Vegan Meal Prep Math

Who it is for

• Busy households (working parents, shift workers, students, new parents) who want a month of dinners in the freezer, and to know what it saves against takeout and ready meals.
• Home meal-prep business starters with a weekly box for neighbors, a gym or an office: yield, cost per meal, price, profit and break-even worked out honestly, and the rules to check first (in most US states cooked meals are not cottage food).
• Vegans and plant-based eaters who want protein per portion and cost per 20 g of protein worked out, with no diet prescriptions.
• Budget cooks who want unit prices, dried against canned and bulk break-evens done properly.

Not for: diet plans or medical nutrition, canning, meat or fish, or factory scale. Metric first, US units beside it; every price illustrative and dated November 2026.

What you build: the Freezer Month and the Box Run

Two weekends, four cook sessions, and every chapter adds one number to the plan.

• The Freezer Month: five freezer recipes, 8 portions each: 40 portions, 20 weeknight dinners for two. Chili, dal, curry, burritos and soup, each pot weighed and split into equal boxes.
• Every box checked: 20.8 to 28.5 g of protein a portion against the book's 20 g planning floor (a figure for planning, not advice), cooled against the FDA Food Code's two-stage clock, and frozen within what the freezer can freeze in a day.
• The money: about 1.74 a plate with the boxes, the energy and the freezer counted (69.51 for the month), about 182 a month less than frozen ready meals.
• The business, the Box Run: the same recipes × 1.5 for 12 customers from a shared kitchen: about 297 a week before tax and any wage, and break-even on the first year's permit, insurance and kit after 6 weeks. These are worked examples with a column for your own numbers, not promises.

48 Vegan Freezer Meals: 12 soups & stews, 12 curries & dals, 12 chilis & bakes, 12 burritos, bowls & patties, each written as a batch you can scale. They are worked out on paper from published ratios and USDA data: cook a small test batch first.

The book was written in collaboration with AI tools and reviewed by the author. Its numbers are checked by a verification program, and its figures are drawn by the same program, but mistakes may remain: see corrections & errata. The book does the arithmetic and names the authority; it is not a food-safety course or diet advice. Cooling and reheating times are the FDA Food Code's, USDA FSIS's and the UK Food Standards Agency's, and selling cooked food follows your own state's or council's rules.