How I gain time during the day with meal prepping

It's Friday and I don't have to cook anything today. I have a full day as I have many things planned for today. I'm learning Japanese characters, doing sports, writing in three different documents, going to language class, doing homework and going to the weekly games night in the evening. I usually have two options for food on days like this:

1. I eat cold dishes like bread (here in Japan only baguette, not in the mood for that anymore)

2. go out for dinner

No bad options? That's what I thought for the last four weeks, but although I'm a huge fan of bread and have even come to terms with the bad baguette in Japan, I don't feel like eating it several times a day. I can be persuaded to eat a salami sandwich with a cup of milk for breakfast, maybe with a pepper and a bit of cheese, but to be honest: White bread every day, that's not good for me. One goal I have set myself for Japan is to get in good shape, lose weight, become more athletic. Whilst I'm now doing a bit of sport every day and actually getting more athletic (endurance, strength), my diet is still so-so.

Going out to eat? Great idea, and I could probably do a lot more than I currently do, but ramen is actually not that healthy due to all the oil and sushi you can get for a good price here too, but when you face it, eating out every day is not possible for someone like me who currently has no job and is living on a shoestring if I want to eat well on top of that.

Cooking instead of eating out

The solution? I cook dinner. And that's what I've been doing for the last few weeks, but I've been so incredibly annoyed by cooking food in these circumstances that my motivation was almost gone and I gave up. A single hotplate and little space for cutting vegetables and meat? Unfortunately very frustrating and time-consuming. Whilst I've now got used to the lack of space, simple meals like rice with roasted/boiled vegetables take about 1 hour at least. This is because you can only move on to the next ingredient once you've finished one and taken it off the hob. For more elaborate dishes, you can spend a good 90 minutes in the kitchen. That's not bad in itself, but unfortunately I don't have that much time at the moment.

The real solution

Fortunately, the first few times I cooked rice in my pot, I was very clumsy at estimating the quantity and still had a lot left over. So I usually had rice left over for the next morning or at lunchtime and fried it with eggs and vegetables. But that also took time, even if only a little. The real problem was that I've had afternoon lessons since this week, so I have to stay at school for lunch and only have a 10-minute break to eat. It was always enough for a snack during morning lessons, which I could buy from the convenience store opposite, but a proper lunch? Not a chance. So I bought two microwaveable containers and cooked extra food so that I could pack the rest. I did this two days in a row and then cooked a total of 6 meals twice. Really great if you ask me. I fry some meat, veg and add the rice and I have a high quality meal that probably doesn't even cost a euro (I found frozen veg, very cheap). Six meals equals 3 days of two hot meals a day. All I have to do at school is unpack my box, pop it in the microwave and I have a meal that is the envy of others.

The advantages of meal prepping

Mealprepping literally means ‘meal preparation’ and it's nothing else. The benefits are simple:

• Reduced cooking time per meal

• Cheap

• Hot meals in places where others can only eat ready meals

It's as simple as that. I'm very happy with the way I organise my meals and I'm realising that I'm slowly getting more and more interested in trying out new culinary things, even in this little mini kitchen.

But that's all from me for now, so long!