Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/05/23/my-experience-with-meal-prepping-for-a-friend/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=55734

At my age, I have started to have more and more friends decide to start families. Settle down, get married, have kids, the works. So many of my peers and even close friends are choosing this path, and it’s been hard for me to think of ways to support them through this journey of theirs. Sometimes I feel disconnected to my friends because of it, since I just can’t relate at all to what they’re going through, but at the end of the day I still want to be there for them and be a good friend. But I couldn’t figure out how.

About a month ago, I was scrolling on Tik Tok, and this video from Mad About Food popped up (click on it if it doesn’t show up for you or if the window here is wonky):

@mad_about_food

meal prep for a new mom I dropped this food off to a friend who recently had her first baby because there is nothing better when you’re a new parent than someone else cooking for you. Full recipes at the link in my bio! meal prep breakfast sandwiches stuffed shells with meat oatmeal chocolate chip cookies apple cider vinaigrette

♬ original sound – mad_about_food

Meal prep for a new mom. It was genius! How had I not thought of that? Food is basically my love language. I should’ve realized sooner that making food for my friends was the answer I had been searching for. It’s helpful, practical, and something I can do to help that doesn’t involve dirty diapers!

The menu seemed simple enough: breakfast sandwiches, stuffed shells, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. All of that seemed pretty cheap, easy to make, and convenient to have on hand to bake whenever they were ready. So let’s talk about if it actually was, in fact, cheap and easy.

Step one was gathering ingredients for everything. I had to assess how much I had on hand already, and what I needed to go buy. The recipes themselves are pretty simplistic. There’s nothing you wouldn’t be able to find at the store, and no special expensive ingredients or anything like that.

For the breakfast sandwiches, I needed to go buy all the ingredients. The breakfast sandwiches required a dozen eggs, but the cookies also required eggs, so I  bought an 18-count of eggs. She uses bacon in the video, but I opted for Canadian bacon so I didn’t have to actually cook any bacon.

First, you blend up a dozen eggs with a container of cottage cheese and bake it. I thought that was a strange mixture of ingredients, but it baked up so nicely and came out perfect! Once the eggs cooled and I cut the sheet of baked eggs into twelve squares, assembling the breakfast sandwiches was so easy. Just split the English muffin, put a square of egg on it, top it with Canadian bacon and a slice of cheddar cheese (I used Sargento), and that’s really it.

Like she does in the video, I individually wrapped each one in foil and put each one in its own freezer sandwich size Ziploc bag.

Let’s talk dishes. I used a mixing bowl and an immersion blender, a 13×9 baking dish, a knife, and a baking sheet. Not bad!

For the stuffed shells, I did in fact need to go buy every single ingredient. The recipe contains a lot of common pantry items though that you might have regularly, like the pasta and the marinara, and I’m sure some of you have a log of ground beef as a regular grocery you buy. I will say normally I have Italian seasoning but I had just ran out last week so I needed a new bottle.

Anyways, the stuffed shells were not too complicated. You cook the meat, and you mix the meat with the ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella. I did this in a stand mixer, but you can totally do it by hand if you want. You cook the shells, you wait for them to cool, and then ya stuff ’em. Top the shells with sauce and more mozzarella and bada bing bada boom, stuffed shells. Easy peasy! Do not bake it after you assemble it, whoever you’re gifting it to will just throw it in the oven when they’re ready to have it!

The dishes count on the stuffed shells was considerably higher than the breakfast sandwiches. I used a pan and spatula to cook the meat, the stand mixer bowl and attachment, a pot to boil the pasta, a strainer, several measuring cups and measuring spoons, and a spoon to scoop the filling with.

Finally, for the cookies, I can’t believe I’m saying this but I had every ingredient on hand! Please, hold your applause until the end. Though, my brown sugar was sadly rock hard, so I bought a new bag of light brown sugar. Other than that, I didn’t have to buy anything for the cookies.

The cookies were second nature to me, as cookies are my favorite thing to make and I do it semi-regularly. Plus, when making cookies, the stand mixer is your best friend. So, it was no trouble mixing the butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, and dry ingredients, and folding in the chocolate chips. It was quick and easy and honestly the biggest issue I faced was spilling some oats all over the counter.

In the instructions she says to chill the dough before rolling it into balls, and usually I’m tempted to skip this step because I’m impatient, but I actually listened. And thank goodness I did because even after that hour chilling, when I was rolling the dough into balls it was definitely like, very heat sensitive. I don’t know if my hands were just hot as heck for some reason or what but I almost had to put it all back in the fridge because the balls were just becoming hot messes.

But, I managed to make all the balls and instead of baking them, you just freeze the balled dough. Then the person you’re gifting them to can bake as many as they want at a time. They could just take two balls out and bake up one or two cookies, or they could put the whole tray in at once. Very convenient.

Dishes for cookies were the usual suspects, the stand mixer bowl and attachment, various measuring cups and measuring spoons, a rubber spatula, nothing too wild.

I bought everything at Kroger, and after buying the ingredients as well as disposable trays like in the video, plus some Ziploc bags and aluminum foil to cover stuff with, my total was a little less than a hundred dollars. And the time I spent actually preparing the food was probably about five hours, six if you count the time it took to do dishes and clean up. Admittedly I am sort of slow when it comes to cooking, though. Things that take “only thirty minutes” will take me double that time, if not more.

So, it took like a full afternoon and a decent chunk of change for ingredients, but honestly I think it’s worth it and I’m just happy I found something that I can contribute to a friend who is going through something as monumental as becoming a parent. My friend was so happy to receive the food, and that made me happy in return! It was a great feeling, and I can’t wait to do it all again for my other pregnant friends. I have a lot of those right now, it seems.

Do you make freezer meals often (this was my first time)? Do you like Canadian bacon? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/05/23/my-experience-with-meal-prepping-for-a-friend/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=55734