Monday, October 6, 2008

Cookin' up a storm...

Whew!!! This has been a cooking weekend!
We have been trying to figure out how to cut back on the budget to minimize the impact of my missing paychecks in the next months. We spend so much money eating out--sometimes it's a meal that we have deliberately planned on eating out (think Little Rosie's)--but sometimes I just don't plan ahead. Either I don't have groceries at home. Or I have meat but it's in the freezer. And raw. By the time I think about dinner at 4:30 or 5, I don't have time to thaw an entire hunk of meat and cook it, so we very often default to eating out.

In order to combat this, we have been talking about buying a bulk of groceries and cooking ahead. Friday night, Jon took me on a 'date' to Sam's and we bought SIXTY pounds of meat!!! We bought chicken tenderloins, pork steaks, pork shoulder for BBQ, 2 roasts and frozen chicken breasts. We also bought several bulk sized bags of frozen veggies so we'll always have sides too!

Saturday after the kids went down for their naps, we started. I stuck the pork shoulder in the crock pot. Then I got some water boiling. I cooked and tore 6.5 lb of chicken to be used for soups and casseroles. Jon grilled 20 lb of chicken that we froze in meal-sized portions. These will be used as plain chicken breasts, used on buns for chicken sandwiches, cut into strips to put on top of salads, chopped for chicken salad sandwiches, etc. After grilling all the chicken, Jon grilled 10 pork steaks. We have recently learned that pork steak is one of the kids very favorite meal meats. They LOVE it! Anyways, I put one roast in the freezer raw, and one will cook overnight tonight. It will be roast tomorrow, and maybe one more day, then Beef Stew after that! Sunday after church we at one meal of the BBQ pork that had been cooking since Sat afternoon, then froze the rest.

My freezers are packed with meat!!! I think this will last us most or all of 2 months!! I am so very excited--There is no reason that when i think of dinner at 4:30, I can't just go look in the freezer and decide which cooked meal I want to reheat and what sides I want to cook.

I am thankful that Jon was willing to work together with me so we could come up with a solution, and that he spent his Saturday afternoon cooking up a storm!! :)

5 comments:

THE MORROW FAMILY said...

Wow! Way to plan ahead. I need to try that...I just don't usually plan that much ahead. I'm on a week by week basis, but I can see how doing that definitely takes away some of the stress in the long run and saves money.

Unknown said...

No problem. I think the kids like the pork so much because they keep calling it chicken, but hey it is after all "the other white meat".

And no it was not a "date". My mom texted Stacy and asked if tonight was date night and Stacy said "yeah, date night to Sam's".

Jamey said...

Don't knock date night at Sams! Kenny and I love to walk around and eat the samples....

We've also revved back up the monthly menu. This time I made the menu out before I did my shopping. We are hoping this will cut back on money, time and easier meal times for everyone!

Stefanie said...

Way to go Stacy! I definately need to start planning ahead better myself. We have tried planning by a menu, but some nights I just don't want to cook. We may have to try this ourselves.

Sunny said...

Good for you guys! You've always been so good at making a lot of food and freezing it! I think that I should sign up for freezing lessons from you.

I don't think that I've left you a "Congratulations" comment on your blog (think I only posted on Jon's). We are so very happy for the both of you!