30 Days of Food!

 

I have always tried to cook once for the whole week. It usually happens on Sundays and I try to prepare a few meals for lunch at work and some options for dinner. I just wing it for breakfast (I know, back off!). Anyway, in my endless search to simplify my life and "green" it up, I searched the good ol' internet for ideas on accomplishing a bigger cooking/prep day to possibly cover an entire month. I came across a cool book and website called "The 30 Day Gourmet". The website offers a few recipes and tips but the real goldmine find was the book. Tons of recipes, ideas, solutions, encouragement and worksheets for putting together a prep session for individuals, pairs or even groups.

So I took off work on Friday to set about my new task. I got up early, created my shopping list (the book and website have downloadable/copy pages to simplify this) and headed out to the local Piggly Wiggly. I rant on the Pig, but it is local and in order to live up to my soapbox speeches, I need to support the local economy. I also took advantage of the Stillwater Farmers Market for homegrown veggies (I bought 2 tomato plants and 1 pepper plant too). My grocery bill came to less than $60 since I had such a wonderfully stocked pantry.

The big investment has been the freezer bags and rigid freezer containers. I haven't gone "green" on those items yet. I wanted to see how this little experiment pans out first.

I put 8 pounds of chicken into the crockpot for Italian Chicken. Then set upon the cube steak for 20 servings of Swiss Steak. Finally, I started the 2 pounds of pasta and spinach for the 12 servings of baked Ziti (meatless). I chopped onions and peppers, squeezed frozen spinach and prepared labels. When it started coming together, I realized that I had not cleaned out the freezer so I quickly rearranged and fit everything in neatly. Organization is a key component of the 30 day Gourmet but it's all laid out for you, so it really is simple.

At the end of the day, I had a fully stocked freezer, meals in the frig' and even some homemade, sugarfree strawberry banana ice cream that I decided at the last minute to make.

Yay!
Click on the post title for the link to 30 Day Gourmet