressure. So don't put that pressure on yourself.

Speaker 1:

Unless you're just switching one or two things and you're like, oh, I'm getting bored of just like regular plain rice, let me see what I can add to the rice to try and switch it up, then that's different. Right, then that's a little bit different because you already know how to make rice. You're comfortable making rice. You're probably switching a seasoning or two, and also you might want to try different sauces for different kinds of, let's say, meat in particular, or pastas. For example, my kids love teriyaki pasta or like Asian style noodles. So I buy the Primal Kitchen no Soy Teriyaki, I just throw it on some noodles. They love it and it takes like however long it takes the noodles to cook, because then you just throw the sauce on top. Or we also like the Primal Kitchen Buffalo sauce so you can throw that on top of chicken. It totally changes the flavors. You can make sauces from scratch. I don't really have the time to do that, so I am grateful for Primal Kitchen for having amazing jarred sauces and rails and all the other pasta sauces that already come jarred, because your girl only has so much time.

Speaker 1:

Cool, I feel like I'm talking really fast. This is just like I feel like I'm coaching you right now and if you have like meal prep drama and I'm just sharing with you everything that I share with my clients, right, and what makes it different is that with them, I know their schedule, I know what they like, what they don't like, so it becomes very personalized and, instead of being this list of trying to figure it out, we really hone in on like a specific strategy for them to try, with the time that they have and the capabilities, like the, the kitchen skills that they have as well, to figure out all these things that I'm sharing. Like what are they go to meals, what do they like, what do they not like? Do they want to try bigger meals or not, etc. Etc. Number five we're coming up on number five.

Speaker 1:

This is the last one, which kind of ties into the rest of the tips. At least the first, like the last two or three, is planning ahead for freezer stash meals. All right. So if you don't want to buy, let's say, a lot of freezer food, things like that, or you want to avoid doing takeout and still fulfilling, like your quick and easy meals at home, I love to make big meals and stash some in the freezer for a later time and by that it can be like so frito. So frito is a great one.

Speaker 1:

If you want to make your own or you want to buy some for Loiza, I buy some from the audience, to be honest, but before Loiza was around, I would make a big batch of so frito because it just makes cooking a lot faster than chopping everything up, and I would freeze it in ice cube trays. I would freeze an ice cube trays because I was like how am I gonna freeze this entire tub of so frito and how am I gonna get like a few spoons full out of here? So I just bought some ice cube trays just for my so frito, because you want your ice smelling like onions and garlic, and I would freeze it there. And once they would be frozen, I would take the ice cube, so frito ice cubes out and so frito frozen cubes, whatever out, and I would throw it in as a black bag. And then I had little so frito cubes to throw in a moto to throw in chicken, whatever I wanted to use it for, and it made things so easy. So throwing ground ground meat. It was so amazing.

Speaker 1:

Other things I have frozen has been chicken soup. Whenever somebody is sick or or I just have the urge to make a big, big batch of chicken soup, I also always freeze some, because it always happens where somebody out of the blue gets sick and then you have zero time to make soup or something like that, or you yourself can we talk about that like if I get sick and no one else can make me soup and I'm like I don't want to make myself soup because I'm sick, thank God for those freezer stashes where I can just defrost it and have my own soup that I've made before. Another thing I love to freeze is beans, because if you make, let's say Dominican beans from scratch. They're pretty labor-intensive, they take a little while. You don't want to be making them from scratch unless you want to make them quickly with canned beans, which is cool too. But I love to make those in big batches as well. Portion them out, because if I ever want rice and beans during the week, then I already have a jar of my own beans in the fridge.

Speaker 1:

And let me tell you this is number six which I had not originally planned for, but I remember I do this too is when your family members offer you food, take it. That's another thing. If you enjoy their food and they're offering you, like my mother-in-law, my mom, they'll always offer me beans. I'd say yeah, I put it in the freezer. Or they offer me like extra meals, I'll eat them for lunch. You know that's number six. When you're at a party, when your family members invite you to take food home any of those situations, take it home. That's tip number six. I changed my mind. There's not five, there's six of them, because you know that if you come from a Hispanic family, most of the time there's a ton of leftover foods and they know it. So they bring to go containers. All right, I know I've done that in my house and the guests take food home, so take it home, make another meal with it, all right.

Speaker 1:

And another thing I like doing for the freezer stash is I'll peel things like starchy vegetables, let's say Juca Malanga. I haven't really done it with platanos, but one of my clients told me that she makes tostones. Like if you ever made tostones, you know you fry it and then you mash it and then you have to refry it. So she says that she fries it and mashes it and doesn't refry it and then freezes. It. Isn't that genius like genius? And then she just takes it out of the freezer and gives it the second fry and she has those don't is right away. And, frankly, anything that go yourself in the frozen section I'm sure that you can make as well, all right, so you can have that there in your freezer for next time, all right.

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I hope these tips have been helpful. I hope it gives you just such a vast majority of strategies as to how you can meal prep. There is no one way. There's many different ways, and I myself have used every single one of these strategies. Every single one I have used whenever I feel like I need to pull on that tool. So practice, don't judge yourself. Everything definitely does not have to be from scratch. Remember that the most important thing is that you're being fed and you're being fed as nutritionally as you possibly can, which looks different every single time.

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It's okay to accept outside support to eat, whether that's eating at a restaurant, purchasing pre chopped veggies, eating at someone else's house, getting takeout. Instead of judging yourself and be like, oh, there you go again. You should have made stuff from scratch. You should have done this. You should have looked at you again and be grateful that these resources are out here for you. Be grateful that somebody's shopping for you. Be grateful that somebody's delivering this food for you. Be grateful to yourself that you have developed so many skills that you have all of these options to feed yourself and your family. Give yourself a big pat on the back and a pat on the shoulder. Be like, wow, I've really taken it upon myself to learn about all of these different ways to feed myself and to feed my family. I've taken it upon myself to learn what are the restaurants, what are takeout options, what are supermarkets that are around where I can throw something together or I can order some things all right.

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And if you are super overwhelmed by now 45 minutes me sharing a bunch of stuff and you just want things to be personalized to you, you don't wanna have to figure it out on your own, because things like feeding yourself, feeding your family, meal prep and getting groceries is a point of stress for you, something that you've been avoiding, similar to what I was talking about about my finance journey. Just me, the only way that I've been able to move along is because I have a money coach. Thank you, soledad. In a business coach and a mentor like I, have a lot of people and a therapist who have heard and friends who have heard my story and have helped me and held space. So if you feel this way about food, about groceries, about cooking, about eating out, dining out or if we're getting takeout, if you give yourself such a hard time, then I invite you to book a consultation so we can see if working together is a good fit.

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In the consultation, you will share with me what your challenges are and I will let you know how I can help you. Not only will you let me know what your challenges are, but you will also let me know where you wish to be how you wish your life would look like, what your goals are, how you wanna feel all of that good stuff, right? So if that's you, you can go to the show notes and you'll find a direct link to there. If not, you can DM me on Instagram. Also, if you want any recommendations for the meal delivery services or the meal prep services that gets delivered to your house, send me an email or a DM on Instagram and I can hook you up with that information. Okay, so I hope you guys have a lovely week. If you're going to the Dream Lab, go ahead and stop by and say hello and I'll see you on the next one. Have a good week. Bye.