Photo by Martin Kingsley

Quite a few of you mentioned that you’d like the topic of freezer meals and batch cooking covered in our Back to the Basics series. I’m definitely not an expert in this field, but it’s something I want to incorporate more in my own home management, so this is a refresher post for me as well.

Cooking in advance has the serious advantage of saving time and money. You’ll waste less food (especially the perishables), and you’ll save money by doubling up your efforts on the spoils brought home from the store.

It’s also healthier, because you won’t need to buy convenience foods that are chock full of MSG, preservatives, sodium, and other unpronounceable chemicals.

There are a few methods of batch cooking, but essentially, it involves cooking a lot of food in advance. You can cook enough food to warrant freezing and stockpiling, and you can prepare scratch ingredients, helping you to cook without the fake ingredients found in so many store-bought items.

Here are a few tips for the different methods of cooking ahead of time.

Freezer Meals

Freezer meals are entire meals prepped in advance, and then frozen for later use. They can ether be completely cooked, so that all they need is thawing and reheating, or you can prepare most of the steps in advance, so that all that’s left is cooking the meal.

Advantages:

This is a great time saver. You can stockpile loads of meals for future use, such as when you’re expecting a newborn in your life. Or you can simply have a few meals on hand, so that when life is a bit busy, all you need to do is shop your freezer.

Disadvantage:

You need the space. If you want to do freezer meals hard-core, you might want to check your local Craigslist to find a used deep freezer for your garage. I have a simple second freezer in the kitchen (it’s the size of a compact fridge that’s popular in college dorms). It provides some extra space, but not a ton.

Helpful Tools:

Plenty of freezable dishes, such as those foil casserole dishes you can find in your grocery store. I prefer large resealable plastic bags because they take up less space. Vacuum sealers are great, too, though I don’t have one.

Good Freezer Meal Recipes

• Chicken Nuggets
• Fannie Farmer’s Classic Baked Macaroni and Cheese
• Beef Stew
• Chicken Tetrazzini with Caramelized Onions (make the alfredo sauce from scratch – it’s very easy)
• End of Summer Vegetable & Fresh Herb Casserole
• One Skillet Lasagna
• Chicken Enchiladas
• Spinach Black Bean Lasagna
• Ground Beef and Tomato Manicotti
• Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

You can also search the freezable meals at My Recipes or the make ahead recipes at Whole Foods.

Once A Month Cooking

Some families cook all their meals for the month in one day. I haven’t personally done this, but I hear it works well when you plan in advance and you have extra hands to help.

You can create a two-week menu plan, then buy all your ingredients on one shopping day. Get your perishables and produce at the farmer’s market, and everything else at the grocery store.

Make sure you double all the amounts for each recipe, so that you have enough for the month. You could even quadruple the recipes and have plenty for lunch.

Then you clear an entire day early in the month, and cook, cook, cook. It’s a tough day, but then you’re done for the month! Freeze the meals, label and date them well, and all you have to do is thaw, reheat, and serve.

Cooking & Freezing Staples from Scratch

Photo by thebittenword.com

Even if you don’t like the idea of freezing entire meals in advance, you can still batch cook and freeze staple ingredients.

• Once or twice a month, roast a whole chicken, then cube the meat and store it in half cup or whole cup quantities in resealable bags. Label the quantity and date — you might think you’ll remember, but believe me, you won’t.

• Now, you’ve also got plenty of chicken broth to freeze. Also store this in whole cup quantities, and label it well.

• I also like to match batches of homemade cream of chicken soup, and freeze for recipes later. The stuff in boxes and cans are chock full of fake ingredients and sodium.

• Brown and drain ground beef the day you buy it at the market, and you can also store this by the cup for freezing. This way, you’ll also use less meat per meal, because it’ll be an ingredient instead of the main feature.

• I also like to throw dried pinto beans into the Crock Pot to make a simple side dish that will last us about two weeks. You can mash them into refried beans, too.

• We’ll get to canning later, which will cover lots of veggies and sauces. But you can also make basic marinara sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa in bulk, and freeze them for later. Jump on these things now, while tomatoes are abundant, fresh, in season, and cheap!

It can feel overwhelming if you try to jump on all these ideas at once, so just pick one or two, and gradually add more freezer meals to your agenda. For me, I’ll be freezing my chicken ingredients, ground beef, and a few meals for the next few months.

What do you like to cook in advance and freeze? What are your batch cooking tips?

It’s Monday morning, the start of a new week. I’m not a fan of them either, but I choose to look at Mondays as the day that sets the mood for the rest of the week. When I wake up to a relatively straightened-up home with a penciled-in sketch of a game plan for the week, I’m more positive about another day.

If I haven’t made a menu plan for the entire month, I’ll create one for the week on Sunday evening. If you haven’t made yours yet, you’ve still got plenty of time. This week’s task in Back to the Basics? Create a menu plan, and start making this a regular habit in your household.

This week’s task:

Create a menu plan for this week, and possibly for the next two weeks.

Who this involves:

You, mostly, though you should take all the family members’ food limitations and favorites into consideration.

How long this will take:

It might take you longer if you’re new at this, but it will get faster each week, especially if you repeat your weeks. I’d set aside about an hour to search your cookbooks or your recipe bookmarks online.

The process:

Go through your current food stash and note what needs to be used up, then pore over your recipes and decide on what to make for dinner this week. Create a shopping list based on your plan, and write down your menu, either with pen and paper, or in an online calendar.

The goal:

A useful menu plan that works specifically for your family’s needs, aligning with your mission statement.

