Once A Month Cooking Ideas

Here are some ideas I had last night while I was thinking this through. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to get all of this done while shuttling boys back and forth to school all day (take them at 7:30-8:00, then pick up at 11 and 3:30), taking care of 2 babies, and homeschooling my 13 year old daughter. Here are my ideas:

Day One: Preparation and Planning

· Go to grocery stores and see what is on sale (got sale papers last night~nothing great on sale)

· Clean out fridge and freezers

· Look at calendar for the next month and decide how many meals I want to freeze

· Make a list of meals to cook and freeze

· Make a list of ingredients

· Make a list of what I need to do to prepare and freeze the meals

Day Two: Shopping and Chopping

· Get shopping started early

· Peel, chop, cook meat

· Store it all in fridge

Day Three: Cooking Day

· Cook

• Cut the amount of meat in half (I wonder if I should double the veggies or something else to make up for the missing meat?Are you wondering why I want to cut the amount of meat in half? 3 reasons: 1)we need to eat less meat for health reasons 2)if I buy meat for a family of 9 for a whole month of meals it will cost a fortune 3) I have a real problem with animal cruelty and I feel that it is wrong to make them suffer their whole lives. Now, I do not think it is wrong to eat meat. But I want to make sure the meat I buy is from animals who had a normal life and were not raised in a stall and never got fresh air. But free-range, grass-fed meat is expensive. Enough said about that. )
• Use crock pot to make whatever I can
• Freeze meals in gallon sized bags, freeze flat, then store them vertically
• great article
• Stick something in the crock pot to cook while I am preparing stuff (shop and chop day)
• Add spices, onions, garlic, celery, and carrots to chickens while cooking to make healthy chicken broth. Freeze the broth.