Cooking ahead

I had meant to take lots of pictures of my cooking marathon...but the cooking proved to be quite a lot and I forgot to document it all. I recently bought a book "Cook For A Day Eat For A Month". All about cooking for the freezer. I did do a lot of things out of this book, but I didn't follow it completely. However this month I did do complete meal planning and wow what a difference it is making.

First off breakfast foods, I prepared 48 cooked breakfast burritos wrapped accordingly and all they need is a minute in the microwave and breakfast is served, same with egg muffin sandwiches there are 20 of them in the freezer ready to go. These are great especially on mornings when we are running a bit behind.

I did cook some stew, chilli, italian beef, meatloafs and taco meat froze them as well as two lasagnas. A lot of what I also did was prep work, my steaks are frozen in their marinade so as they defrost that is already done and then I just have to grill. My roast is frozen in beef broth and seasoning ready to be put in the crock pot. Onions have been diced and chopped, herbs frozen with butter ready to be thrown into vegetables. I also made an inventory list of my freezer which I think helps.

Instead of sitting down and figuring out what I want for the whole month I made a list of all things I had for what meals for example I know in the freezer I have stuff for roast dinner, lasagna, tacos, grilled steaks, etc. So I made a list ended up with about 40 meals on it that I know I have the ingredients on hand. Then on Sundays I sit down and decide which of those 40 I am going to make for the week. So much easier. I really plan to do this again next month. I also think it is already saving on the grocery bill even though you almost had to revive me when I went and did all of that at once, but even next month wont be as much to stock up because I know I will have carry over.