Bulk or Once a month cooking experiment!

I have to say its been a while since I have posted something to this blog but I have decided to take this blog back to what I originally had thought about for this blog.  The original idea and that was NOT for posting deals and coupons.  There are so many blogs out there for that and I originally wanted to stand out a bit.  So for in the future, there will probably be very few coupon deals posted if any at all.  Christmas will probably be the only exception to that rule.  So anyway, aside from all that I wanted to announce my latest experiment, once a month cooking.

My grandmother and great grandmother were always in the kitchen, as well as my mother slaving away at the stove in the heat of the summer and I could never figure out why.  Well of course we had to eat but wasn't there truly a better way then slaving all day in the kitchen?  So in my daily journeys of stay at home mommyhood I discovered what some call bulk cooking and what some call once a month cooking.  I approached my husband about it months ago and could never get up the nerve to actually do it!  It seemed so daunting to cook all that food in one day!  Then I came to the realization that I could potentially cut my food bill for the month significantly down by doing this.  So I set forth to conquer.

(there are some entrees missing from this picture)

I started looking online for recipes because lets face it I'm trying to save money not spend more so I didn't want to buy a book, although it would make a great birthday present!  *hint, hint*  LOL!  There are many sites out there that offer freezer cooking recipes so I just found a few that sounded good and would be super easy to make and I printed them.

Then it was off to look in my cupboards to see exactly what I had and didn't have.  I usually keep a pretty good stock pile of ingredients so I wasn't too worried.  I opened my cupboards and I felt like Old Miss Hubbard- my cupboards were almost bare!  Then I realized that was because I had no snacks in the house and needed to go shopping anyway.  The main bulk of the price for this experiment went to meat.  I wanted to deal with fresh meat because technically by food safety standards meat should not be frozen, thawed and frozen again.  I know we have all done this but it was just easier to deal with fresh meat.  So I had my husband call the local butcher not far from us and we ended up getting 15 lbs of meat for around $49.  That bundle included boneless skinless chicken breast, boneless pork chops, boneless spare ribs, hamburger, and swiss steaks- 3 lbs of each.

Then I went to Walmart and got everything I was missing, which wasn't much.  Really I just needed to get all the different types of cheeses and some other fresh ingredients I was missing.  No big deal.  The trip roughly cost me about $25.

I split the whole ordeal into to two days- day one for shopping and planning and day 2 for cooking.  This plan seemed to work out really well.  I do know I need to plan a little better at how the day will run.  What we will cook first, second and so on and really pay attention to the details of prep work.  We totally missed that this time!  The other thing I think we will do differently next time is splitting up the recipes between my husband and I so that we know what each other is working on and not constantly asking, "what are you doing?" or "what are you making right now".  Oh and I would highly recommend having someone there to help you with all of this if this is something you decide to embark on.  My husband luckily was a short order cook for several years so this was easy peasy to him!

Once we had everything figured out and the recipes each of us was doing we were really underway.  The total cooking time took about 4-4 1/2 hours.  That does not include the cooling time that needs to be added in order to put some of this stuff away!  Again, totally missed that part of it.  No big deal though.  We didn't let it ruin our plans for the evening.  We covered everything and left, by time we got home everything was cool enough to package and then freeze.

The other thing I didn't take into account is the amount of containers needed to freeze things.  Not everything goes well in a ziploc bag.  So I used a lot of my containers, which I don't mind, I just didn't plan for it.  I will say though everything we thought would work with some of the pans and such did, and made things that much easier!  For example, for the lasagna, we put plastic wrap down first in my glass baking dish and put all the ingredients for the lasagna inside.  We placed that in the freezer for about 4-5 hours and then removed it from the freezer.  The plastic wrap allowed me to remove the now frozen lasagna from the baking dish and place it into a ziploc bag!  Now when I want to make the lasagna its already in the shape of the pan needed so I just remove it from the ziploc, drop it in the baking dish and place it in the oven!  The other thing we did was with our meatloaf.  We sprayed our bread pans with cooking spray and then placed our meatloaf's inside the pan.  Placed the pan in the freezer for a few hours and then removed it.  The meatloaf fell right out of the bread pan and I was then able to put it into a ziploc bag and back into the freezer.  Again when we are ready to use it, we can take it out of the freezer and drop it right back into the bread pan and bake it.

Now for the real experiment!  Will we use all the meals?  How much money will it save us compared to not bulk cooking?  Will we eat out less and eat in more?  Stay tuned for further blog posts letting you know how the rest of the month goes with this!  We are only $75 in right now which made us 20 meals.  Break that down and its about $3.75 per entree that feeds 4 people.  We will see how the rest of the month goes!