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Prep and Rally: An Hour of Prep, A Week of Delicious Meals
From Dini Klein, rising Instagram star and founder of the popular meal-prep service Prep + Rally (@prepandrally), a guide to delicious, family-friendly meals with less stress, less expense, and minimal time.
At the end of a workday, when the whole family is hungry, who has the energy or time to put together a home-cooked meal? With Dini Klein’s brilliant Prep + Rally method, you do—all while saving money, saving time, and saving the stress of what’s for dinner.
In this inspired recipe collection, Klein shows you how just one hour of prep can result in four delicious, home-cooked weeknight meals, with one inexpensive weekly grocery bill. It’s easy: shop for the week, using Klein’s grocery list, spend one hour to Prep staple recipes, and use those staple recipes to quickly assemble creative and flavorful Rally meals that are sure to please the whole family.
Ideal for busy parents and working families, Prep + Rally includes infinite ways to modify each meal plan for different dietary needs, occasions, and picky kid preferences. In the same week, you can enjoy:
Poké Bowls with Ponzu Sauce
Pineapple Chicken with Broccoli, Edamame, and Rice
Loaded Vegetarian Chili Bowls
One-Pot Mac and Cheese with Broccoli
Complete with essential advice for remixing leftovers, along with dozens of recipes for easy egg dishes, snacks, and sweets, Prep + Rally will alleviate weeknight mealtime stress, once and for all.
At the end of a workday, when the whole family is hungry, who has the energy or time to put together a home-cooked meal? With Dini Klein’s brilliant Prep + Rally method, you do—all while saving money, saving time, and saving the stress of what’s for dinner.
In this inspired recipe collection, Klein shows you how just one hour of prep can result in four delicious, home-cooked weeknight meals, with one inexpensive weekly grocery bill. It’s easy: shop for the week, using Klein’s grocery list, spend one hour to Prep staple recipes, and use those staple recipes to quickly assemble creative and flavorful Rally meals that are sure to please the whole family.
Ideal for busy parents and working families, Prep + Rally includes infinite ways to modify each meal plan for different dietary needs, occasions, and picky kid preferences. In the same week, you can enjoy:
Poké Bowls with Ponzu Sauce
Pineapple Chicken with Broccoli, Edamame, and Rice
Loaded Vegetarian Chili Bowls
One-Pot Mac and Cheese with Broccoli
Complete with essential advice for remixing leftovers, along with dozens of recipes for easy egg dishes, snacks, and sweets, Prep + Rally will alleviate weeknight mealtime stress, once and for all.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published September 6, 2022
35 people are currently reading
3721 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
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April 1, 2023This might be my favorite food prep book so far. You have to be on board with following the method in order for this book to be usable, though.
The method is this: 1 hour of fully cooking everything on Sunday for 4 reheated weekday meals.
The book is organized into 10 weekly meal plans + a couple extra chapters. Each weekly plan starts with a list of everything you will need that week (literally everything) so you can grocery shop, then all the recipes (including for like... white rice), and then the dinner menus. The dinner menus include components that you pre-cooked as well as other day-of elements like canned beans or sliced avocado. The shopping list is super-well organized, with recipe numbers next to each item so you know to skip it if you are not using that recipe. Since there are 10 weekly meal plans, this book will get you about 2 months of meals before you repeat anything.
Recipes: Flavorful and straightforward, with a contemporary American cuisine profile. Reminds me a lot of Hello Fresh menus https://www.hellofresh.com/recipes.
Storing food: Super light on instructions for this, since food doesn't usually go bad within 4 days of cooking it and the expectation is that you will be doing exactly that. No instructions on best methods for freezing + reheating, for example.
Adapting recipes: A+ in this department. Each menu includes suggestions for making it more kid-friendly, vegetarian, gluten free or swapping out ingredients. It's helpful that this is listed at the very beginning of each chapter, before the shopping list.
I appreciated the leftovers guide - a kind of spitball list of what you could make with leftovers, organized by the category of what you need to use up (chicken, rice, etc) and a list of ideas to tuck ingredients into something else ("stuff some vegetables... put it in a taco shell").
As far as teaching you to meal-plan independently, there is a a free template download here: https://prepandrally.com/wp-content/u...
In the template, it is clear that the meal building strategy is protein+carb+veg+sauce. This is more subtle in the book, but the elements are all there. For example, with "chicken meatloaf sandwiches": chicken, bread, tomatoes & lettuce, and honey mustard sauce.
