Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ: FAQ

Will this work for people with food allergies?

Yes! All the recipes in the Minimalist Meals cookbook include easy adaptations to make the meals gluten free, nut free, or dairy free! Since the ingredients used are mostly whole natural foods, you won't need to worry about using processed foods with long ingredient lists where potential allergens could be lurking.

How is this book different from other “Fast and Easy” or “5 Ingredient” cookbooks?

Most other “fast and easy” cookbooks save you time in only one way, by giving you recipes that don’t take much time to cook. That’s all well and good, but what about the meal planning, grocery shopping, and prep time? All those things can add up to hours of work before you ever even get to the cooking part! Minimalist Meals will save you time every single step of the way, while still giving you easy and delicious recipes that only require 15 minutes or less in active cooking time each day. According to a study by the Time Use Institute, the average person spends over 50 hours per year grocery shopping, but I can help you spend only about 12 hours per year, one hour each month. That one change alone saves you about 40 hours per year, the equivalent of an entire work week!
5 ingredient cookbooks are fine if you’re only shopping for a few recipes at a time. But what good does a collection of 5 ingredient recipes do if each recipe requires 5 different individual ingredients, and you still end up with a mile long grocery list? Instead, the recipes in this book rely on a minimal number of multi-purpose ingredients, reducing the total amount of ingredients overall rather than just limiting the number of items per recipe. That means a clutter free pantry and a short grocery list!

How is this method better than other freezer cooking plans?

This method is a much more efficient use of your time than most plans. Most freezer cooking plans require you to spend an entire Saturday or Sunday making a month’s worth of weeknight meals (so about 20 different recipes) and then freezing them for later. Granted that will help you on the weeknights, but that still requires a huge chunk of your time up front. Instead of concentrating all that work on one day, wouldn't you rather reduce the total amount of work? In Minimalist Meals, you’ll discover how to freezer cook using a rotation schedule, making only four recipes in bulk, and then switching up which four recipes you make in your monthly freezer cooking session. Making only four recipes at a time instead of 20 means freezer cooking will only take you about an hour. Doesn’t that sound better than wasting an entire day?

Why should I do this instead of a subscription meal plan?

You don’t have to waste your money month after month subscribing to get your recipes; this book is a one-time purchase that will pay for itself the first time you grocery shop. Also, most subscription meal plans are just a random set of recipes with a grocery list. The Minimalist Meals cookbook is so much more than that; it is a comprehensive system of meal planning and cooking, designed to save you as much time and money as possible. Plus, most subscription type meal plans still require you to grocery shop every week, whereas with this system of meal planning you’ll only have to shop once or twice a month, saving you hours of time!