I take a different tact for dinners. My goal is to be able to put dinner on the table in under one hour. If I can do it in 30 minutes or less, that is even better! This means that meals that take a lot of prep or cooking time are generally frozen. Any meal that I can make quick or in the slow cooker, I make from scratch. Here is my dinner menu. The bold recipes are from the freezer.

So I would have to say that most of our meals are frozen in one form or another. I like to make a lot of kit meals. A good example of a kit recipe are the Freezer Quesadillas. I make up the filling and place it in a quart freezer bag for each meal. I place the tortillas in a gallon freezer bag and then place the quart bag of filling in the gallon bag as well. This makes it easy to just "grab and go". Add a salad and some fruit and you have a quick meal.

Do you ever get tired of the same meals during your menu session and just never get to them?

Since I am on a quarterly menu, we usually don't see the same recipe again until the next month. That seems to be the right amount of time for my family. We do get "tired" of recipes. When that happens I drop them off the menu at the start of the next quarter and I don't add them back until the next year or until someone asks for them. A good example of this is Wet Tacos. I just added the recipe back to the menu after being absent for a year. It took the spot in the menu where we used to have Soft Tacos. Chances are that if I had left both of the recipes on the menu we would have been tired of them by the end of the quarter. 

A lot of people cannot imagine cooking for three months. I get questions on the process all the time but it is not that hard. I usually divide the cooking into several sessions of similar meals. I may have a chicken recipe day, a ground beef day, a soup day or a pasta day (lasagna, shells, etc.). Having so many different recipes in the freezer allows me to serve a great variety of meals to avoid the boredom. 

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Last month I talked about buying cheese on sale. Someone posed a question on what I did with the cheese until cooking the next cooking day. This is a very good question. Cheese can be frozen. I will often just put the bags of cheese in the freezer and keep them there until I am ready to use them. This last cooking session I was able to purchase it on sale for my cooking day so I was not forced to store it in the freezer.

Everyone loved the story from Barngranny about the large roast that she tried to cook on her last cooking day. I received lots of comments. Click here if you missed this great story!

Do any of you have a roaster that you use to cook your Thanksgiving turkey? Jil puts hers to use on her cooking day as well. Here is her tip:

Hi Guys,

I found a great solution for frying large amounts (up to 30 lbs.) of ground beef and for making all my poached chicken breasts....a roaster (the kind you can get at Wal-Mart for $30). I load up my chicken, carrots, celery and onions with my herbs; then cover with water and crank her up to 400 degrees. It takes about 1 1/2 hours to cook 24 breasts. I keep them "in the drink" until I process them. They are wonderful and moist. Good Luck!

Jil

And here is a great tip that we received from PJ concerning casserole dishes:

Love your web site.

 

I've been making ahead meals and freezing them for more years than I like to remember.  Back then I only had 1 or 2 casserole dishes and couldn't leave the meals in my pans.  Here's a little tip a friend taught me. 

 

Line your casserole dish with foil leaving 8-10 inches on each side of the dish and spray it well with no stick spray.  Put your casserole in and top it with the lid.  Put it in the freezer long enough for it to freeze.  Then pull it out the frozen casserole using the extra foil to wrap the top.  Put the frozen casserole into a zip top bag and label.  Return the casserole to the freezer and your dish to the cabinet for the next casserole.  When you are ready to  cook the frozen casserole, spray the dish with no stick spray and just unwrap the casserole and pop it back into the dish.

 

Keep on cooking/freezing,

PJ

I received some great information from Lisa about the Oriental Sesame Dressing Mix. I am going to look for this the next time I visit Kroger.

 

We LOVE the chicken strips and the salad dressing. When my salvage store stash of Good Season's [ $0.25 per pack--I bought all 12!!!] ran out I found Kroger has a generic and they run sales on their generic. I think it was $0.99 on sale.

 

I like the pricebook tie-in. It may just get me to do one. Also, you list reminded me of some good stuff for upcoming soccer nights! Thanks!

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CONTEST WINNERS

Our winner this month is Cinnamon from Valencia, PA. This is a story that was posted in the Crazy Cooks section of the Cook's Corner message board. The story is titled "and there is food in the freezer??????". I enjoyed the story. I hope you will too.

Let's hear from Cinnamon:   

I ordered the Advantage Cooking Software and was VERY excited when it arrived. Everything got planned and purchased basically 'on schedule'! However, cooking day started off with a cranky 1 yr old and 4 yr old to match! 1 yr old began by dropping and breaking a baby food jar of split pea soup - gotta clean that up! Downstairs for broom and pan. Done! Baby won't stop fussing and since she hadn't slept night before, call the doctor because I'm sure it's an ear infection. (8:50 am) Put Apple Squares in the oven to bake. Brown some ground meat, take apple squares out of oven and clean up the mess from them spilling over (must be in the wrong size pan). Drop it all, turn everything off and head off to the doc at 10am. Hmmm, nope ears are fine, just teething! GRRR! Home by 11:45 when DH tells me that I need to take him to the doc for 2:00 because he's too dizzy to drive (even longer story!). Ok, dear! Cut some onions, feed 2 kids (and the dog) bag a few things (how did they get cooked? not sure!). Drop a pound of meatball mix on the floor - guess the dog is happy! Now I pack everyone in the van at 1:45 and zoom to the 2nd doc appt of the day! Race home to get 2 more kids off the bus (just beat them home!) I'm not sure how I did it, but in all this craziness, I actually managed to get 20 main dishes into my freezer! AND I even stopped to play Polly Pocket with my 4 yr old at some point (though I can't remember when - it's more of a blur!) Even though I didn't start off in the order I planned (I wanted to put my cheesecake in the oven 1st), things still worked out! So I woke up Saturday a.m. and stuck the cheesecake in to cook. Smelled good, looked good, cooled off nicely. Cut into slices - looked great! However, once it hit the floor, it didn't look too nice! Yep, it slipped out of my hands and onto the floor! My dog is going to get fat if I continue like this! Oh, well, better her than me!

I hope my crazy day encourages others to stick to it! If I had given up after the 1st doc appt, all I would have in my freezer would be 2 - 1/2 gallons of ice cream and a meatloaf. However, I have 20 main meals (plus a few to give away! love that part) apples squares (the ones that didn't burn on my oven floor), and a bunch of soup--all happily chillin' out in my freezer! THANKS 30 Day Gourmet! Love the Advantage Cooking! Now I'm off to clean my floor - the dog did a good job, but I'm thinking maybe I should scrub a bit, too!

Thanks for the sharing this great story with us!  

So, how do you make 30 Day Gourmet work for you?  How do you use it to help you deal with a challenge in your life?  How do you use it to help others?  Do you have a funny cooking story to share? Email me at  carol@30daygourmet.com or post your story on the Cook's Corner message board to be entered in our contest. 

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