Preparing for a Once-a-Month Cooking Day

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was my day to prepare the grocery list for a month of meals.  I took a look at my next menu and added a few meals to make a total of 35.  With four adult children living at home while in college, the meals are going faster than they once did.  It is my hope that this will get us to early May. 

Today, my hubby and I went shopping.  We were able to get most of the ingredients at Costco and Target, but I will need to shop at another grocery store to get a few more specialty items.  That can wait until morning!

Here's my kitchen this afternoon.  I never like putting it all away, but it's also good to split the shopping from the cooking.

 My freezer is quite empty as I go into this cooking day.

The refrigerator, on the other hand, becomes quite full as it is the holding space for all those groceries until morning!

 A few items are ingredients for meals that are best made fresh, such as Pigs in a Blanket which will be made with fresh bread dough, so I identified one package that must be saved!

I did prepare a few items today that just make sense before freezing.  Here's what I did:

• Froze the pre-seasoned Salmon
• Cleaned two chickens and froze them separately
• Cooked all the boneless skinless chicken breasts
• Made two quiches, one Aztec, one plain
• Cut the 3-pack of hot dogs into individual packages, labeled one and froze all
• Froze the hamburger patties

Tonight I am baking the last meal from the last round of cooking, a Lasagna.  Tomorrow the cooking begins!