Overall I am curious to give this a go for a couple weeks. I am trying to be more systematic about my meal prepping, with pre-cooking things on the weekend and then freeing up more time during the week. But following such an exact weekly plan is more rigid than I am used to (Maybe I'm not looking at this fairly: it is only 4 days of planned meals, so that would leave 3 days of spontaneity, plus you can choose which order to eat your meals in). The true value of this book is that it totally takes the guesswork out of the weekly planning, so you can outsource that part of the mental load.
The method is this: 1 hour of fully cooking everything on Sunday for 4 reheated weekday meals.
The book is organized into 10 weekly meal plans + a couple extra chapters. Each weekly plan starts with a list of everything you will need that week (literally everything) so you can grocery shop, then all the recipes (including for like... white rice), and then the dinner menus. The dinner menus include components that you pre-cooked as well as other day-of elements like canned beans or sliced avocado. The shopping list is super-well organized, with recipe numbers next to each item so you know to skip it if you are not using that recipe. Since there are 10 weekly meal plans, this book will get you about 2 months of meals before you repeat anything.
Recipes: Flavorful and straightforward, with a contemporary American cuisine profile. Reminds me a lot of Hello Fresh menus https://www.hellofresh.com/recipes.
Storing food: Super light on instructions for this, since food doesn't usually go bad within 4 days of cooking it and the expectation is that you will be doing exactly that. No instructions on best methods for freezing + reheating, for example.
Adapting recipes: A+ in this department. Each menu includes suggestions for making it more kid-friendly, vegetarian, gluten free or swapping out ingredients. It's helpful that this is listed at the very beginning of each chapter, before the shopping list.
I appreciated the leftovers guide - a kind of spitball list of what you could make with leftovers, organized by the category of what you need to use up (chicken, rice, etc) and a list of ideas to tuck ingredients into something else ("stuff some vegetables... put it in a taco shell").
As far as teaching you to meal-plan independently, there is a a free template download here: https://prepandrally.com/wp-content/u...
In the template, it is clear that the meal building strategy is protein+carb+veg+sauce. This is more subtle in the book, but the elements are all there. For example, with "chicken meatloaf sandwiches": chicken, bread, tomatoes & lettuce, and honey mustard sauce.
Overall I am curious to give this a go for a couple weeks. I am trying to be more systematic about my meal prepping, with pre-cooking things on the weekend and then freeing up more time during the week. But following such an exact weekly plan is more rigid than I am used to (Maybe I'm not looking at this fairly: it is only 4 days of planned meals, so that would leave 3 days of spontaneity, plus you can choose which order to eat your meals in). The true value of this book is that it totally takes the guesswork out of the weekly planning, so you can outsource that part of the mental load.
August 29, 2023
3.5 stars.
I loved the idea of this book, but my issue with (all) week-long integrated meal plans is at least one of the proposed dinners is going to be a fail for my family. And since all the ingredients and prep are shared, it’s hard to swap out one of the meals without completely redoing the plan, thus saving myself very little time or mental energy.
Maybe in a few years my kids will be more adventurous eaters and we could try this again.
I loved the idea of this book, but my issue with (all) week-long integrated meal plans is at least one of the proposed dinners is going to be a fail for my family. And since all the ingredients and prep are shared, it’s hard to swap out one of the meals without completely redoing the plan, thus saving myself very little time or mental energy.
Maybe in a few years my kids will be more adventurous eaters and we could try this again.
November 24, 2022
This book was oddly stressful. Buy all of these things, cook them one day, cook more the day of, mix and match, but make sure to eat these things first because they’ll go bad, and also portion control 4 pieces of zucchini and 2 potato wedges. I eat healthy, I love meal prep, but this was not the book for me.
November 15, 2022
This style of cooking doesn't fit my current lifestyle but I still thought it was a fantastic book. I picked up a lot of tips I can use now and would have so appreciated this book 10 years ago. Even though I don't plan to follow the meal plan instructions, I got so many ideas to simplify my cooking / leftover process it's a must own. (originally borrowed from library)
* Written by chef (instructions and methods are solid)
* Pantry Essentials & tools- all normal things that a well stock kitchen will have. The tools are all ones I wouldn't be without
* real food, with a few convenient swaps if you like (ie, instruction to make a roux sauce, but use canned soup if you want)
* Very well organized. Good variety, and mostly dishes that my family would be happy to eat.
* Each week/chapter has 4 nights of meals, a prep cooklist of recipes to cook in advance to make dinner cooking easier, notes & swaps to adapt for picky eaters/kids, vegetarian, lighter\gluten free, a full grocery list.
* For the Prep Part, you make a bunch of recipes ahead. Roast some meat, pre-cook veggies, grains, pasta. make sauces/condiments.
