I love food. I love cooking. I love cooking for other people. But I have a deep, unshakable hatred for weekly meal prep.

I’ve tried to make it work. I’ve stood over sheet pans on Sunday afternoons, roasting broccoli until the kitchen smelled faintly of sulfur, portioning out tidy mounds of chicken and rice into identical little plastic containers. I’ve upgraded to glass, hoping that a sturdier vessel might redeem the bleakness of four-day-old poultry. It didn’t. I’ve stacked my fridge with Mason jar salads that slowly collapsed into themselves, Mason jar noodle soups waiting for their just-add-water reveal, Mason jar overnight oats (so many Mason jars).

Don’t get me wrong. There were stretches when I was “good” at it — when I mustered the discipline to churn through the same routine week

See Full Page