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"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."
Proverbs 31:10

A Virtuous Woman :: In the Kitchen :: Once a Month Cooking :: My experiences thus far... Author Topic: My experiences thus far... (Read 285 times) greenegirl New Member member is offline Joined: Feb 2004 Posts: 38 My experiences thus far... « Thread Started on Mar 4, 2004, 2:41pm » I absolutely love to cook! But I do work full time outside of the house. I workout after work, so I do not get home until 6:00 most nights. By the time I cook a meal, it is so late and I don't want to eat that late. January was the first month I decided to do a bunch of cooking at once. I thought I would do it every week or every other week, but I ended up doing two weeks in a row and not really needing to do any more until this coming Sunday! There are a lot of things I like about this. I am a vegetarian, but my husband is not. I do not usually make a non-vegetarian dish at each meal for my husband and this is fine with him. He likes the vegetarian food I make and believes it is healthier for him, so he is happy to eat that most of the time. However, it is definitely an adventure for him as he is frequently trying things he has not had before. He likes the adventure and is very gracious, but there's definitely stuff he DOES NOT like! By cooking meals in advance, I can more easily have a variety of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods for my husband to choose from. Since it is just the two of us (no kids yet!), I package all the meals I make into serving size ziploc containers for the freezer. When I am getting ready to go to work in the morning, I can grab one out of the freezer and be all ready to go. I have definitely cut down on the number of times I have purchased food in the cafeteria at work so have saved money that way. My husband is currently working on a project out of our house, so it makes it much easier for him to find lunch as well. No rummaging around to make a sandwich or figure something out -- he just has to grab something out of the freezer and heat it up. We have a 5 cubic foot chest freezer and the freezer on top of our refrigerator. All the meals are in the freezer on top of the frig. Anything else that has to be frozen goes in the chest freezer. This morning, I made a list of the recipes I will be making this weekend. I will spend Saturday evening doing prep work (including chopping, cooking dry beans, etc) and Sunday morning doing the actual cooking. I keep Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, so will not do any of this cooking during that time. I will probably be up early Sunday morning -- I am definitely a morning person and get up at 5:00 on weekdays. I usually sleep in some on weekends, but am up by 7:00 at the latest. The first weekend I cooked, I made 4 dishes and it took me most of the day. Part of the reason for that is that I made my own vegetable broth, which took a significant amount of time in chopping and boiling. I recently discovered a grocery clearance store (they sell things the grocery stores can't -- like dented cans, etc) and am able to buy 15 oz cans of organic, fat free vegetable broth for only $0.60 each, so I am not making vegetable broth as long as I can find that deal! The second weekend I cooked, I made 4 dishes and was done in just over 2 hours. This weekend, I plan to make about 12 dishes. I chose the recipes and made my grocery list this morning. I have an extremely well stocked pantry, so it looks like I will only spend about $50-75 on the remaining ingredients for this list. This will not be my complete grocery bill for the month since I will still have to get fresh fruit and veggies, milk, and cereal. Most of the time, when I grocery shop, I am shopping to refill my pantry, not specifically for a recipe. I shop about once a month at the previously mentioned grocery clearance store, a couple times a month at a farmers market for fresh stuff, and about once a week at Walmart for things like milk or eggs. I also go to an Indian grocery store and an Oriental grocery store every 3 months or so to pick up unusual ingredients that are MUCH cheaper in those stores than in the regular grocery store. I go to the health food store every 3 months or so as well, especially for spices or unusual products that can not be found anywhere else. I go to the bread factory store every 6 weeks or so for bread (I can get the exact same brand/size loaves I get at Walmart for $1.60 at the bread store for $0.75 and it isn't even day old -- they bake it right at that location). I only go into the local grocery stores when they have terrific sales on something and then I buy lots of that item. The last time butter was on sale for $1.50 a pound, I bought 30 pounds of butter and put it in my chest freezer. I am about to need some more, so will be on the lookout for a sale. Anyway, this post is getting REALLY long, so I better stop! Hope some of this information helps Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged krystalnotes Moderator member is offline Music is so much more than singing or the sounding of instruments, it is the sounding of the soul. Joined: Feb 2004 Gender: Female Posts: 325 Re: My experiences thus far... « Reply #1 on Mar 31, 2004, 12:11am » Thanks for sharing! I love going to the market! We don't have a large freezer. We should look into that when we can though. I'm sure it'd help! Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged Richard & Krystal, became ONE 7/11/98 Our Blessings ~ Elisabeth 7/12/99 * Josie 9/12/02 Balanced Moms greenegirl New Member member is offline Joined: Feb 2004 Posts: 38 Re: My experiences thus far... « Reply #2 on Mar 31, 2004, 8:11am » We got our freezer at Sears on sale for $170 about 1-1/2 years ago. I LOVE it. At the time, we chose a 5 cubic foot freezer because we didn't think we would really use anything bigger than that and because it was most practical for the space we had to put it. Even though there is only the two of us, I could definitely use a bigger freezer! I am always thinking of different ideas of things to use the freezer for. At the moment, I can not fit anything else in there. Karen Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged mi3sons Junior Member member is offline Joined: Feb 2004 Gender: Female Posts: 87 Location: Central Florida Re: My experiences thus far... « Reply #3 on Mar 31, 2004, 8:51am » Sounds like you are doing great! Isn't it great to have a meal ready after work. I like to put frozen things in the oven and set the delay bake! Then it is cooked when I get home and all I have to do is heat up sides! Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged Moms with boys work son up to son down! Erin greenegirl New Member member is offline Joined: Feb 2004 Posts: 38 Re: My experiences thus far... « Reply #4 on Mar 31, 2004, 9:48am » I love doing cooking this way. Since it is only me and my husband, I package each dish in a single serving size container. I use the 2 cup plastic ziploc containers you can get at the store now. We each choose and microwave our own meal each evening and we do the same for lunches. All the meals are actually in my freezer above the refrigerator. I can fit about 40 containers in there. My big freezer has ingredients in there. I have a list at home of everything that is in there, but the things I can remember are: 40 bags of chocolate chips purchased on sale for $0.67 per bag; 10 5-pound bags of all-purpose white flour purchased on sale for $0.82 per bag; High-gluten white flour purchased in a 50 lb bag and repackaged into 5 lb units; 5 lbs sugar since I buy it in 10 lb bags (these are cheaper on a per pound basis, but the regular container I use to store sugar only holds a little more than 4 lbs sugar at a time); 28 'pie crust mixes' which consist of pastry flour (purchased in a 50 pound bag and then divided up for this), salt, and baking powder (each mix makes two pie crusts. In order to make a crust, I take these straight out of the freezer, add butter, a little apple cider vinegar and water. I sold some pies at Thanksgiving so bought the flour and made up the mixes at that time. I also used these to make the pies I entered in the Central Florida Fair this year); about 20 or so bags of powdered skim milk each of which will make 2 quarts of milk which was purchased as two boxes each of which would make 20 quarts for a total of $5 at a store that was going out of business that day; 1-1/2 lbs of dried basil, repackaged into quart size bags, purchased at the same going out of business store for about $3 for the whole 1-1/2 lbs. Usually, there is a quantity of butter in my freezer as well. I buy 20 or 30 lbs of butter when it goes on sale for $1.50/lb and store it in the freezer to use when I need it. At the moment, there is none in there because I did more baking than usual and ran out of sale priced butter. There has not been another sale yet so I haven't been able to stock up again. As you can see, my freezer helps me save a lot of money on groceries and also helps make sure I have staples on hand all the time. It has allowed me to think in a whole different way about shopping! Karen Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged krystalnotes Moderator member is offline Music is so much more than singing or the sounding of instruments, it is the sounding of the soul. Joined: Feb 2004 Gender: Female Posts: 325 Re: My experiences thus far... « Reply #5 on Apr 5, 2004, 8:59am » AWESOME! Ya know I was thinking, where we would put a large freezer??? Then it came to me; You could put it almost anywhere and drop a cloth of some sort over it and place a nice decorative piece. WALA! A nice decorative table and a freezer! Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged Richard & Krystal, became ONE 7/11/98 Our Blessings ~ Elisabeth 7/12/99 * Josie 9/12/02 Balanced Moms Melissa Ringstaff Administrator member is offline Loved ones are the only treasure you can take to heaven! Joined: Jan 2004 Gender: Female Posts: 350 Location: Kentucky Re: My experiences thus far... « Reply #6 on Apr 11, 2004, 9:06am » We want to get a second refridgerator which would give us more freezer space and more fridge space as well. We have such a large family and just feeding us on a daily basis requires a lot of food, but when we have all the kids and grandkids together - several times a year - we have a hard time getting the food in the fridge. And our freezer is always packed to the gills. My husband does all of our shopping and like you Karen, when something goes on sale, he stocks up. I always have the ingredients for my recipes unless it is something really exotic and then I just add it to the shopping list. We never want for food and could feed our family for months probably a year if we were really careful without going to the store. In fact we have a large pantry upstairs, and two large pantry's in our basement, and our garage has shelving with drinks and juices and such. I don't mind having to climb stairs to get the food for every meal. I feel so blessed to have a husband who provides so well for us. You can use anyplace in your house for food storage if you think about it. Melissa Ringstaff, Director A Virtuous Woman Snickerdoodles Cloth Diapers Country Blinkies Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer." 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"Delight thyself in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."
Proverbs 34:7