* Each night you just reheat (usually 300F for about 20-30) combine or add a few new ingredients for your dinner.
* Inspiring leftover guide for ideas on repurposing ingredients (throw it in a shell, blend it in a soup, fritters, etc)
Negative
* The tag line "an hour of prep a week" has got to be a lie! Chapter 1 - Oven: Roast chicken (50m) + Bake Potatoes (45m) + Roast Chickpeas (35m) + Roast Zucchini (30m) + Roast Broccoli (25m) / Cook squash/lentil soup on stove 30m / Cooks Quinoa on stove 10m, make dip. If I was planning to actually cook ahead everything, 2 hours prep honesty wouldn't bother me but if your thinking your doing in this 1 hour, it's not happening unless you have two ovens. And probably a helper.
* Written by chef (instructions and methods are solid)
* Pantry Essentials & tools- all normal things that a well stock kitchen will have. The tools are all ones I wouldn't be without
* real food, with a few convenient swaps if you like (ie, instruction to make a roux sauce, but use canned soup if you want)
* Very well organized. Good variety, and mostly dishes that my family would be happy to eat.
* Each week/chapter has 4 nights of meals, a prep cooklist of recipes to cook in advance to make dinner cooking easier, notes & swaps to adapt for picky eaters/kids, vegetarian, lighter\gluten free, a full grocery list.
* For the Prep Part, you make a bunch of recipes ahead. Roast some meat, pre-cook veggies, grains, pasta. make sauces/condiments.
* Each night you just reheat (usually 300F for about 20-30) combine or add a few new ingredients for your dinner.
* Inspiring leftover guide for ideas on repurposing ingredients (throw it in a shell, blend it in a soup, fritters, etc)
Negative
* The tag line "an hour of prep a week" has got to be a lie! Chapter 1 - Oven: Roast chicken (50m) + Bake Potatoes (45m) + Roast Chickpeas (35m) + Roast Zucchini (30m) + Roast Broccoli (25m) / Cook squash/lentil soup on stove 30m / Cooks Quinoa on stove 10m, make dip. If I was planning to actually cook ahead everything, 2 hours prep honesty wouldn't bother me but if your thinking your doing in this 1 hour, it's not happening unless you have two ovens. And probably a helper.
April 7, 2023
I liked reading it... but then I did the first set of recipes. The prep took me two hours instead of one because I am not a professional chef like the author (and BTW, I'm one of the rare people who actually does have two ovens... for most people I would estimate double the time it took me to prep). The two hours it took me was not including the time spent on mis en place or on jarring everything after cooling. The rallying nights also still took quite a lot of work and... almost everything was terrible. The chicken was dry. Even with half the zucchini called for, there was not enough space on a sheet pan and it baked into a slimy gelatinous mess. The chickpeas burned at the stated time and temperature and had to be done over (hard to keep an eye on the oven and manually adjust anything based on color when you're running around the kitchen like a crazy person trying to prepare eight recipes in an hour). The ranch was passable, but I think a bit too lemony (the recipe just called for the juice of one lemon... I guess my lemon was bigger than the one the recipe was tested with... or Dini likes lemony ranch). The broccoli was great, but its hard to give points on a recipe that was just broccoli, oil, salt, oven. Even the broccoli, though, was ruined by being stuffed into egg roll wrappers for the second day with the leftover dry chicken. We each took one bite of those egg rolls (which also seemed overcooked at the stated time and temperature) and threw the remainder away, rummaging in the freezer for chicken nuggets. I would say the sweet potato wedges were good, and making plain quinoa was uneventful. The only full meal we actually liked was the Santa Fe bowls... which I probably could have made without the pre-prepped ingredients and it would have been great anyway. The meal ideas were good I think, but everything suffered by the pre-prep. Had I been making zucchini for that night's dinner, I would have pan fried it for consistently great results always and it probably would have taken less time than the cumulation of baking it and attempting to revive it on another day. Making for just the day allows the proper attention to make sure stuff isn't burning or drying out. (And if I have to do a bunch of stay the day of anyway, why so much prep?) Overall, a pretty disappointing recipe book. Maybe other recipe sets would have gone better, but I won't be wasting any more time or money trying them.
November 15, 2022
This book provides recipes for yummy meals while prepping 4 meals for 4 people for the week.
This gets 4 stars mainly for the unrealistic tagline on the front "an hour of prep, a week of delicious meals." The tagline is why I wanted to read/use this book. The prep could be "an hour" IF all your veggies and meats are cut and prepped already and if you have unlimited oven space.
