Food? Yes, food!
I came across the idea of Once A Month Cooking a while back. I gave it a half-hearted try and found that it was expensive and time consuming. I was disorganized and had little clue about what I was attempting to accomplish. Oh! And the food didn't last as long as I thought it would. Could that possibly be because I left teenagers home alone for a 4 day weekend while I went out of town? Okay, maybe.
The second time around, though, I was a little better prepared. First things, first; I determined that ground beef was on a mega sale and bought up 30 pounds of it! I gathered some yummy recipes and made my shopping list. Approximately $200 later, I had my ingredients and ziptop freezer bags, and I was ready to go!
Eight hours later, I had 16 complete dinners prepared and frozen. No, my $200 did NOT net me a month's worth of meals. But we had 16 meals in the freezer and I was rather pleased with myself.
Here is our list of meals:
2 almost lasagna (made with penne pasta)
2 real live lasagna
2 stuffed manicotti
2 shepherd's pie (ready to top with mashed potatoes)
2 bags of meatballs for meatball stew and stroganoff
1 sloppy joes
1 tamale pie
4 meatloaf (mixed and mashed into gallon freezer bags)
Not one, single meal was rejected by the family. Oh, and did I mention that these meals are supposed to feed a family of 4? I've been feeding a family of 5 adults and a 10 year old nephew and nobody left the table hungry!
How did I do it? I had a plan. I followed that plan. I cooked up ground beef 5 or 6 pounds at a time by boiling it. Yes - boiling it! One inch of water in the bottom of my spaghetti pot is just enough to help the meat cook nicely into crumbles. Draining the meat was an easy task with my colander and another pasta pot. By the way, the meat drippings make fabulous beef stock!
Once the first round of meat was cooked, I got busy cooking penne pasta for my almost lasagna. Frozen veggies, canned spaghetti sauce and cooked ground beef went into gallon ziptop bags and were labeled "Shepherd's Pie". Frozen corn, canned spaghetti sauce, ground beef and some great spices went into more gallon ziplocks and were labeled "Tamale Pie". The penne was added to a bag with ground beef, canned spaghetti sauce and cottage cheese. These were labeled "Almost Lasagna" and stored, flat, in the freezer. The lasagna was made exactly as I would have any other day EXCEPT that I didn't cook the pasta. You see, freezing and then baking takes care of the entire cook for lasagna noodles. The manicotti was stuffed (uncooked, also) and places into an aluminum foil lined pan on top of some more of that canned spaghetti sauce. Then they were covered with more sauce and the whole thing was wrapped up tightly in aluminum foil, then moved into another ziptop gallon bag.
The meatloaf and meatballs were the easiest! All I did was mix up a LOT of meatloaf as I usually would. Then, I "measured" the amount of meat I would need by filling up my loaf pan. The measured meat was put into one of those groovy ziptop bags, flatted out and tossed into the freezer. For the meatballs, I smashed as much of the meatloaf mixture as I could onto a cookie sheet and filled it up to the top of the side of the pan. That pan was tossed into the oven and baked until done. I took a pizza wheel and cut the meatslab into square meatballs and let them cool. They were loaded into 2 ziptop bags and frozen.
Every morning, I pull out another bag of prepared food and let it thaw until dinner time. Dinner has never been easier!
I've been converted!
Posts
