"The Visual Guide to Easy Meal Prep" by Erin Romeo is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to streamline their meal preparation process. With clear instructions and helpful visuals, this book makes planning and cooking healthy meals a breeze.

Meal prep has made life so much easier for a lot of people, me included, and this book had some nice ideas even for long time fans of the process. Great for beginners, too

This book is great for people who are beginning to meal prep and are new at it. I'm a more seasoned meal prep per but is till learned a lot from this book and got some great ideas. I highly suggest this as a go to for learning.

I absolutely love this book! It has helped me meal prep quicker and more efficiently. I think the overall idea and tips are what's best about this books. Some of the recipes are a little out of my budget, but I still found most recipes to be great! And the pictures are beautiful... that is my second favorite thing about this book, the beautiful presentation of the food.

This cookbook had some really great recipes. The recipes were easy to understand and not too complicated for the average cook. I enjoyed the illustrations and look forward to making these recipes for years to come.

I already meal prep a lot so I didn't need the USP of planning/prepping meals. I work full time and have a family so anything I can do to same time in the kitchen is a bonus. Some great recipes included. A great starter for those Wii are just getting into experimenting with cooking. Would be a good gift too!

Me and so many other are into meal prepping these days. I love the pictures in this book and the recipes that go along with it. Would recommend to any library looking to build their cookbook collection with popular trends.

Finally, a book that teaches how to achieve eating healthy dinners, instead of just having recipes.

In this book, the author shows the reader how to prep meals ahead of time so that eating healthy doesn’t become a chore and set aside. Prepping meals, according to the author, has amazing benefits, such as “you will regain hours in your day … You will eliminate the need to multitask as you prepare lunch or dinner” and “You’ll be present with the people around you.”

The five steps of prepping food can be used in its entirety or the reader can choose to take away one or two. Each of them are beneficial.


I received an ARC from Quarto Publishing through NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book. I am voluntarily submitting this review and am under no obligation to do so.

Enticing photos and delicious, healthful recipes make this book a winner! I'd always meant to do more advance meal prepping, and this book was the catalyst to finally do more of it.

I received a free e-copy of The Visual Guide to Easy Meal Prep: Strategies and Recipes to Get Organized, Save Time, and Eat Healthier from NetGalley for my honest revies.

This book has a variety of recipes that will help you to eat healthier and eat cleaner. Recipes that will be pleasing to everyone, even the pickiest of eaters.

I found the way meal prep was presented by Romeo very useful. I can be a little bit messy and disorganized when I try it myself, very much deciding on the day that it would be great to prep for the whole next week. Aside form that, the visuals in this 'visual guide' are stunning and helpful, the exact combination I look for in any food-related book.

Visually appealing - Check. The Visual Guide to Easy Meal Prep is perfectly suited for novice meal preppers, but any adult/parent/caregiver that knows their way around a kitchen may find it too simplistic to be helpful. Check out the author's social media links for more timely inspiration.

This book was full of great ideas and recipes for meal prep! I especially appreciate the visuals! This is a great resource for anyone looking for suggestions on healthy eating/meal prepping!

n these busy times, most of us want to be more organized so that we can save time and accomplish more. Preparing meals takes significant time for most of us, and trying to think of something to cook for dinner is often stressful. Healthy seems almost impossible. However, Erin Romero has solved the problem for those of us who are willing to invest a bit of prep time, in her excellent cookbook, The Visual Guide to Easy Meal Prep: Save Time and Eat Healthy with over 75 Recipes. This cookbook covers all aspects of getting things ready early so that we can simply take storage containers out of the fridge and have delicious, healthy meals in record time.

The early chapters include an approved food list, storage containers, low carb, vegetarian, and other meal plans, as well as necessary kitchen tools (most of us already have these in our kitchens – no need to go out and purchase anything). The whole point of the book, of course, is Romero’s The Five Steps to Meal-Prep Success: (1) Get Containers where she explains the pros and cons of different storage containers, (2) Grocery Shop, where she explains how to read nutritional charts, food terms, and the importance of shopping with a list, (3) Clean and Cut, including helps in keeping things fresh longer, (4) Cook, and having several items cooking at the same time to save time and effort, and (5) Portion and Pack. While these steps aren’t rocket science, they are absolutely brilliant and are the key to success.

The recipes include are excellent, healthy, and appetizing. They include items for special diets such as vegetarian, gluten free, low carb, etc. and are actually for dishes most of us want to eat. Chicken and Bacon Club Wraps, Mediterranean Steak Salad (delicious), Chicken Tortilla Soup (Yum!), Breakfast Burritos, Berry Vanilla High-Protein Pancakes, and Thai Bowls with Peanut Sauce are a few favorites. The recipes are well-written, succinct, and easy-to-follow. Everyone can prepare them, whether beginning or advanced in the kitchen, and everyone will love the results, no matter how picky. There are beautiful photographs of most of the dishes, so readers will know just how things are supposed to turn out.

If you are trying to find ways to get more organized in your meal prepping, this is an excellent cookbook that will help you reach your goals. Highly recommended.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

I received this arc from NetGalley for an honest review. Great, easy to read meal prep book with lots of pictures and recipes. Easy to use with lots of great ideas. One I will buy for sure.

Meal prep is something that seems like too much work for me. This book does help to make it a little easier. While not comprehensive, it has good ideas for me. I think this is good for people beginning to meal prep. I would highly recommend this to many hat are starting a new healthy eating journey.

3.5 stars.

This book is helpful in teaching you the basics but it includes many obvious stuff that you should know like buying knives for the kitchen to get started. This takes around 1/3 of the book before going to the lists of food and which category they fall into (carbohydrates, fats or protein).

