Make Meal Prep Quick and Easy, with Stacie De Lucia

Have at least two different proteins that you're gonna vary between for those three days, two different carbohydrates, and then maybe two to three even more vegetables that you're gonna have. Then you can mix and match them.

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We are really privileged today to have Stacy back for episode number two.

Stacy's a registered dietitian nutritionist who studied at the University of Delaware and is currently pursuing her master's degree in functional medicine. She's worked on organic farms in Hawaii and and Italy and is passionate about learning and reteaching others, sustainable agriculture and holistic healing through whole foods and lifestyle. Welcome back, Stacy.

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here again.

Yeah, we had a lot of fun last time talking. So we want to have you back and change subjects a little in terms of still talk about food because why not? Because it's.

Food is life. Can't live without it.

But we want to kind of switch the subject to cooking because that's a huge challenge for a lot of people, whether they're single and cooking for themselves or trying to cook for the whole family.

Let's start with people who don't like to cook. How do we simplify getting food on the table that's whole and natural for those people?

Right. So I first always ask and feel people out for what the biggest barriers are for them, because everyone comes from a different background of how they grew up with food. I think that's number one is thinking about how you grew up. Did your parents prepare all your meals? Did they go out to eat a lot? What kinds of foods were they eating? I think that's the biggest barrier is.

If they didn't eating Sloppy Joe's, right?

I eat Sloppy Joe's. What's Sloppy Joe's?

Canned corn and canned beans. Yummy, right?

And the era too, depending what age you grew up in. So I think that's the biggest thing is looking at what their relationship is based on how they grew up. I always kind of feel that out when we talk in our sessions, and I know how to kind of gear it towards them. It's really about meeting the people where they're at. So how can I help them? Like to cook and where are the barriers? So that's the main one. Other things would be time. So we hear that all the time. None of us have time to think about ourselves after work and after taking care of our kids and running here and there and, you know, everything else. So time is definitely a big barrier. Family preferences. So if you have a large family and you have a bunch of different kids that have different food preferences, that can get really difficult. So I often hear parents say, I have to make three meals.

That never happens. Kids are. Kids are never picky.

Come on, right?

You must have. You must be straight, right?

That's a whole other topic for another day. But basically, how can we combine that so, you know, the mom or dad doesn't have to cook three different meals. We can find things that everyone likes. And then money, you know, money's a big thing, too, is trying to shop on a budget without it having to be lacking in quality or nutrient density. So I think those are really the biggest barriers to cooking or liking to cook.

And what about people who say, I just don't like cooking? Do you have any tips and techniques for them?

Yeah. So. Well, then I asked them, well, what do you like to eat? You know, like, if you went out anywhere, where would you go? What kind of cuisine do you like? And then I try to figure out, how can I make this super easy for them? Sometimes you might have to start them out on a meal kit company, which there's a lot of great ones out there now, which we can talk about later. So maybe something like that, or going out. We look at meals together in our sessions and figure out, okay, how can I make this really simple to kind of bridge that gap of the daunting feeling of having to cook everything by themselves. If they've never turned on an oven, if they've never turned on the stove, you know, it can be very, very daunting. So starting there again, meeting them where they're at, even if we have to start with, like, frozen meals in the frozen section of the store that have better ingredients, at least that's somewhere to start where they actually are in the act of heating the food up, they're doing something to prepare it, at least in some sense. So sometimes we take baby steps, and sometimes they're ready and they're all in to just learn.

So let's say a person actually wants to cook. Do you have a rule of thumb of how long you would say per person or how long is the prep time that you would need and how.

Do you make it the least.

