Meal Prep With Me: Italian Style

January 12, 2026

As you probably know, we are expecting a new baby in March. As we quickly race towards the little one’s arrival, I’m trying to stretch my cooking and preparation skills in anticipation of more mouths to feed and less time.

Before Christmas, I did a meal prep one Saturday morning, and today I want to share that with you. No, these meals aren’t necessarily for when baby comes (we will eat them before then), but I’m just trying to get more in the mindset of batch cooking and cooking ahead.

The meals have a common theme, kind of an Italian theme, which makes it easy to prep several meals at the same time since the ingredients are very similar. By cooking meals with similar ingredients, I’m also able to cut down on food waste which is important to me as I seek to save my family money.

Here are the meals that I chose to make:

• Spaghetti sauce

• 2 pans of lasagna

• Meatballs

We like to use sausage as the meat in our Italian dishes because it adds such a depth of flavor. Since I was already cooking several pounds of sausage for the freezer meals, I decided to go ahead and cook another pound for our Saturday morning breakfast egg casserole.

On Saturday mornings, I try to make a big breakfast that will last us through the weekend and into part of the following week. By doing this, it really helps with breakfast on busy Sunday mornings before we head off to church and it also helps our homeschool week get off to an easier start.

The Night Before

On the night before my actual meal prepping, I cooked a total of 3 lbs of sausage—2 for the big pot of spaghetti sauce (some of which will go in the lasagnas) and then some for the breakfast casserole. By cooking my sausage and making the spaghetti sauce ahead, it will make meal prep a lot easier the following day.

Once I finished cooking the sausage, I drained the grease. I then put about 1 pound of the sausage in a 9x13 casserole dish and then put it in the fridge to finish off in the morning as an egg casserole. In case you are wondering, to finish off the casserole, I whisk a dozen eggs with about a half cup of whipping cream, ½ t. salt, ½ t. onion powder, and pepper to taste. Bake for about 20-30 minutes.

Back to the spaghetti sauce--I left the rest of the sausage in the pot and then started building my very simple spaghetti sauce. I added 4 jars of Mushroom spaghetti sauce from Aldi. I love the mushroom flavor because it seems to have a great flavor combination and is actually not really “mushroomy.” Even one of my mushroom-hating children doesn’t notice the mushroom flavor.

I then added some herbs and spices to boost the flavor a bit—some dried basil, oregano, garlic powder, and onion powder. I didn’t measure but just eyeballed what looked like a good amount. After several vigorous stirs, the pot of sauce was ready for the fridge and prepped for the following morning when I would actually start to assemble everything.

The Next Morning

Spaghetti Sauce

I took out half of the sausage spaghetti sauce and put it in a bag for serving over pasta (which we have already devoured).

Lasagna

I then set out to work on the lasagnas. I just kind of winged it and made this up as I went. I did not have ricotta cheese, so instead I blended about 2 cups of cottage cheese in place. The cottage cheese was a little watery, but it worked in a pinch. To the cottage cheese, I added several eggs and some spices such as basil and oregano. I didn’t measure, just eyeballed the amounts.

This amount made 2 small lasagnas which worked just fine for our family. We would rather not eat lasagna for days on end, so it worked out just fine.

Then I started to assemble my lasagnas. I put about a cup of spaghetti sauce on the bottom of the pan. Here’s how I layered the lasagna (though it really doesn’t matter how you layer!). I think I had enough ingredients to follow this pattern twice.

• gluten free lasagna noodles (I did NOT precook them, and it worked perfectly.)

• spaghetti sauce

• cottage cheese blend

• shredded mozzarella

  
  

Once we are ready to eat the lasagna, I will take it out of the fridge the night before. I’ll bake the lasagna for about 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Meatballs

Here’s how I made my simple, naturally gluten free meatballs.

I like to use a blend of ground beef and sausage for the meat, so I used one pound each. Then I added some parmesan cheese (about ½ cup), oatmeal (about ½ cup), an egg or two, and a variety of spices (basil, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper). Using my hands, I then blended the meat and shaped it into balls and then put the balls into a gallon sized bag.

Once we are ready to eat these meatballs, I’ll pull them out of the freezer the night before and then bake them at about 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until done.

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Thanks for joining me in my kitchen! I know these were not technically “recipes,” but I hope this post gave you some ideas for prepping ahead so that you can feed your family wholesome food!

--Ashley

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