Cook Once, Eat All Week: 26 Weeks of Gluten-Free, Affordable Meal Prep to Preserve Your Time & Sanity Paperback – April 23, 2019

Convinced by The Minimal Mom on YouTube that the cookbook "Cook Once, Eat All Week" might be life-changing, I purchased a used copy (spiral bound) on Amazon. This book has quite a collection of HEALTHY recipes that use plenty of vegetables and no cans/boxes/junk food (although bacon is debatable). The recipes call for real, fresh ingredients. The book contains 26 "weeks" (a set of 3) of dinner recipes that use similar ingredients that are prepped ahead of time. For example, cook 5 lbs of chicken and divide it into 3 containers to use later. Each recipe serves 4 to 6 people (generously). I looked through the recipes and chose week 09 because I already had most of the ingredients needed. I only had to buy avocados and mini corn tortillas. I'm not a big kale fan and I already had fresh spinach and mixed greens so I used those in place of the kale. The "prep day" was pretty straight forward. I used a pressure cooker to cook the chicken instead of baking in the oven. I was concerned about not having enough room in my fridge for everything, but that was no problem. The containers don't have to be big. I used fitpacker containers (28oz and 12oz sizes) and glass jars (8oz). The first dinner I made was a chicken and veggie casserole. It took 10 minutes to put together, which is the amount of time for my oven to heat up. Bake time was 30 min. BAM! Dinner's on the table! EVERYONE in my family liked it (and I do have some kids that are hesitant to try new things). The casserole was a complete meal so I didn't make any sides to serve with it. The second dinner I made was street tacos. It took about 25 min from start to on-the-table, which is amazing considering I normally spend an hour making dinner. I was skeptical about this recipe being a complete meal, but it definitely was! Again, everyone really liked this dinner! It was seriously WOW! (And I don't even really like corn tortillas.) We made 15 mini tacos instead of 12, but I bet we could probably get 20 out of it. Next time, I will double (or maybe triple) the amount of greens called for in the recipe and provide more limes wedges for squeezing over the tacos. This would be easy to make the next time we have guests for dinner! The third dinner was a salad. It took me about 9 minutes to put together. I decided to use 3 avocados because I had to cut out so many dark brown spots, so that took longer. I wasn't sure if the dressing would be good because I used dry herbs (halved the amount) instead of fresh and had to add water to get it to the right consistency. The dressing didn't taste fantastic by itself, but on the salad it was fine. The salad was very good and liked by everyone. I thought it was much improved with a sprinkling of fresh ground salt and pepper. Next time I'll add a little more bacon. Again, this recipe was a complete meal. All 3 recipes were satisfying and filling for 5 of us. I feel very accomplished for making amazingly delicious dinners in so short a time each day! The best part was that I didn't feel completely wiped out after dinner because the dinners didn't take so long to make. I also really liked having a plan for what I was going to make and having the dinners halfway prepared before I even started. I already picked out which set of recipes I will be making next week and am so excited!!!

First of all, I never expect a cookbook to be precisely what I need. I cannot have gluten, dairy, poultry, or pork. That said, I really like this cookbook. It has fantastic customization options for dairy free, egg free, nut free, low carb, and I’m sure one or two other things I’m forgetting.My main goal in purchasing this was to get some new recipes that I could use with my family and make fit my own dietary restrictions. Are there some weeks I won’t really be able to use because the protein substitutions I am able to make won’t work? Most likely. But it’s still worth it to me. One way that I make it work well is by making sure there’s enough leftover for myself from a meal and then using chicken, pork, etc. from the supplemental meals in between. That keeps my family from being restricted to only beef and fish, but I’m not having to make multiple dinners in an evening.Second, the ingredients list and advance preparation for each week is well organized and well-written. And for my busy family and me, it makes so much sense to have a bigger prep day to make weeknights quicker and easier, yet still allowing for delicious, healthy whole foods.The section in the front of the book outlines how to accommodate your size of family and how many meals per week you need (taking into account the three meals from the weekly prep as well as two supplemental meal suggestions).I recommend this cookbook, and I’m glad a friend recommended it to me.

I LOVE this cookbook. I love that I can walk into the grocery store with a prepared grocery list that has been thoughtfully put together not only to streamline my time, but reduce cost and food waste. In our household it's just my husband and me so in making the 3 meals each week we have plenty of leftovers to get a full week's worth of dinners. I enjoy cooking but not when I have to stress about what to cook/buy/prep/store (Love the handy tips on storing!!), but have always struggled to plan far enough ahead for the week. In addition, I have never felt emboldened by a resource (I've tried various recipes from various sources on the internet) in order to get it done. That's all changed with this book and I want more! On top of it all, we also have so much fun with it ! We spend an hour or so on Saturday or Sunday (when I did plan it would take me all day on a sunday making overly complicated meals that didnt have any variety or cohesiveness) enjoying learning new recipes and putting together the ingredients for the week. Above all I love that it saves me the extra brain power and legwork needed to think up thoughtful, diverse dishes that at the end of the day are also Delicious. In summation, I am so pleased to have made this purchase and supported Cassie Joy and her team who I have been following for a little over a year. She embodies all of the effort, time and love that was clearly put into this book and we are so thankful for all of it. Buy this book!! You wont regret it! Thank you Cassie Joy and team! :)