Right. So it depends on the size of the family. So let me give you a little bit of background on me. When I was finishing high school, my mom came up with this idea that she wanted everyone to cook one night of the week. So she was busy. My stepdad was busy. You know, everyone's busy. But if we could help take that load off and also, you know, take some of the responsibility, that was great. So I didn't like that idea, because I didn't. All I wanted to do is go hang out with friends after school. I didn't want to worry about cooking dinner for my family, but it did help. And then we kind of figured out from there how long it would take. So if I didn't prepare ahead of time, I'd at least look in the fridge that morning and say, okay, I'm going to throw together this frozen vegetable, this meat, and then this. This other thing, sweet potatoes or something. So that's kind of. I had to know how much the family was going to eat. And my family ate a lot, so I knew I was always going to have to make extra, so I would start there. But for the average person, if it was just like a couple, a single person or a couple, I'd say kind of block out, like, two hours of meal prep at least each week, which isn't that bad when you think about two hours out of the entire week to prepare things, because there's a lot of easy tips and tricks that we'll go over, using frozen, using different canned items, even different gadgets. I can tell you about, like, the easiest methods if you want to start there. So I remember I was watching some kind of show. You know, they always have the. On the pbs, they show, like, different methods of cooking and different besides Food Network, they have, like, people come on chefs and things like that. And there was this one lady, I don't remember her name, but she had a whole cookbook on cooking with sheet pans. And I was like, how could you have that many recipes with one simple sheet pan? Right? But she was cooking everything. And I was like, that is pretty genius if you can figure out one. One piece of equipment that you can cook all these different things on, and you have multiple racks in the oven, things like that. So that kind of changed my whole perspective on, well, how can I do this with other things that I already have in the kitchen? So I started looking into sheet pan meals. You can cook pretty much your protein, your vegetable, and Your carb all on one tray. And that's, you know, a couple meals right there. Casserole dishes don't have to be for that gross tuna casserole that your mom might have made growing up. It can be other things I love, like shepherd's pie with sweet potato instead of regular potato. That's something you can do that has. I always look for the protein, vegetable, and carb and then other things like skillets. Some people like to just do a saucepan if you're doing like soups and stews. Slow cookers have always. They've been a big thing in the past, like 20, 30 years. But now they have instant pots, which is like instant food.

My best friend.

Exactly. And then air fryers, too. And now they have things that are all combined. Air fryer, instant pot. You know, don't tell her that I hadn't heard that.

Don't start, please.

I don't. I can look up what it's called. I know we have a lot of patients that are very savvy with all of this. And, you know, every year for the holidays, there's a new gadget that's highlighted each year. So if you can get rid of other ones because the counter space gets kind of thin at some point. Right. We can't have all of these gadgets because there's no room and then they end up collecting dust. Meanwhile, it costs a lot of money to get a big appliance. So personally, my favorite and most recent that I've had is the instant pot. It's a little scary at first because when you think of pressure cookers. I know, my grandma told me, you know, back when they came out. I don't know when that was. There was a lot of things that were going wrong, like things exploding and, you know, damage and stuff. But now they've pretty much perfected it. You press a button, you look it up on Google how to do it, and you're set. So in the beginning, it can be a little daunting. I always say if somebody's getting it for their elderly parents, to go over it with them first so it doesn't seem so scary. And then once you know it, it's like nothing. It just has become so easy. So I know it's kind of a long winded answer, but those are the best methods that I've seen and I'm sure there's plenty more.

So can we drill into that? What's one or two examples? That two hours I can prep, that I can have three days of meals what does that look like?

So let's focus on lunches and dinners, because those are pretty interchangeable, right? So I say have at least two different proteins that you're going to vary between for those three days, two different carbohydrates, and then maybe two to three even more vegetables that you're going to have. Then you can mix and match them. So let's give examples. Say we're going to do chicken, we're going to do rice, and then we're going to do broccoli. That's one full meal there. And then you can kind of do the same thing with maybe you're going to have fish as your second protein. Then you're going to have sweet potatoes as your other carb. And then you're going to have some salad or something like that, or asparagus as your other vegetables. So now you have two of each, right? So now you can mix and match them. So maybe for lunch, you have a tray of the chicken, you have a tray of the rice, you have a tray of the broccoli. And the same goes for the fish and the sweet potato and the other vegetable.

Is this all cooked?

Yeah. So you cook it all at one time. So you cook it all on Sunday. You can take from it and portion it out ahead of time. So if you get enough Tupperware, nice glass Tupperware, you can keep them in the fridge to be all organized. But for me, I'm a little bit lazy. I just keep them in the trays in the fridge, and then I take from it each day. So, for example, today I had ground turkey with kale and sweet potato, and that's something that I prepped over the weekend. But I also made rice. But today I just felt like I wanted the sweet potato instead of the rice. And if I wanted something different than the kale, I would take the, I don't know, roasted broccoli or Brussels sprouts that I had instead of the kale. Does that make sense? You're just kind of taking from different. Like, you have the option to switch it up so you don't get bored, and you make enough for the three days to where you can mix it up. The breakfast is usually a little bit different. I mean, you can take from those if you want, but breakfast, I feel like, is usually on the fly for most people, and it's something that you can easily make in in like, 10 or 15 minutes. So that's not something you really need to prep unless you're somebody who needs, like, a bigger breakfast. Each day. And then you would take that into account, too. There's plenty of easy recipes, recipes for breakfast as well.

What you're talking to is really planning the meals ahead of time and having the ingredients, at least, if not cooking them.

