I typically spend the week thinking about what I’ll make for main meals and then execute it all on one day. I make 8 full meals then 5 overnight chia oats and 3-5 portions of whatever meat was on sale at the store. It typically takes a few hours on my last day off any week (work a really weird schedule). I supplement any other cooking/more oats as the week progresses.
I buy two 30 packs of beer and divide them 7 ways.
I only cook for myself so most recipes end up going in the fridge or freezer since they make more than 1 serving. I don’t like eating the same meal twice in one day but I don’t mind eating the same meal every day, so as long as I have 3 distinct meals in rotation each day I’m fine. If that number drops to 2 or 1 then I get cooking again.
I’ve never been someone who can eat the same thing multiple days in a row, so i can’t do the “standard” approach of making proportioned meals. I also can’t just eat food I’ve heated back up in the microwave for every meal.
In a perfect week, I’ll make some bread, some rice, a soup/stew, a sauce of some sort, etc. I also make a lot of yogurt and ricotta-type cheese (from milk, not whey), because milk is heavily subsidized where I live.
I basically just try to have different things I can combine in different orders, and typically I’m leaving some part of the process to still be done each night (roasting veggies, boiling pasta, stir frying something, etc).
