Good Eats.

So this weekend was our big experiment. Could once a month cooking, or freezer cooking as it's known to some, work for our family? I work second shift, and J works a normal 8-5 schedule. Kidlet, of course, is in school; what this amounts to is people who are home at all different times. Hungry people. People who will eat fast food or frozen pizza or rice crispies when faced with a meal time dilemma.

I've been trying to get dinner organized and cooked daily before work. But frankly, daily housekeeping, plus dinner and clean up by 1 pm is ROUGH, especially when you get off at 11pm, come home, wind down until 1-1:30 am, and have to be up again at 6am to get said kidlet off to school. So I put an add out on Freecycle looking for a free upright deep freeze to replace my little chest freezer and said, "If I get one, I know it's fate."

Within 4 hours, I had a deep freeze. Well, it took a month to get it to my home; the previous owner was replacing it with a chest freezer for her basement and there was a power issue in her basement, but once she had her act together, I was able to go pick up my new (to me) freezer. That was last weekend. It became do-or-die time for me.

I spent several days pulling together a menu (which I will share later) and then another several days putting together a shopping list with volumes needed for my shopping list (if you want it, I can email it, too). I wanted a good mix of new recipes to try, and some family favorites I knew they'd eat.

I did my major grocery shopping Friday night after work. I had a trip planned to a meat market about 45 minutes from home for Saturday morning, where I was able to buy ground chuck for $1.69 a pound. I needed 10 pounds just for the dinners planned, so it was well worth the gas money--I saved $20 over the same meat in the grocery store. (I stocked up and actually bought 20 pounds... it's a lot of meat, but I am planning on spending a day this week making up several kinds of meatballs to have on hand and some meat sauce for spaghetti to have on hand. I'll probably also freeze patties for quickie burgers, also.)

I splurged on toss away aluminum casseroles. One of our obstacles to a shiny sink is DH doesn't *do dishes* as a matter of "I told you if you got rid of the dishwasher dishes were all on you." (Never mind that I got rid of the dishwasher because it leaked and he wanted to lay my new wood floor in there; I told him no floor until that portable dishwasher left. He got to lay floor, I got rid of an eye sore. And most of the time, I don't mind washing dishes by hand. Who knew?) But that means that at 11:30 when I get home from work, there's a sink full of dishes for me to wash before I can shine my sink and go to bed. I also bought bulk paper plates. This way, I only have to wash silverware and glasses. The rest can be tossed. I know it's not eco-friendly, but unless someone wants to come to my house an wash my dishes, they'll let us just continue to eat our way through the rain forest. Since in most other ways, we've gone green (our own grocery bags, phosphate free soaps, stainless water bottles for tap water instead of throw away bottles, packing our lunches in Tupperware containers instead of zipper bags) I'm not feeling overly guilty.

So here's what we came up with. Each meal feeds 6-8 people. We're a family of 3, so I'm counting on each meal feeding us dinner for 2 days. I figure every 5th day will be a day for killing the leftovers in the freezer. Here's what we'll be eating this next month

Sat Oct 2: Persian Chicken Polo, Basmati Rice
Sun Oct 3: Nacho Pie, tortilla chips, sour cream, salsa
Mon Oct 4: Inside out ravioli, dinner salad, garlic bread
Tues Oct 5: leftover Chicken Polo, Nacho Pie, and Inside out ravioli
Wed Oct 6: Day Before Casserole, Roasted Brussels Sprouts, salad
Thurs Oct 7: Day before casserole, Brussels sprouts, salad
Fri Oct 8: Day Before Casserole, Salad
Sat Oct 9: Meatloaf and gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans
Sun Oct 10: Meatloaf, gravy, potatoes, green beans
Mon Oct 11: Meatloaf sandwiches (there's a LOT of meatloaf)
Tue Oct 12: Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole, bread, broccoli
Wed Oct 13: Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole, Bread, broccoli
Thurs Oct 14: Chili, Cornbread Cheese, Crackers,
Fri Oct 15: Chili, cornbread, crackers, cheese
Sat Oct 16: Fairy Pie, Salad, bread
Sun Oct 17: Fairy Pie, Salad, bread
Mon Oct 18: Leftover casseroles, Chili, whatever
Tues Oct 19: Tater tot casserole, salad
Wed Oct 20, Tater tot casserole
Thurs Oct 21: Chicken quesadillas
Friday Oct 22: Baked Fish sticks and fries, home made tarter and cocktail, hush puppies
Sat Oct 23: Kidlet gets a happy meal, we have a party to go to
Sun Oct 24: Beef stroganoff, broccoli, salad
Mon Oct 25: Chicken casserole supreme, salad
Tues Oct 26: Chicken Casserole supreme, salad
Wed Oct 27: Mexican Shepherd's Pie
Thur Oct 28: Mexican Shepherd's Pie
Fri Oct 29: Inside Out Ravioli, Salad
Sat Oct 30: Kidlet's Halloween party, lot of spooky fun food this night!
Sun Oct 31: Baked Fish sticks and fries, tarter, cocktail. Ready for another day of freezer cooking!

With adding in a few bags of ready-to-heat home made meatballs and sauce, the guys will also have a few meals for meatball subs or spaghetti and meatballs, Swedish meatballs, that kind of thing. It'll be on hand if we need it. We also ended up with enough extra cooked roasted chicken for 2 more chicken casseroles or to make a batch of chicken salad for lunches. There's a bag of roasted chicken drumsticks and wings for any meal kidlet just won't eat. (There's only one I'm worried about, but he'll always eat a drumstick of wings.)

I can't believe we did it!

Recipes will be on the next post. :)