Right. And it doesn't have to be strict, though. You don't have to know we're going to have burgers and this and this. Just know you have them there for if the day is really crazy and you can just toss them in.

Is there any tips to kind of planning ahead of time, like thinking about the week? Is there any.

A pick list. You're talking about a pick list.

Yeah, like, so definitely knowing preferences for the family is helpful because then you don't have to cook a bunch of different meals. If it gets on the plate and they say, we don't want this. Right. That's pretty frustrating. So having some time with everyone to say, like, maybe not get everyone's input because then it's going to get a little too crazy. But maybe when you're at the store with one of your kids, have them pick something out that they like, or just knowing, like, okay, we had pasta this day, but we'll have something else this day, so they don't get bored with it either. I think it's more about knowing their preferences right off the bat and kind of knowing how to have variety is important, too, because I know if I was eating chicken all the time, like, if we had chicken every single night as a kid, I would get very upset about that and I wouldn't want to eat it. I would be like, I'm just going to go to a friend's house or something like that, or grandma's house, because I don't want to want chicken again. So I think variety is really important. Knowing that you're going to have a few different sources of each component to make sure that it doesn't get boring and that they're within your family's food preferences.

I usually try to pair. If I know that one or two of my kids won't eat one thing, then I try to have something else on the table that I know they're going to eat. And I don't really care if all you eat is squash for dinner one night. I'm not gonna pick a fight with that.

Right, right.

So could you. If you allocated your two hours for the couple to prep, can you do prep for a week on Sunday, or is it too far ahead of time to do your prepping? And when you say prep, what are you referring to?

Yeah. So the way that I usually recommend it is try to do at least for the next three days because we also don't want things sitting in the fridge for that long of a time either. Especially if somebody has sensitivity to mold or yeast or something like that. We tell them not to really keep leftovers longer than three days. So I usually say meal prepping for three solid days of food. So that would be three meals times three days. And then I would say depending where you're at in that time of the week, do another couple meals if you can, for the rest of the week until you get to the weekend, then it's a little bit different. And then you could take into account if you're going to be eating out at work, like some people order at work, or if somebody else is going to be preparing your meal if you're going out, or you're going to a friend's house or your parents or something. So kind of look ahead of the week and try to make at least three days of food. So that would be the Sunday before.

How do you translate this into hypothetically speaking, a family with four children, where in laws might eat over frequently. So we're looking at feeding eight people at any given meal. Hypothetically speaking, asking for a friend. How would you do that? Because I have honestly yet to manage prepping for more than a day, given the sheer volume of food. When you talk about prepping for three days, the amount of food that you just went through is the amount we go through in one meal. So how do you do that?

Yeah, it's like batch cooking. Right? At that point, it kind of has to be batch cooking. And that's why something like the instant pot or air fryer is so good, because you can make a huge thing of rice or a huge thing of all the sweet potatoes in there at the same time. Something else that I would say for that is to have things maybe ready to cook like that night. If you feel like you're not going to be able to prep it all ahead of time, kind of have it planned out in your mind. Okay, we're going to do. Maybe we're going to do frozen burgers today. They're going to be a good quality, but we're just going to throw them in the air fryer last minute.

You can do that?

Oh, yeah. You put them right in the air fryer. Don't. That's pretty much it. And flip them over. Same thing with the sweet potatoes. You can do just frozen vegetables. You can dump them in the air, fryer and they're done in 15 minutes. So I think that's the other thing is having grace with knowing, like, I don't have. I'm not going to have everything regimented, but at least I have them in the fridge or in the freezer that I know I can cook them quick. And I think that's really important because it's probably not feasible for most people to take Sunday. If you're cooking for four plus people, that's going to be more than two hours of cooking of, you know, batch cooking, all of that stuff for the week. So it's more about having in mind what you can just throw together last minute, because life comes at you and you never know what's going to happen. So as long as you're prepared and have them in the fridge and freezer, that's honestly the best thing that you can do.

Is there anything you have to be mindful of when you put, like how long things stay in the fridge?

