It has taken me most of the week to do (almost) all of the cooking I bought groceries for. I prepared ten crock pot meals and 2 weeks of breakfasts. I’m still working on 2 weeks of lunches. While the actual preparing of the meals was quick and easy, there was some pre-preparation that I should have accounted for, namely some pre-cooked chicken and the baked omelette. The first cooking session I stayed up too late because I started the chicken too late in the afternoon and, at the time, I debated not doing so many meals. But, now that I’m done, I see how being unprepared messed up my whole session. Next time, I think I’ll still prepare 10 meals, I’ll just know that I’ll do it over a few days.
Here’s my freezer all full of tasty food!
The recipes :
1) Beef and Cabbage (saute onions, garlic and mushrooms; brown meat; cover with chopped cabbage and lid; once cabbage is wilted, add soy sauce. Serve over noodles or rice. (my own ‘recipe’) )
2) Amazing Lentils and Kale from allrecipes.com (It really is amazing. Easy to make and my carnivorous husband ate it and the leftovers readily. He did mention ham at some point, but it wasn’t too important to him. Serving it with rice or bread may have made it last longer, but it already fed us for three meals, so I’m cool with that.)
3) Meatloaf with Rosemary Potatoes from Baked in the South
4) Honey Sesame Chicken from Baked in the South
5) White Chicken Chili from Baked in the South
6) Beef Stroganoff from Baked in the South
7) Thai Chicken Wings with Peanut Sauce from Baked in the South
8) Indian Chicken Curry from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen (although it was a “cook everything now and freeze your leftovers” type of meal it was pretty good. I felt there was way too much cinnamon in it and would have easily benefited from onions, peppers, and carrots too.)
9) Salsa Chicken (for Quesadillas) from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen
10) Pho (which isn’t a freeze-ahead kind of meal, I just wanted to use some rice noodles and my husband loves Pho!)
11) Spinach and Feta Oven Omelet Breakfast Bagel Sandwich from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen
12) Blueberry and Banana smoothie packs as inspired from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen
Each meal is at least enough for four meals – that’s 2 nights of dinners for Warren and I! And so far, two of the meals had even more than that – lunches for me! 🙂 So, 10 dishes will make at least 20 dinners. We’ve declared Friday night “Pizza night,” so that’s another 4 dinners. I guess that’s not a full month of meals, but it’s close enough for me!
I spent $168 although I got many groceries using WIC. I also feel I saved a lot of money buying meat in such large quantities. Both steak and chicken were nearly half the price when bought in “value packs”. We also had some staples on hand already (oil, salt, sugar, etc) and vegetables from our CSA (which I guess technically increases how much we’ve spent on food, but we paid in advance for those veggies so we don’t have to shell out any money now.)
So, while a little overwhelming to start, I think this is a very profitable endeavor and will probably do it again next month!