The Maths of Meal Prep: Why I'm Reconsidering My Weeknight Cooking Chaos
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I approach weeknight cooking, and honestly, it’s a bit of a mess. There’s this post I came across from someone in WA who’s managed to prepare 26 meals for about $55 – roughly $2.10 per serve – through bulk meal prepping and strategic shopping. And look, I’ll be upfront: my initial reaction was a mix of genuine admiration and mild defensiveness about my own kitchen habits.
The numbers are pretty compelling when you break them down. They’re talking about beef stroganoff, butter chicken, Tuscan chicken, meatballs – proper meals with around 150g of protein per serve, plus fresh vegetables. The key seems to be timing a big cook-up with specials, using loyalty programs strategically, and having the freezer space to store everything. They even saved an additional 10% through Woolworths Rewards and another 4% buying discounted gift cards through their RAC membership. That’s the kind of bargain shopping that speaks to my soul.
Here’s what got me thinking, though. My household is three people – me, my wife, and our teenage daughter – and every evening feels like a negotiation about what everyone will actually eat. The teen is going through one of those phases where yesterday’s favourite meal is today’s “I can’t eat that.” My wife and I both work, and by 6:30pm on a Tuesday, the last thing either of us wants to do is stand at the stove for 45 minutes. So we end up with a rotation of about four safe meals, supplemented by the occasional takeaway when we’re too exhausted to function. It’s neither cost-effective nor particularly healthy, if I’m being honest.
The methodology in this post is fascinating from a systems perspective – and maybe that’s the DevOps background in me talking, but there’s something elegant about treating meal preparation like you would any other optimization problem. You identify your requirements (variety, nutrition, time savings), you look at your constraints (budget, storage, cooking skills), and you build a process that addresses both. The person posting mentioned they wouldn’t cook every night just for themselves, so batch cooking solves that problem entirely. They’re essentially front-loading the effort and spreading the benefit across multiple weeks.
What strikes me about this approach isn’t just the money saved, though $315 for a $422 shop is nothing to sneeze at. It’s the mental load reduction. Decision fatigue is real, and every weeknight’s “what’s for dinner?” question burns through cognitive resources I’d rather spend elsewhere. Having 26 meals sorted means 26 fewer decisions to make. That’s nearly a month of not having to think about it.
The environmental angle interests me too, though it wasn’t the main focus of the original post. Food waste in Australia is staggering – we’re talking about 7.6 million tonnes annually, much of it from households. When you’re meal prepping in bulk, you’re buying exactly what you need for specific recipes. There’s less chance of that sad, wilted bunch of coriander dying slowly in the back of the fridge because you only needed two tablespoons for one dish. You’re also potentially reducing packaging waste if you’re buying larger quantities rather than multiple smaller packages over time.
The capital requirements are worth acknowledging, though. An extra freezer isn’t cheap, and not everyone has the space for one. There’s also an upfront time investment – spending several hours cooking on a weekend requires both the time and the physical stamina to stand in a kitchen that long. I’ll freely admit that some Saturdays, I struggle to muster the energy for basic household tasks, let alone a marathon cooking session.
But then I think about those Tuscan chicken portions in the freezer, or that beef stroganoff made with home-grown mushrooms (impressive, by the way). The user mentioned they’re getting variety and good nutrition, which is often what goes out the window when you’re tired and reaching for convenience options. And if you’re someone living alone, which seems to be their situation, the economics become even more compelling. Cooking for one often means either eating the same thing for days or letting food spoil – neither of which is ideal.
I’ve got a mental block to get past, I think. There’s something about batch cooking that my brain categorizes as “too much effort,” even though the maths clearly shows it’s less effort overall when you amortize it across all those meals. Maybe it’s the Australian cultural thing of priding ourselves on being casual and spontaneous? Except spontaneity at 6:30pm on a Wednesday when everyone’s hungry usually just means frustration and poor choices.
The loyalty program stacking is something I could definitely get better at. Five thousand seven hundred points for a single shop is impressive, and that’s real money – nearly $30 off the next shop. I’ve got the Woolworths Everyday Rewards card gathering digital dust in my Apple Wallet, barely used because I forget to scan it half the time. Leaving money on the table like that goes against everything I believe in as a bargain hunter.
I might not be ready to commit to a full 26-meal bulk prep session just yet. But maybe starting smaller would work – perhaps six or eight portions of a couple of different meals, timed with decent specials. Test the waters, see if we actually eat the frozen portions or if they end up as permafrost in the back of the freezer for two years. The slow cooker approach for the beef stroganoff seems particularly forgiving, and I can definitely manage throwing ingredients in a pot and walking away.
The biggest hurdle, really, is breaking out of our current patterns. Humans are creatures of habit, and our weeknight dinner chaos has become a comfortable – if inefficient – routine. But comfortable routines can also be expensive routines, and we’re definitely spending more than $2.10 per serve on our current approach. At some point, the pragmatic thing to do is acknowledge that what we’re doing isn’t working brilliantly and try something different.
Maybe that’s the project for next weekend. Pull up those Woolworths specials, see what proteins are discounted, find a couple of reliable recipes, and give it a go. Worst case scenario, we’ve got some frozen meals that aren’t quite as good as we hoped. Best case scenario, we’ve cracked a system that saves us money, reduces stress, and means I’m not standing in front of the fridge at 6:45pm on a weeknight wondering what on earth we’re going to eat. That sounds like a pretty reasonable return on investment to me.