I like how there was a low carb, vegetarian, gluten free and dairy free plans before heading out to the recipes for each meal of the day with pro tips in between.

Overall, a bit disappointed because I thought there would be a different insight to meal prep besides the obvious. Regardless, the recipes in the book sound delicious and I can't wait to try some of them especially since they're healthy.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with the digital copy for an honest review.

Useful Tips and Healthful-Sounding Recipes, But...

Do you have a hard time getting dinner or other meals on the table every day? In this book, the author introduces her take on the concept of advance meal preparation and gives her five steps for meal prep success. The introductory sections of the book do provide a firm foundation in what you need to consider if you decide to attempt this advance meal prep. I have occasionally done multi-meal food prep, so I know that organization and planning is a key to success (along with sturdy shoes). The author goes into a little about how to grocery shop for healthful ingredients and even do some pre-preparation before your cooking day.

The author espouses what she calls healthy cooking, and for the most part, I would say that it is. Although, when I looked over her “approved food list” (and something about that rankles my independent, don’t-tell-me-what-to-eat mentality), I was somewhat dismayed to find that potatoes were not on it. I am not one who believes that potatoes are inherently evil, unlike some, and I believe they have a place in a well-rounded, healthy diet so long as you are not following a low-carb or anti-inflammatory diet plan.

Speaking of plans, the author does give four meal prep plans that you can follow depending upon your dietary preferences or needs: low carb, vegetarian, gluten free, and dairy free. For each plan, she gives a couple of breakfasts, mains, and snacks. Each plan has enough for four days of food, with the three main meals and one or two snacks covered. While the author does discuss how to strategize your cooking day in general in the introduction, she goes into greater detail in each of the plans. She tells you precisely which recipes, or parts of recipes, to do and in which order so that you make the most efficient use of your time and resources (like oven or stovetop time). I think both these detailed plans and the more general plan are a fantastic way to get you thinking about how to structure your own meal prep sessions with your family favorite recipes.

The recipe portion is divided into just a few basic sections like breakfast, mains, snacks and sides, and dressings, dips, and sauces. Unfortunately, the author does not give any sort of nutritional information for any of the recipes. I think this is odd for a cookbook that is meant to be healthy. Everybody has a different approach to what they think healthy eating is. Some watch their carbs while others watch fat, amongst other things. It would have been nice to have the macronutrient breakdown as well as the calorie count. Even though she gives meal prep plans for four very specific diets, she doesn't label the recipes as being friendly to them. Sometimes, of course, this is easy to figure out (no chicken for a vegetarian, no cheese for someone who’s dairy free), but other times, it is more tricky and perhaps even impossible if you are, say, really eating low-carb since she doesn't give any nutritional counts.

For each recipe that needs to be reheated on eating day, the author gives brief but useful instructions. I will admit I have a hard time imagining some of these recipes being good warmed up, like an omelet. Eggs always seem to be the best right after they've been cooked. So I wonder how the egg dishes would actually be on day three or four.

One thing that I found kind of funny is that there is no specific dessert section, but dessert recipes are definitely included in the snacks and sides section. I'm wondering if the author thought that she couldn't have an official dessert chapter in a healthy cookbook or if she didn't have enough healthy desserts to warrant an entire chapter. Surely, she is not saying that one should snack on dessert foods? For some reason, in what is meant to be a healthy cookbook, I find that kind of funny.

I feel like this book could have been organized better, though I'm not quite sure what should have been done. I'm wondering if perhaps the plans should have been at the back, as I often see in cookbooks, and the recipes clearly marked with what diet(s) they would work with. Perhaps, too, she could have had hyperlinked master lists of recipes for each diet. I just feel like this book needs some better organization since it seems to be appealing to at least four different and distinct crowds as well as the general cook. Maybe the book would have been better split into four separate books based around the different diets, with only the recipes that would be suitable for it. Maybe she could have had a fifth cookbook that was more about the generalities of meal planning with multiple plans to really help the cook-reader get a sense of how to strategize and execute multi-meal cooking, based not just around diets but seasons and holidays as well.

All in all, I think this cookbook shares some good tips and techniques if you want to try prepping and cooking ahead. Some recipes are complicated, which could be hard to do on a big cooking day, but some look relatively straightforward. The organization is a little confusing, and there are issues with the recipe information, as I stated. I would call this cookbook a mixed bag, so to speak, with some good information and recipes but definitely lacking in a few areas.

I am just getting into meal prep, so I really appreciated the way this book was formatted. This serves as an easy introduction for those unfamiliar with meal prep. Simple and straightforward that anyone can follow.

I'm having some mixed thoughts about this book. One one hand, the pictures are pretty and the recipes look good. I didn't have a chance to try any of them yet but I do like how they are divided into Vegetarian, Non Dairy and Meat Eating parts.

That said, there's nothing super earth shattering about this book. Romeo starts off explaining what meal prep is and why we should do it. We go through container sorting to shopping and prep for the prep.

But honestly, I was hoping for more. I wanted tips like - what meal is good to make and freeze? These veggies aren't in season, what about substitutes? What are the easiest ways or containers or items that help transport these meal prep foods? Are some better than others for waiting 4 days? Let's face it, the reason I'm reading this book is because I have a picky toddler and I'm trying to figure out new and creative ways to save time and still get her to eat healthy foods that doesn't involve chicken fingers and pizza. But there isn't really a section for that.
The book tries to be two different things - meal prep and cook book and sadly that didn't work for me. I wanted more at the beginning where some of my questions were answered. It is a nicely laid out book and I think I will try some of the recipes but as far as meal prep goes, I was not enlightened.</p>