Hey all! Happy 2 year blog-o-versery!
I started this blog 2 years ago to document my free time in the strange between finishing university and work place of my life. I have since 1. found a job and 2. don't really have that much free time any more!
As I mentioned a billion times, Mike and I tutor every. single. night. So that means from Monday-Thursday we have no free evenings. I still love tutoring and it helps with some extra spending money, but this means we need to be prepared to take on the week on Sunday.
Over the holidays I was pinteresting a lot. Like every day countless hours a lot. But in doing this I did manage to find something that actually looked like it could help the Monday-Friday no time thing.
I pinned this link to Loving My Nest for Freezer Crock Pot Meals. What I liked about these meals is that they were full of veggies and weren't all chilli. After looking over the grocery lists and the recipes (which Jessica from the blog has all ready to go), I decided to take the plunge. I did one of each recipe on her list (except for the spaghetti sauce) and added the Goulash Recipe from Mama and Baby Love.
Now what hurts my soul a little is that Jessica from "Loving my Nest" was able to double or triple most of her recipes and only spend 150 for all her food. She found chicken breasts for 1.69/lb. That just doesn't happen here. I made 12 meals (all of which will have double leftovers), so food for 6 weeks, and it worked out to be around 250 bucks (I also did normal groceries for lunches, and a costco run, so my bill was a lot higher!) But still that works out to be just over 30 dollars a week for supper for two people. Not too bad! So money wise it isn't a huge saver, but time wise it should be very helpful.
When I arrived home from shopping Mike and I quickly organized what was for the MEGA Cooking, and what was for normal groceries. Next we started washing and chopping all the vegetables. I following the instructions at Loving my nest, and figured out per ingredient what needed to be chopped/diced/sliced etc. I then would tell mike chop 9 carrots, dice 5 etc. We also figured out what an "average" serving of each vegetable was..so one carrot = 1 cup, which made it easier to put together the recipes.
Once we had all the vegetables chopped the kitchen/table wasn't looking too bad. It took us about 1.5 hours to chop all the veggies. I figured that was the hardest part...I was wrong.
Next came assembling the bags. I labelled all the bags with the title, the date, and the instructions (ex add chicken stock). Then I started with the bean soup (no meat) while Mike cut up all the chicken breasts. As we went through each recipe things got a little complicated. For instance I had only bought full tomatoes, not "tomatoes with chillis" or diced tomatoes. So when they showed up Mike had to dice the canned tomatoes, and add some jarred jalapeños. Also I made the taco spice from scratch, the enchilada sauce from scratch.
Meanwhile, we also had a chicken cooking all afternoon to get the shredded meat for the tortilla soup, so we had to deal with that, and we had to cook the sausages for the sausage and bean recipe. ALSO...we went to a potluck last night and had to pull something together for that.
At one point, the kitchen/table was a disaster. I think doing this kind of meal prep would be much better suited for a normal sized kitchen not a condo kitchen.
But in the end after a few hours of meal assembling, the bowls of veggies were disappearing, the bags were going into the freezer, and the ingredients were getting put away. The clean up at the end only really took maybe 45 minutes (a few dishes to wash today, but nothing too scary!).
And typically I spend at least 3 hours every Sunday in the kitchen preparing the weeks food so instead of spending say 18 hours over the next 6 weeks, I only spent about 5. And now our groceries each week should be fairly simple. I have yet to try any of the recipes, but one is going into the slow cooker tomorrow, and hopefully it tastes good!!
Anyone else do MEGA Cooking?? Anyone else like living off their slow cooker in the winter?
I started this blog 2 years ago to document my free time in the strange between finishing university and work place of my life. I have since 1. found a job and 2. don't really have that much free time any more!
As I mentioned a billion times, Mike and I tutor every. single. night. So that means from Monday-Thursday we have no free evenings. I still love tutoring and it helps with some extra spending money, but this means we need to be prepared to take on the week on Sunday.
Over the holidays I was pinteresting a lot. Like every day countless hours a lot. But in doing this I did manage to find something that actually looked like it could help the Monday-Friday no time thing.
I pinned this link to Loving My Nest for Freezer Crock Pot Meals. What I liked about these meals is that they were full of veggies and weren't all chilli. After looking over the grocery lists and the recipes (which Jessica from the blog has all ready to go), I decided to take the plunge. I did one of each recipe on her list (except for the spaghetti sauce) and added the Goulash Recipe from Mama and Baby Love.
Now what hurts my soul a little is that Jessica from "Loving my Nest" was able to double or triple most of her recipes and only spend 150 for all her food. She found chicken breasts for 1.69/lb. That just doesn't happen here. I made 12 meals (all of which will have double leftovers), so food for 6 weeks, and it worked out to be around 250 bucks (I also did normal groceries for lunches, and a costco run, so my bill was a lot higher!) But still that works out to be just over 30 dollars a week for supper for two people. Not too bad! So money wise it isn't a huge saver, but time wise it should be very helpful.
 |
| All the food (except for the meat) |
Once we had all the vegetables chopped the kitchen/table wasn't looking too bad. It took us about 1.5 hours to chop all the veggies. I figured that was the hardest part...I was wrong.
 |
| Labelling the bags |
Next came assembling the bags. I labelled all the bags with the title, the date, and the instructions (ex add chicken stock). Then I started with the bean soup (no meat) while Mike cut up all the chicken breasts. As we went through each recipe things got a little complicated. For instance I had only bought full tomatoes, not "tomatoes with chillis" or diced tomatoes. So when they showed up Mike had to dice the canned tomatoes, and add some jarred jalapeños. Also I made the taco spice from scratch, the enchilada sauce from scratch.
Meanwhile, we also had a chicken cooking all afternoon to get the shredded meat for the tortilla soup, so we had to deal with that, and we had to cook the sausages for the sausage and bean recipe. ALSO...we went to a potluck last night and had to pull something together for that.
At one point, the kitchen/table was a disaster. I think doing this kind of meal prep would be much better suited for a normal sized kitchen not a condo kitchen.
 |
| Sorry for the blurry Pic..This was the state of my mind haha |
But in the end after a few hours of meal assembling, the bowls of veggies were disappearing, the bags were going into the freezer, and the ingredients were getting put away. The clean up at the end only really took maybe 45 minutes (a few dishes to wash today, but nothing too scary!).
 |
| 6/12 done! |
Anyone else do MEGA Cooking?? Anyone else like living off their slow cooker in the winter?
