30 day cooking-Freezer meals

[chanibell]

Hello all!

So happy to find this thread! Do any of you practice the 30 day meal thing? I have tried it in the past,but would like to incorporate more diverse meals than what's in the cookbook. Any advise/tips/yummy recipes? Also I think I may have broken my vacuseal machine. Can anyone advise me on how to get this fixed? I miss it so much!

[root*children]

You should post up in the meal planning subforum

[Amys1st]

feed the freezer

I have read books on the 1 day cooking/30 day meals. Its a great idea, but for me its takes the fun out of cooking. I am one of those people who love to cook.

I do a feed the freezer cooking. I double or triple batch things that freeze well and then we have dinner plus two more dinners all ready for a few weeks later. I do this at least once a week or if I know we have a busy schedule coming up, a few times a week for a few weeks. Then its eat from the freezer during the busy time. Now every week we have one day where we eat from the freezer meals. I have a list of what there is and we decide that morning and put it in the fridge. Then at dinnertime we bake, reheat or whatever it is we have to quickly do to eat.

This has cut down on takeout, eating out, and our grocery bill a huge amount. Its also trimmed our waistlines as well.

[Rebecca]

I tried to do this but was a failure. I'd need to spend the ENTIRE DAY preparing all 30 days worth of meals, and I just can't do that, nor do I really want to. The book was enlightening and interesting. I bought it a while ago (when I was preg with ds1), but I really don't like casserole type meals every night. I like fresh stuff added in too. The book is worth borrowing from the library to see if you'd be into it, I think.

I do lots of food prep to save myself time though. When I cook rice, I cook a big pot full and freeze most of it for later meals. That saves some time. ALso, when I'm chopping veggies (sometimes I use the food processor for this) I'll do a whole bag of onions or peppers and freeze the rest for later meals. I do the triple batch cooking also, when I can. Most of the time that just gets eaten for the next day's lunch, but whatever.. that's one less pb&j sandwich I have to eat!

[Amys1st]

We also try when possible to have leftovers the next day for lunch. DH takes them and it helps him.

I also have the Dbra Taylor book and I think spreading it out is easier. I too like fresh things. We are not casserole kind of people. But having taco meat, chili, meatballs, lasagnas, ravolis etc on hand is much easier then going from start to finish all the time.