Case №09 · LIFE · 90 MIN · EASY

Meal Prep Without the Sunday Sacrifice

Meal prepping fails when it's framed as cooking ten perfect dishes. It works when it's framed as an assembly line for five repeatable lunches.

AI or DIY?

OUTCOME: A fridge with five ready lunches, a repeating grocery list, and Sunday evenings back.

Document A

The Spec Sheet

> for the machine · speed · precision

AI as menu planner, macro counter, and grocery-list generator.

Required

1
Generate the menu
Prompt: "Plan 5 work lunches around [cuisine you love]. Constraints: one-pot recipes, shared ingredients to cut waste, ~600 kcal each, vegetarian (or your preference). Reuse the same base ingredients across meals."
2
Collapse into one grocery list
Follow up: "Merge all 5 recipes into a single grocery list, grouped by supermarket section, with quantities for one person."
3
Get a cook-order
Then: "Sequence these recipes so total cooking time is under 90 minutes — what cooks while what rests?"
4
Iterate weekly
Rate each lunch 1–5 during the week. Friday: 'keep the 4s and 5s, swap the rest' — the menu improves itself.

EFFICIENCY NOTE: Menu decisions (the actual time-killer) drop from ~1 hour of dithering to 5 minutes.

Document B

— for your hands · craft · patience

The no-apps method: one base, three toppings, five boxes.

Materials

1
Pick one base
Something you genuinely like and can eat variations of all week. Cook a big pot — this is 80% of the job.
2
Roast one tray of vegetables
Whatever's in the fridge, olive oil, salt, 25 min at 200°C. One tray, zero attention.
3
One protein, three ways
Paneer/eggs/chicken cooked plain, then split: curry-ish, salad-ish, wrap-ish. Same ingredient, three different lunches.
4
Assembly line, then label
Line up 5 boxes, fill base → veg → protein in passes. Day-1-to-3 boxes in the fridge, day-4-to-5 in the freezer.

OLD-HAND TIP: Sauces make repetition invisible: one yoghurt-herb, one peanut, one tomato. Same food, five personalities.

// the verdict

Filed & Decided

DIY wins the cooking; AI wins the deciding. Use AI for the plan and grocery list, then execute the dumb-simple assembly line.

// common failure modes

✕Prepping salads on day 1 for day 5 (sog). Dress at eat-time.
✕Ten recipes instead of one base — that's catering, not prepping.
✕No backup meal for the day you inevitably skip — keep 2 frozen emergency boxes.