Cook Once, Eat All Week—Weeks 1-5
After eating RP-meal-prep-style for what feels like 700 years, we’d had enough. So I went on the hunt for meal prep books that had a little more variety than chicken + rice in large format.
I’m now cooking my way through Cook Once, Eat All Week by Cassy Joy Garcia. The title is of course an exaggeration. But the idea is to meal prep based on shared components, for example, in Week 1 you get 3 dinners based on shredded chicken, rice and broccoli. You prep those items ahead of time, then when it’s time to make the meal it’s mostly just sauteing some onions and assembling. There have been several recipes that are almost entirely passive prep (stick em in the oven), which I appreciate. The recipes usually yield 4 servings (sometimes 5-6) so we get lunch leftovers out of them too. Each week she suggests 2 bonus dinners that are super simple to make (like, throw a pork chop in a pan, bam, done).
The recipes are gluten-free, which I didn’t realize when I bought it. I’m fine with it, but it does result in some wacky ideas like the meatza (which……actually turned out to be one of our faves lmao) and stuffing avocados with shredded chicken (our least favorite so far). She also gives suggestions to make things paleo/keto/dairy-free, which is nice! Overall, we’ve liked the recipes so far, and I’ve been really impressed with how thoughtfully put together the book is.
Since I’m going to the trouble and all, I thought I’d keep track of how we like everything. You’d think this would be the perfect opportunity to practice food photography, and you’d be right except that I’m usually slamming this dinner on the table as fast as I can before toddler meltdown hour. So…no. You get the bad photography. Except Week 1 where I took no photos because I hadn’t had this idea yet.
Favorites from these weeks:
- Meatza (week 2)
- Balsamic Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner (week 3)
- Green Chili Chicken Casserole (week 5)
- Chicken Parm Bake (week 5)
Week 1
(No photos)
BBQ Chicken and Rice Casserole—3/5. I’d eat it again, but nothing much to say about it. The BBQ sauce carries it, so it depends on what kind of sauce you get.
White Chicken Chili—4/5. For FODMAP reasons I left the beans out, so this was really more like a creamy chicken soup than a chili. However, the flavor was good, and even JP ate some.
Chicken and Broccoli Fried Rice—I gave this a 4/5 but Bren gave it a 5/5. I bet if he made it, it would be really good (he’s the wok guy, lol).
Week 2
Spinach and Artichoke Meatza—5/5, a surprise hit. It’s a pizza but it has a ground beef crust. We were a little dubious about the concept but, as Bren pointed out, it’s basically like eating a hamburger without the bun. We were both pleasantly surprised! The artichoke and garlic cream cheese really sold it.
Enchilada-Stuffed Zucchini Boats—3/5, and we only really liked the filling. The boats were just…not very good. Also, I felt like I needed twice as much enchilada sauce for the amount of beef we had. HOWEVER, the cilantro-lime cauliflower rice was “ON HIT.” 5/5 just for that component.
Ground Beef Stroganoff—3/5. Good flavor. The sauce was super loose (as you can see) but that’s probably my fault…I was burned by the enchilada boats so I doubled the sauce and it didn’t really work lol. But, tasted fine.
Week 3
Loaded Cauliflower Casserole—5/5, although it photographs especially poorly lol. I mean, you can’t go wrong with shredded chicken topped with bacon and cheese. Cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes made it feel a little less heavy, which was nice.
Balsamic Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner—5/5, great flavor, and even JP ate some. I will say though…I don’t know what is up with my measurements vs. the author’s measurements. Maybe cauliflower heads are much larger where she lives. But, as you can see, I could have used a little more cauliflower here. 😛
Buffalo Chicken-Stuffed Avocados—2/5. How would you like to eat 2 avocados in one sitting? Oh, you wouldn’t? Lmao. The chicken was great, but the avocado vehicle…it was a lot. And, we didn’t think it would keep very well, so we just opted to eat them all. That’s 4 avocados. So much. Too much.
Week 4
Bacon Burgers with Broccoli and Twice-Baked Fries—3/5. Is it a burger without the bun? I got buns (we don’t have to be gluten-free). This was fine, just kind of standard. I actually realize I forgot to take a photo because meh it’s burgers and fries. 🙂
Picadillo Tacos—3/5. This was also fine, but we felt like the sauce was flavorless. I did notice it was really thin when I was making it, and I checked to see if she wanted me to reduce it but…nope. Just “warm through.” Someday I’ll figure out how the sauces work in this book. Also, I should have diced the potatoes much smaller but I am so very lazy.
Cottage Pie—3/5. Good, pretty standard I guess. Really liked the red wine/beef stock flavor. This was actually supposed to have broccoli in it, but I accidentally ate all the broccoli with the burgers (again, it didn’t seem like enough?). So I just put the whole bag of peas/carrots in, rather than a portion. It worked out fine.
Week 5
Chicken Parmesan Bake—5/5. I forgot to take a pic which is bummer because we both really liked it. The sauce was note-worthily good (the author and I finally agreed on a sauce) and we liked the pork rinds crust. I don’t read ahead in the book—I just uncritically purchase the items on the shopping list—and part of me was like “ah man if I had known they were a breadcrumbs sub I wouldn’t have bothered” because we have breadcrumbs. But another part of me was like… yummm pork rinds. We didn’t even mind the zoodles.
Green Chili Chicken Casserole—5/5. Loved the flavor, loved the cheese (I put on extra, of course).
Cajun Chicken and Rice Skillet—4/5. I just thought this was OK. It seemed oddly flavorless to me, but Bren disagreed? So that’s why it gets a 4 and not a 3. I don’t know. I’d be willing to make it and try it again, maybe I was just off that day.
