Welcome. Congrats. Good luck.
I don't think it HAS to take away any time from studying. But I suppose that has a lot to do with priorities.
If it is a priority to cook a fancy new meal every day - well, then that could cause some time issues.
I find a few meals that I'm comfortable with and just make those over and over again until i get tired of them and then try something new or different.
For instance this week my breakfasts alternate between bagel sandwiches, oatmeal, and breakfast smoothies.
My lunches have been split pea soup and a roll or a vegan sausage with a side of beans and corn.
My dinners have been tofu broccoli and mushroom stir fry over rice or lentil stew over mashed potatoes.
My snacks are more varied. Hot chocolate, apples, bananas, persimmons, nuts, and guacamole.
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Another thing you can do is take a page out of Henry Ford's book and try to mass-produce some of your meals.
For instance, most of us don't make just a small serving of mashed potatoes but a big batch. I will make a quart at a time and then freeze the extra servings. Same thing with my lentil stew and my split pea soup. I make a quart at a time and keep the extras servings in Tupperware or freezer bags. Since your family is bigger, you might even try making 2 quarts at a time.
Oatmeal is pretty easy to make but it can also be mass-produced. You can make single or double servings as overnight oats. or you can make up one or two quarts of it on the stovetop and store the excess in the fridge or freezer. This is especially a good idea if you like steel-cut oats. You can even add all the extras to the oatmeal before you store it.
If you have a big blender why not make a quart of smoothies at a time. or this is a cool trick i just learned. Put all the ingredients but the plant milk in a freezer bag and then when you need to make a smoothie you just empty the freezer bag in the blender and add milk.
I like to have what I call "emergency meals" in the freezer, too.
My go-to is PB&J sandwiches. When I come home from the store I turn a loaf of bread into PB&Js assembly-line style. then pop all the sandwiches back in the bag and into the freezer. They do defrost pretty quick or you can just put them in the toaster oven for a minute.
My other emergency meal is bean burritos. I make up 10 at a time. I used to wrap them individually in wax paper and freeze them in a big Tupperware container but now I just put them in freezer bags individually. I then re-use the freezer bags. I like to make them with the smaller sized tortillas so that they can be eaten one-handed. Once out of the freezer they only take 1 - 2 minutes in the microwave.
Another trick I learned is when getting home from the grocery store to wash and cut up all my veggies. I am more likely to eat veggies as a snack if they are all ready to go. It also cuts down on prep time on meals. I will even sometimes make up a really big salad with lots of ingredients and then store it in my biggest Tupperware container. Eating a salad, especially one with a lot of ingredients is a lot more attractive when it takes less than a minute to assemble.
There are several YouTube vegans who do instructional videos on mass-producing assembly line style a whole week of meals.
The Cheap Lazy Vegan is my favorite. Garbanzo Girl,
Caitlin Shoemaker, and
avantgardevegan are all very good.
