There are several areas of my life that could use a little changing in 2008. Actually, there are many areas that could use a whole lot of changing! One area I’ve determined to work on is the amount of time I spend in the kitchen. No, I’m not going to stop cooking but I’m going to go back to my Once A Week type cooking. I did it in KY back when we mostly lived in one house and it worked for me then so I don’t see why it won’t work now. I’ve heard of Once a Month cooking and there’s probably some book or DVD on Once a Week cooking but I just do it my own way.
I cook all the things that can be cooked ahead and I make extra and freeze it and then every fourth week (if not sooner), I don’t have to cook at all — just pull stuff out of the freezer. If anyone is interested in knowing more about what I do, just let me know and I’ll talk more about it here.
Here’s what I made today:
- Taco Soup – half of it will be for Wednesday night, along with toasted cheese sandwiches, and half of it went into the freezer.
- Shipwreck Stew – we had half of it tonight, along with cornbread and coleslaw, and half of it went into the freezer.
- King Ranch Casserole – we had almost a whole smoked turkey breast left over from Christmas so I made two batches of King Ranch Casserole and one went into the freezer, we’ll have the other on Thursday night.
- Black Eyed Peas – Of course we have to have those tomorrow so I cooked 2 pounds of dried beans, along with the ham bone bone from Christmas, and got 3 batches of black eyed peas for the freezer. Doesn’t take any extra effort to cook 2 pounds of beans than it does to cook 1 pound.
- Pork Roast – Gotta have pork tomorrow too. Instead of making 2 small roasts, I made 4. Once the gravy is made, I’ll slice the pork, put it in the gravy and freeze it. We’ll also have leftovers on Friday!
I will have to make side items like baked potatoes, rice, salads, cornbread — stuff like that but basically, I’m finished cooking til Saturday.
Here’s my menu for the week.
Monday – Shipwreck Stew, Coleslaw, Cornbread
Tuesday – Pork Roast, Black Eyed Peas, Cabbage, Garlic Rolls
Wednesday – Taco Soup, Guacamole & Chips, Crackers
Thursday – King Ranch Casserole, Baked Potatoes, Green Beans, Rolls
Friday – Pork Roast, Rice & Gravy, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Salad
Since these foods will only be in the freezer for a few weeks, I don’t worry a whole lot about how they’re packaged. Here are a few items I put in the freezer.
Using handy dandy 3M Post-it tape, I label the packages. Only 3M tape will do . . gotta have the best! 🙂
I make an Excel spreadsheet where I describe everything and make any notes I’ll need to know when getting the food out of the freezer.
I label the containers, along with the numbers from the spreadsheet. When I need something, I’ll just go to the freezer and look for item #7 or 5 or whatever I need!
Oops, here’s something you might NOT want to do. I opened the drawer to get out a knife, cut the bag of beans open and oh, my gosh . . dumped most of the beans into the knife drawer. Not what I had planned to do!
Less time in the kitchen means . . more time in the sewing room! 🙂
