My Cooking Spree

Well, I am not doing once a month cooking but I have taken a few hours today to cook in bulk. I happened across a very good deal on about to expire ground beef yesterday. I bought 10 pounds. lol. Soooooo today I decided to invest some time in the kitchen. I am about halfway through my cooking and taking a break and decided to talk about the method to my madness.

The first thing I did today was to throw a 5 lb bag of chicken breasts into the crockpot. When it is done cooking I will cut half up into chunks and shred the other half and store these in the freezer for meals later this month. This chicken will easily make 5 or more dinners of various kinds such as chicken enchiladas, chicken pasta, chicken pot pie, mexican rice casserole, etc.

Then I cut up onions... oh the tears! And I began browning the ground beef with the onions, a few pounds at a time. When finished I drained the ground beef to remove excess fat. Meanwhile I kept another pot going for making this browned meat into a variety of meal options. So far, I have made taco meat and sloppy joes. I still will make chili and spaghetti sauce. Each of these will be placed in freezer bags, carefully labeled, and frozen solid for future easy meals. Although this will only be part of the meal options this month, this will make the month much simpler. And only in a couple of hours.

If the beef had been leaner I would have made some meatballs or meatloaf out of some of it... or simple hamburger patties... but this was fattier ground beef than I like to get so I browned and drained it instead. But when the meat is marked down dramatically it was a deal I couldn't resist.

For the rest of the meals this month, I will focus on more chicken, fish, and some meatless meals to balance out the red meat of this cooking binge... but this will have made for very inexpensive meals and easy. It should keep me from ordering pizza or going through the drive through on those days I simply am too busy or tired to cook. Something like sloppy joes is microwave and go.