Yes. So let's talk about just storage in general, because that can also be kind of daunting. If you have a big family, you probably will go through things quickly, right? I doubt that you have things lying around unless it's something that nobody liked. And it takes trial and error to get into a rhythm of knowing, like, if this is the first time somebody's meal prepping, they're not going to get it right off the bat unless they have a gift or something like that. So if something goes to waste, compost it or give it to a friend or something, find somebody to eat it or get chickens or bring it to a local farm. So, you know, you don't feel bad about it going to waste. And then, you know, okay, we're not going to make that dish again. So that's something good to note there. But yeah, let's talk about storage. So first of all, we want to make sure that we're putting food in the right containers. So I know in our practice we always talk about glass, things like that. No plastics or anything, especially with heat. We don't want any plastics leaching into our food, disrupting our endocrine system. We get enough, you know, toxic waste as it is, just like touching plastics and breathing in the air. We don't need it every day, you know, in our food, especially if we're using hot food, it's going to leash right into that or hot food in plastic containers. So glass is pretty safe. Make sure you have lids that seal pretty tightly. I know that we tend to lose lids a lot so, you know, do your best to keep it organized and make sure that the lids fit well, because if they don't, that's when bacteria and mold and stuff comes in. So make sure you get lids that seal really well. Some people like to use mason jars, that's glass with the secure lids on top of the well. So kind of just playing around with glass containers, making sure you're cooling things properly. So don't take something that's boiling hot, put it into the glass container and then put it in the fridge or freezer. Because what that does is it brings down the temperature of the fridge or freezer, which then puts all the other food at risk for getting bacteria in the temperature danger zone, which is 41 degrees or higher. So make sure your fridge is definitely below that at all times if you can.

So wait, so you put your hot food into your glass container, you let it cool down. Do you put the lid on before it cools? Do you put the lid on after it cools? Does it matter?

Good question. After you want it to kind of, if you put a lid on, it's going to retain the heat, right? So you kind of want to just leave it open, leave it out until it cools. The best thing to do is put them in shallow containers because the shallower something is, the faster it'll cool, right? Because there's not as much to cool. And then, so if it even helps get like, I have big, like casserole dishes that I put it in and then let it cool in there. And then you could portion it out into other containers if you want, or just store it like that, which is what I usually do. And then you want it, you don't want to leave it out for longer than probably two hours. It should be cooled by that point and then you can put it in the fridge or freeze it. So number one food we do not want to freeze is meat that we've already thawed. Right? So like if you had frozen beef or something like, or a steak and you thawed it out and you're like, oh, wait, I don't want this anymore. We don't want to put that back into the freezer because bacteria has probably already started to gather on it. We want to cook it first, then you can freeze it again if you want to.

After letting it cool.

After letting it cool, yes. Cooling is a given at this point. Point. So that's kind of the number one thing. Things that don't freeze well would be things with high moisture content, like vegetable wise. So if you've ever tried. If you were doing an experiment or you just didn't know and you froze a salad, you probably know that the leafy greens taste horrible when you take it out because they have high water content. So things like cucumber stew and zucchini and all of that, it doesn't really freeze well. But if you cook things and they're in soups and stews, that's pretty easy to freeze. If you blanch vegetables, meaning you kind of cook them and then kind of put them in a bowl with ice water to kind of shock them, they're pretty good for freezing as well. Another tip for freezing especially, I noticed this with bananas the hard way. My dad would freeze banana. Like, he. If the bananas were getting bad, he would just put the banana in there, and then he's like, oh, you can make a smoothie. There's frozen bananas. And I would take it and my hands would start burning because I was trying to peel this banana, and I'm like, how do you do this? And so I learned you cut up the banana first, then you freeze it, and it's in slices, and then it's easy to just throw into peeled, peeled, and cut. Right, Peeled. You do not want to take time to peel a frozen banana. It hurts, and it's not fun at all. So the same thing goes here. Cutting things up ahead of time, then freezing them. So it's not one big mess that you have to kind of, you know, break up and figure that out. Frozen fruit's awesome, though. I always keep frozen fruit. That's honestly where my biggest source of fruit comes from. Especially in the winter when we don't really have fresh produce, you know, that I can go pick up fresh berries at the market. I always get, you know, organic frozen fruit and put it in a smoothie in the. In my breakfast. Or I'll have some as a snack. Like, I love frozen cherries as a snack. It's like a dessert pretty much. So, yeah, frozen fruit's pretty easy. Frozen veggies. Another tip is go to the store and see what's frozen there. Whatever's frozen there, you can do yourself at home pretty much if you want to. Okay.

How long do things last? Once you've stored them properly in the fridge and the freezer. How long do you keep them?

Yes. So, like I kind of mentioned before, a rule of thumb for leftovers. I would say so three days. Once three days hits, you know, it's kind of getting old at that point. It's probably got some kind of mold Spores on it, just from the air. If you're not going to eat it after three days, I would freeze it. If you are going to eat it, eat it, you know, within the three days. And then as far as freezer goes, it really depends what it is. It depends on the moisture content. If it's a soup and stew, if it's frozen vegetables. I think a good rule of thumb would be like three months for something and then try to eat it. And then if you've ever heard of fifo, first in, first out. That's a good rule of thumb too, is like, if it was in there for a long time, try to bring it to the front. Because things get. We all know things get stuck in the back of the freezer, in the.

