Budget Meal Prep

Cooking every night when you're tired is unrealistic. Ordering delivery is expensive ($15-20 per meal vs $2-4 per home-cooked meal). Meal prep solves this: two to three hours on Sunday produces five to seven days of ready-to-heat meals. This skill provides a complete repeatable system — not recipes, but a framework you load with your own preferences and dietary needs. Budget target: $40-60/week for one person eating three meals and snacks daily. Complements the cook-from-scratch skill (which teaches techniques) by focusing on the weekly planning and batch-cooking system.

Sources & Verification

• - USDA SNAP-Ed Connection — free meal planning resources and budget-friendly nutrition guides for food assistance recipients. snaped.fns.usda.gov — verified active March 2026
• USDA FoodSafety.gov — food storage temperature guidelines, safe cooling times, and refrigerator/freezer shelf life data. foodsafety.gov — verified active March 2026
• USDA MyPlate budget-friendly meal planning tools. myplate.gov — verified active March 2026
• NRDC "Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40% of its Food" report — food waste data and storage guidance. nrdc.org — verified active March 2026
• Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey — average US household food spending benchmarks
• Feeding America: feedingamerica.org — food bank locator and emergency food resources

When to Use

• - User spends too much on food and wants a concrete system to fix it
• Relies on takeout or delivery because there's "nothing to cook"
• Buys groceries that go to waste every week
• Wants to eat better but doesn't have time to cook daily
• Living alone or cooking for one and finds standard recipes wasteful
• Needs a shopping list and a plan, not just recipe ideas

Instructions

Step 1: Assess starting point

Agent action: Ask these questions one at a time and record answers in state. Use the results to generate a custom first-week plan.

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Step 2: The budget framework

Agent action: Using the user's budget and restrictions from Step 1, generate a weekly framework based on the template below. Save as their "base template" in state.

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Step 3: The Sunday prep system

The goal is two to three hours of cooking that produces five to seven days of ready-to-heat food.

Agent action: At the start of each week, help the user build their specific prep plan from the template below. Generate a shopping list from their selections. Set a Sunday reminder.

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Step 4: Meal assembly (the daily 15 minutes)

Meal prep works because "cooking" during the week is just assembly, not cooking.

Agent action: Help the user build their daily assembly formula based on what's in their fridge from Sunday's prep.

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Step 5: Food storage and waste prevention

Agent action: When the user describes what's in their fridge, help them identify what needs to be used first and how to use it.

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Step 6: Substitution guide for dietary restrictions

Agent action: If the user mentioned dietary restrictions in Step 1, use the relevant substitution columns to adapt the template.

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If This Fails

1. 1. No time on Sundays: Even 45 minutes of partial prep helps — cook a pot of rice and hard-boil a dozen eggs. That alone solves the "nothing to eat" problem for most of the week.
2. Food going bad before you eat it: You're prepping too much variety. Fewer recipes, bigger batches. Meals that are slightly boring are better than meals that go in the trash.
3. No cooking equipment: A microwave and a single pot on a hot plate can execute this entire system. If even those are unavailable, see the benefits-navigator skill for food assistance programs that may include SNAP or community meal programs.
4. Food insecurity — can't afford even $40/week: Local food banks, SNAP/EBT enrollment (benefits-navigator skill), community fridges, and mutual aid organizations. Feeding America locator: findafoodbank.feedingamerica.org — verified active March 2026.
5. Skills gap — don't know how to cook the proteins: See the cook-from-scratch skill for foundational techniques (how to cook chicken thighs, hard-boil eggs, cook dried beans correctly).

Rules

• - Always include food safety guidance when discussing batch cooking and storage — foodborne illness from improper cooling is a real risk
• Never suggest meal plans without accounting for stated dietary restrictions
• When budget drops below $30/week, always check if the user qualifies for SNAP or food assistance before optimizing cooking
• Do not assume kitchen equipment — ask first

Tips

• - The most common meal prep failure is variety overload. Beginners should prep two proteins, one grain, one batch of roasted veg, and one sauce. That's it. Four components, twelve possible meals.
• Batch cooking dried beans (vs canned) saves ~50% on protein costs and produces better-tasting beans. The barrier is 8 hours of passive soaking — not active time.
• Cabbage is the most underrated budget vegetable: cheap, lasts 2+ weeks in the fridge, cooks in minutes, works raw or cooked, absorbs any sauce flavor.
• Freezing individual portions is more useful than freezing entire batches — you can pull exactly one meal at a time without defrosting everything.

Agent State

Persist across sessions:

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Automation Triggers

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