It was my rest day so I just puttered around in the garden from about 10 to 1:30. We had our semi-cheat meal breakfast of Bisquick light pancakes, omelettes, and turkey bacon, then headed outside to tackle our little weed kingdom.

I weeded, pruned, weeded some more, transplanted some peppers, a daylily and a begonia, pulled the dead plants from last season, cleared out a messy collection of containers, raked in some veggie plant food, and um…weeded some more.

Did I mention that my yard has a lot of weeds?

In the afternoon Chris and I drove out to Altamonte Springs to try out a meal prep kitchen for which I had a gift certificate and prepared 12 entrees (with 6-10 servings each) in about an hour and a half. I think the place, Quick Time Meals, has a great concept. They provide all the ingredients, condiments, tools (mostly measuring spoons, cups, ziploc bags, foil pans, and plastic gloves) and spices and do all of the tedious side work like chopping veggies, cutting meat into correct portions, printing out labels with cooking instructions, and posting recipes. Customers schedule a session time to come in and basically assemble all of the fresh but uncooked ingredients into 8 or 12 separate entree packages (complete with the aforementioned cooking instruction label) that are immediately transported home in a cooler, tossed into the freezer, and then pulled out, defrosted, and cooked over the next few weeks as needed.

It’s sort of what I do when I flash marinate two portions of chicken or beef by mixing up some marinade in a freezer bag, tossing the meat of choice inside, sealing with as little air as possible, and chucking the bag into the freezer for future use. In the case of QTM, they scale their recipes for six typical American servings (which equals about 8-10 servings or so if you are a female doing 6 meals a day BFL style), largely stick to meals that can be baked, slow-cooked, or grilled, and also pack a separate bag with pre-mixed sauces to add to the entree once it has been cooked!

That last idea–the bag of sauce–is pure genius. I am going to start doing this with the various Chinese sauces I normally have to make from scratch and just stockpile them in bulk in my freezer.

Flash marinated frozen meat + bag of frozen sauce + bag of frozen asparagus stir-fry mix + fruit of the day = Meal in 15 minutes (including microwave defrosting time if sauce and meat were not chucked into the fridge the night before to defrost)

Brilliant!

This was what we assembled, in case anyone was curious:

1 Asian Plumb Wild Pork Wings
2 Fish With Cilantro Lime Sauce
2 Roasted Beef Tenderloin with Horseradish Sauce
2 Rock Shrimp Quesadillas w/Sofia’s Salsa
1 Slow-Braised Carnitas
2 Ginger Sesame Chicken and Grilled Pineapples
2 40 Clove Chicken

I think Chris was pretty impressed at how fast and easy the whole process was. By the time we got to the 40 Clove Chicken, he was whizzing through the measuring, marinating, and tagging like a pro. I might be able to trick him into helping me out in about two months when we run out of our QTM stash of lunches and dinners. I plan to set up my own healthy home meal assembly line…though I am sure I’ll be the one doing the slicing and dicing while he just gets to do the instant gratification assembly part.

In the meanwhile, I am just going to enjoy not having to think about what to buy and make for lunch or dinner for the next 8 weeks. My grocery trips are going to consist of nothing but soy milk, cottage cheese, juice, fruit, oats, eggs, raisins, nuts, omelette veggies, rice cakes, peanut butter, and cereal (for Chris) until the wedding. Woohoo!