How to meal prep and not want to die

Wake up babe it’s Grain Sunday.

As a person with a full-time job and a commitment to cooking from scratch, I want to like meal prepping. In theory, a single afternoon of focused work that pays off throughout the week sounds exactly like something I would do. However, I hate eating leftovers for more than one day, and the thought of three-day-old roasted vegetables fills me with unimaginable dread.

Yet… Dinner beckons… I am responsible for two to three dinners, my office lunches, and my ever-changing energy reservoir. At the beginning of the year, when I was recipe-testing grain cooking methods for the (free!) kitchen printable, I accidentally discovered a new “meal prep” tactic that is kind of changing our lives. It’s called Grain Sunday™.

Grain Sunday is when I cook two to three different grains on Sunday afternoon. I cook the grains while I load the dishwasher or do light ingredient prep for Sunday dinner. I make one grain in the Instant Pot and one on the stovetop. I date and label them, and then we have building blocks for lunches and dinners that week.

One week, I made quinoa, brown rice, and white rice. The next, I made farro and brown rice, and since I was there, at the stove, I boiled potatoes. Cooking and cooling potatoes and white rice also has the advantage of creating “resistant starches.” We love that! The following week, I cooked quinoa and white rice. And so forth.

The cooked grains have opened up possibilities for convenience meals throughout the week. The cooked white rice means I can make a quick rice bowl for WFH lunch with leftover tofu, fried egg, and whatever raw veggies are in the fridge. Or I can bulk up a salad, make a quick veggie burger, or at the very least save myself another 30-minute task.

Add a homemade salad dressing, a quart of home-cooked thawed beans, and a few packages of tofu and tempeh — I have a whole-food, mix-and-match pantry to last us the week. Below are ideas on our favorite meals for Sunday’s grains.

White and brown rice

Of course, the classic is my Tofu Rice Bowl, which is fabulous with either white or brown rice. The toppings are easily seasonally adaptable, and tofu is pantry-friendly. Skylar also makes tinned tuna or salmon rice bowls for lunch, which he dresses up with avocado, chili crisp, or yogurt mixed with ranch seasoning.

You know, I love rajma—the Punjabi-style bean dish. Brown rice is particularly lovely with this tomato-based dish; the nuttiness of the rice balances the acid. I love Rancho Gordo’s brown rice. Nothing else compares!

Farro

Cooked farro crisps up nicely in a frying pan with a splash of oil, and I’ve been using it to bulk up green salads. A recent one was arugula, feta, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. Leftover farro also became the base for a pseudo-taco salad with ingredients Skylar had prepared the night before, like steamed sweet potatoes, seitan crumbles, and an avocado.

Roasted squash pairs wonderfully with the chewy farro. I added crumbled feta and a few cherry tomatoes for one meal. While the squash roasted, I cooked marinated tofu—a perfect, minimal-effort dinner.

Quinoa

I love a homemade veggie burger. I usually make

Lukas Volger

’s classic Easy Bean Burgers from Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, but I spied a quinoa, red bean, and potato burger in there that I had to try. I would never cook an entire pot of quinoa for a recipe that only called for a cup, but the beauty of Grain Sunday was that I didn’t have to! I found a few sliced homemade buns in the freezer and par-cooked frozen french fries I had made weeks before to round out the meal.

And, like farro, cooked quinoa crisps up fabulously and bulks up even the most boring green salads.

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What other cooked whole grains would lend well to this style of meal prep? I’d love to expand my horizons.