Why Plan a Menu?

Menu planning is part of a frugal home that wants to eat well, not waste food or money, enjoy the cooking process, and make sitting down as a family at the table a priority.

Just a few of the benefits — you can:

• plan for meals based on what’s already in your fridge and pantry
• make a well-rounded, nutritious game plan with a variety of foods throughout the week
• reuse leftovers creatively, not letting them go to waste
• cook what’s in season and what’s on sale, saving you money
• you also save money by buying what you know you need
• grocery shopping goes faster because you know what you need
• not have that panicky, “What do I whip up for dinner?” feeling at 5 p.m.

It gets easier and easier to menu plan once you make a habit of doing it weekly or monthly, and there are a number of methods that simplify the process.

Tips & Tricks for Effective Menu Planning

As I mentioned in the introduction to the Back to the Basics series, there will be almost nothing new mentioned. Going “back to” something implies that this idea has already been part of home management for generations, and that we’ll simply be discussing the tried and true techniques out there.

Here are some hacks many families use to make their menu work for them:

• Have a daily theme. We do this — Mondays are pasta; Tuesdays are soup, salad, and/or sandwiches; Wednesdays are stir fry; Thursdays are crock pot; Fridays are pizza; Saturdays are something new, and Sundays are something easy.

An example of this is our month-long menu plan from April.

• Repeat your menu every two weeks for a season. Most of us don’t mind eating a meal twice a month, and when you create a two-week menu plan, you can be set for a few months. Try creating a two-week plan for the summer.

• Cook in advance. We’ll discuss this more when we get to batch cooking and freezer meals, but if you plan on repeating a week down the road, go ahead and make a double batch of tonight’s dinner. Then when that next week rolls around, you’re already set.

• Use a calendar program like Google Calendar. I wrote about how I use this method here.

• Plan with the seasons. I find our summertime menu plans easier, because the food is lighter and easier to prepare. Create tomato-based dishes during the summer, when they’re in abundance and fresher (and also much cheaper).

• Post your menu plan on your blog each Monday, then submit it to Menu Plan Mondays on Org Junkie. It’ll keep you accountable to doing it, and you can find lots of ideas from other families.

A Few Thoughts About Grocery Shopping

Shopping for food is easier when you plan a menu. You know exactly what you need and don’t need, and you can intentionally plan to cook what’s cheaper and in season.

Here are a few tips to make grocery shopping easier and to make your food more palatable:

• Shop your local farmer’s market once a week. You know what I mean if you read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the book club this spring. You’re supporting the local economy, your food is infinitely fresher, you’re eating what’s in season, and you’ll actually save money — it’s not very expensive.

Many farmers harvest organic produce and meat, but can’t afford the costly “certified organic” label from the USDA. Chat with them about their farming process, and you’ll be able to find a farmer that meets your family’s need for quality produce at a fraction of the price.

Local Harvest is a great resource to help you find a farmer’s market near you. You can also get info on joining a community-supported agriculture service (CSA).

• Keep your grocery store trips to every two weeks. If you buy most of your perishables at the farmer’s market, you can stock up on your staples at the conventional store. With a two-week menu plan, you’ll only need to go to the grocery store twice a month.

• Use coupons, but make sure you don’t buy more than you need. If you wouldn’t eat the food anyway, you’re not saving money by buying it with a coupon. Money Saving Mom and Deal Seeking Mom are great resources for coupon deals and for tricks on getting more bang from a store’s sale.

• Create a master grocery list. I have a simple one you can download for free, but the one we actually use is sorted by aisle at our particular store. Once you develop a shopping pattern, you’ll find that you usually buy the same things repeatedly.

Craft a simple grocery list in Excel, organized by aisle from your usual shop. Print it off weekly and keep it in the kitchen. Simply tick off items as you need them, and when it’s shopping day, your list is already set. We pared down our shopping time by half when we organized our list by aisle.

• Make a master price list. How often have you found olive oil on sale, but can’t remember if that’s actually a good deal compared to other stores’ prices? Create a simple list of the best normal prices on your staples, and where they can be found. Keep it in your home management notebook, and take it with you on shopping day.

• Oh, and don’t forget your reusable bags. Keep them in your car or your purse.

Your Assignment

Today, plan your menu for the week. Perhaps publish it on your blog, and then share it on Menu Plan Mondays.

Just focus on dinner for now, but if you’re a seasoned pro at menu planning, take a stab at planning breakfasts and lunches, too.

Don’t worry if it’s in pencil because it might change — that’s okay. Ours does every week. It’s there to serve you, not to force you in to a plan that doesn’t work.

Let your family mission statement guide you, if that helps. Since one of our family’s values is to “take care of our health,” we will plan a menu that is made of real food. Because we also want to “be good stewards of creation,” we will mostly eat local food. We also value simplicity, so no complicated food here.

Resources

Here are some articles I’ve already written about menu planning:

• A Basic Guide to Menu Planning
• Menu Planning Resources
• Make a Delicious Cookbook
• 7 Essential Tips to Simplify Your Menu Plan

And here are other good posts from other bloggers:

• A Week’s Menu Plan & Grocery Shopping List All In One :: Small Notebook
• Money Saving Meals :: Like Merchant Ships
• Living Out of Your Pantry: Meal Plans :: Mom Advice
• Lower Your Grocery Bill Without Clipping Coupons :: Money Saving Mom

What are your tips for menu planning? Feel free to link to a post on your blog, if you’ve written about it. And if you write your week’s menu on your blog, feel free to share that here, too.