Food prep Friday (on a Thursday)

 I think I've mentioned that I food prep for the weekend on Fridays to minimize the amount of work I have to do in the kitchen on weekends.  This week, I needed a couple of the items I was prepping to be available on Thursday, so I went ahead and did the other stuff, too, and I thought I'd take you along.

First, I prepped my pizza crust for the month.  I added all of the dry ingredients, except the yeast, to quart sized mason jars, to make pizza crust prep super easy.  I just add the wet ingredients to the bread machine, dump on the dry, and top with yeast before starting the machine's dough cycle.  Making pizza crust in a bread machine is already really easy, but by measuring the ingredients ahead of time, it makes it that much easier.  During my first month of monthly meal planning, I actually made four batches of pizza dough on the first Friday of the month, which I froze.  But I didn't like how those frozen crusts turned out, plus they took up precious freezer space, so now I'm doing this.

Next up was jello cups, followed by peeling and cutting carrots.  These are both items that can be purchased already prepared, but both are less expensive to buy unprepared.  In the case of carrots, they also last longer in the fridge and taste better, if purchased with the peels on.

I made some buns to use for hamburgers this weekend as well as for sandwiches next week--they're in the oven right now.  I also put together a mini sweet potato casserole and its topping, for Hubby to enjoy on Easter.

Not pictured are the extra Shepherd's pie that I made on Monday and froze, the hard boiled eggs I made on Wednesday because all of the egg cartons in the house were in use and I had more fresh eggs that needed to be cartonized, and the sausage that I cooked up for this weekend's pizza and future quiches.

Also not shown are the three Bluefield-family-sized bags of boneless skinless chicken breast that I covered with marinades before freezing and the two pounds of cut-into-small-pieces-and-seasoned chicken that I'll use for a recipe next week and three weeks from now.

All this food prep, it's about being kind to my future self.  It's also kind of about future-proofing my life.  On any given day, I don't know how I'm going to feel about cooking for my family, but by getting as much of the prep done ahead of time as possible, I'm making it much less likely that I'll give up and serve cereal for supper.

What kinds of food prep do you do to make future meals easier to get on the table?