The author has a very specific way of meal prep which is not my favorite: you are instructed to cook all the veggies and meats and then reheat them for the individual meals. I personally don't prefer that, so if I were to make these meals again I would schedule myself when to cook each component (which slightly takes away from using this book). I also made these meals for my partner and I (2 people) which left a lot of leftovers.
The author has some quick recipes for meals at the end of the book which I liked looking at (for example, how to cook a soft boiled egg).
I liked Dini's introduction and what she is trying to accomplish with this book. It just isn't my favorite method.
This gets 4 stars mainly for the unrealistic tagline on the front "an hour of prep, a week of delicious meals." The tagline is why I wanted to read/use this book. The prep could be "an hour" IF all your veggies and meats are cut and prepped already and if you have unlimited oven space.
The author has a very specific way of meal prep which is not my favorite: you are instructed to cook all the veggies and meats and then reheat them for the individual meals. I personally don't prefer that, so if I were to make these meals again I would schedule myself when to cook each component (which slightly takes away from using this book). I also made these meals for my partner and I (2 people) which left a lot of leftovers.
The author has some quick recipes for meals at the end of the book which I liked looking at (for example, how to cook a soft boiled egg).
I liked Dini's introduction and what she is trying to accomplish with this book. It just isn't my favorite method.
January 17, 2023
This book is good in theory: spend one hour a week prepping food for 4 dinners. In execution, it’s problematic and wasteful.
1) The oven is often used to prep a meal earlier in the week only for the oven to be turned back on the day of for the sole purpose of reheating the food.
2) The author is treating this book like a glorified Instagram page. There are over a dozen photos of her cooking in white dresses (what!), no shoes, in an expensive looking kitchen. Nothing is practical.
3) I don’t like to yuck someone’s yum, but fish + dairy is a gross land and sea pairing and this book is full of that (personal) taboo.
1) The oven is often used to prep a meal earlier in the week only for the oven to be turned back on the day of for the sole purpose of reheating the food.
2) The author is treating this book like a glorified Instagram page. There are over a dozen photos of her cooking in white dresses (what!), no shoes, in an expensive looking kitchen. Nothing is practical.
3) I don’t like to yuck someone’s yum, but fish + dairy is a gross land and sea pairing and this book is full of that (personal) taboo.
January 11, 2024
If you eat meat and fish, this is 4 or 5 star book; the premise is quite smart. Make a bunch of items on Sunday that can be mixed and matched. The problem is that meat and fish are doing a lot of the heavy lifting; in a huge amount of the recipes substituting tofu just won’t have the same effect. The hard part about being a vegetarian is that tofu needs a lot more care to seasoning. I was glad I took this book out from the library- it wouldn’t be worth it as a vegetarian. But everyone else: enjoy!
February 27, 2024
I chose one week and prepped as instructed. I'm not a professional, but neither am I an inexperienced or slow cook. Nevertheless, the prep work the book purports to take 1 hour took me 5. It basically felt like I was just making the week's meals all at once, without shortcuts or anything else that saved time. I can't imagine how anyone could do it all in an hour. The recipes say they feed 4, but those are very generous portions. We were eating these meals for 2 weeks. The food did taste good, so I'll give credit there.
July 11, 2023
Great addition to your recipe books especially if you are looking to maximize meal prep. I did 6 weeks worth of her recipes and would highly recommend it. The recipes are ok but I like the strategies she shares for meal prep. I wouldn't recommend this to a beginner cook but to people who are pretty comfortable in the kitchen this would be a good resource.
March 31, 2024
Excellent concept and fairly unique recipes! I love the idea of meal prep or ingredient prep, and this book offers the best of both worlds. I docked it a star basically because out of all the weeks of recipe combos, only one or two would be in MY taste. I’d have to really explore mixing and maxing to get the most out of this one.
February 2, 2024
This book transformed my approach to cooking, organized my shopping, saved me money, and made me a better home chef. I highly recommend Prep and Rally. Dini Klein, thank you for sharing this transformational approach to yummy and healthy eating!
December 21, 2024
It’s a great concept! However I found it took 3-4 hours to really do the prep and clean up, and my (picky) family was not a fan of 6 out of the 8 recipes I used, so this book was a miss for us. It might be a hit with others though!
October 15, 2022
Great recipes! The format is a bit awkward though. Having to go back and forth to get all the instructions for a recipe if you’re not following the ‘prep first for the week’ method
April 19, 2024
I received this book free through the Goodreads giveaway. It took a while to receive it and I'm excited to try a few of the recipes inside. Thanks for the opportunity.
January 8, 2025
Many recipes that look worth trying. Her philosophy and prep + rally formula are a bit intense so don’t focus too much on them and you’ll be fine.
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