Cooking for yourself instead of eating out can be a huge time and money saver in the long run – especially if you’re utilizing your freezer! This is a great, healthy habit to get into while on the road, and it can easily be accomplished if you dedicate a little time to cooking while you’re home – or coordinate meal plans with your wife/girlfriend/mom/etc. Learn more about the benefits of meal planning and cooking your own food here:
1. Eliminate the guesswork. Everyone knows what it’s like to be completely out of dinner ideas. Oftentimes, you’re in a time crunch, starving but not craving anything specific, and you’re not trying to waste too much time on a simple meal. Once you’ve dedicated a little time and brainpower to compiling a menu for the week the guesswork is completely eliminated – problem solved!
3. Be strategic. Use a little strategy that we like to call, “Double Duty Dinners” to help yourself out when it comes to creating the food plan, managing the overall cost of food, and the time that you invest in creating your meal. You can reference our “Double Duty Dinners” series (chicken, beef, and pork) to help yourself get started. The strategy is to create 3 meals that can turn into 3 more meals! For example you would buy a pork tenderloin for pork tenderloin the first night and pork lo mien the second, a roast chicken that you can turn into fajitas the next evening, and a pot roast that you can transform into a delicious stew. That’s 6 amazing meals in under an hour and a half of prep time!
3. It keeps you out of the grocery store. Let’s face it, the less time you spend in grocery and convenience stores, the better. Once you’ve planned your meals for the week, you can compile a shopping list, and complete a one stop shopping mission. It feels expensive to buy all of your groceries at once – but in the long run, it usually ends up being less expensive as you’re going with an exact set of items in mind. The more times you go to the store, the more likely you are to be tempted to purchase unnecessary and often unhealthy items.
4. Freeze your leftovers! When meal planning in an effort to take dinner with you on the road, you’ll want to cook in large quantities. You always have to remember to reserve enough for the next night, and you’ll probably want to set aside a serving to freeze for yourself or your spouse that’s out on the road.
5. Package with care. Cooking ahead as a driver or for a driver is a little bit of work, so be sure to take steps to keep the process convenient. Remember that storage space in the cab is not plentiful, so be sure to flatten out the contents of your freezer bags as they’re hardening in your freezer. This way, drivers can stack their meals in the small freezer space that they might have as opposed to getting out on the road with a fantastic dinner that can’t fit into the freezer and won’t keep.