Back of the fridge, they get lost. Like socks.

Yes, exactly. Behind a dryer or in the dryer, things definitely get lost. Especially if your fridge is like, mine's kind of low. And I don't necessarily, like go down there every day and look in the back and see what's there. Sometimes I'll find a jar of olive top nut or something. So it's good to kind of know what's there too. If you're really organized in type A, maybe even take an inventory. Some people have like a whiteboard on there of what they need and what they have or what they're going to have that week. I mean, that's a great way to plan. Like, okay, these are our veggies for the week, These are our starches or carbs for the week, and these are our proteins for the week. That's something good. And then the whole family can see it. Oh, good. This is what we're having. It's like when they go to school and they can see the menu of like, what lunches they like the best. It's kind of the same thing. They'll know kind of what's on it. Unless you don't want them to know and you want it to be a surprise. That's good too. But for you to know what's in your fridge and freezer is helpful as well. If you're doing this, you're probably an organized person to some extent, right? If you're doing meal prep. So if you want to take it a step further, it's good to know what's in there too.

Or they had a consult with Stacy.

Or we're working on it together, right?

So say someone's listening to this and at the end of this they're like, I just can't. What Are the options for people who either can't carve out the time, their environment's not supportive, or they're really stopped by the prepping? What are some other services or websites that people can use to support themselves in eating healthier?

Yeah. So I think one thing that I've noticed that's really helped people is if you don't have the time to do this kind of thing, you probably do have a little bit of time to go on social media, right? Like, most of us are on it at least a few minutes a day. There's so many great food bloggers out there that post recipes constantly. There's three that I can think of that I love, and I always repost on my Instagram because they're consistently making food that is healthy but also cost effective and looks delicious, too. And so if you find people that you really like that you can follow, you know, that's kind of their life is doing that. So they're always coming up with new, innovative things that are easy. And most of them are moms, parents, you know. So I would say try to just look into. You know, Instagram has a good algorithm to help you find people that you might like. So finding one of those to keep you, give you some motivation and maybe give you some ideas to start with to think about. You don't have to do it right now. Just giving you the idea, planting the seed. And then also there's tons of meal kit companies out there now. There's a big market for it because we are such a busy society, but we do want to start eating healthy. Like, people are really understanding that their food is so important for prevention.

So what would you say are top three to five?

So there's a couple different categories. There's assembly serve, so they give you basically products that you would just throw together. Or there's they teach you how to cook. So there. There's all of the ingredients portioned out, and then you actually have to cook it. Or there's ones that are frozen. That's kind of the three that I've been able to find. So one is hungry root. That's one that a lot of our patients really like. That's the one that's more assembly serve. So it's not really cooking everything, but they're giving you everything you need to just throw together and have a meal. So that's one as far as ones that are frozen ready to go, you just heat it up. You can bring it to work and heat it up there. I really like fresh and lean because their ingredients are pretty good. And they have different types of diets too. So if you're doing gluten free, dairy free, paleo, things like that, I think they even have maybe vegan or vegetarian. So I try to find ones that have multiple options because so many of our patients are on different diets. So that's the frozen. And then the last one that I was mentioning. Oh. Is the cook. The one that you cook kind of like hellofresh or Blue Apron. But the healthier version is called Green Chef. And that one kind of teaches you how to cook. If you kind of want to dedicate some time to that, that's a good one too. So those are my top three. So Hungryroot, Fresh and Lean and Green Chef. And we can probably drop the links in the podcast details if you guys wanna see those. Oh, wait, last one. See a dietitian. So if you don't, you know, if you don't know where to start, see a dietitian that is going to work with you and meet you where you're at. That is my number one goal when I'm working with my patients. I'm not gonna give them unrealistic expectations. I'm not gonna have unrealistic expectations with them. Cause everyone starts somewhere different. So see a dietitian, talk to them, feel it out, and it'll help give you motivation to see where you can go with it.

Yeah. And I'm going to kind of second that and change it a little bit. Because not all dietitians are the same. And you really want to look at a functional medicine dietitian, somebody trained in this type of work. Because you really don't know what you're going to get otherwise.

I think they should just see you. You're fantastic.

Obviously they should.

Yeah, you can come see me. I'll work with you. If you want to just chat a little about it before we dive in, we can have a consult. Yeah. Ready for that?

Stacy, it's been amazing. Thank you for another great episode.

Yes, thank you, Stacy.

Thank you.

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