Once a Month Cooking

My husband has been living in another state for the past 7 months due to work.  For the most part, he has been managing fine in an apartment all alone.  He's kept the apartment relatively clean and managed to make food for himself.  Granted, the apartment looks like a college dorm room, but it is livable.

However, this past month when I went to visit him, there was a little difference.  When I got there, his refrigerator looked like this:

I felt a little bad for him since our refrigerator at  home is the exact opposite of this.  So I decided I would make some food items for him to freeze and use until I came back next month.  I didn't have a lot of time since it was Friday of Valentine's Day weekend.  So I started searching the internet for some casserole type items that I thought he would eat.  I immediately thought of those Once a Month Cooking sites and thought something like that would be perfect.  If I could find something that had a half dozen or so recipes with an already prepared shopping list, that would make it easy.  Unfortunately, most of the Once a Month Cooking sites had lots of recipes for crockpot type items.  He doesn't have a crock pot right now, so those wouldn't work.  I needed something that was mostly casseroles or soups/stews.  

I ran across this page for Freezer Meal cooking at The Shabby Creek Cottage.  It was just what I was looking for.  It had all casseroles and/or soups/stews - no crockpot recipes!!  And luckily there was a shopping list.  I didn't have a lot of time for compiling a list.  I wanted to shop on Friday night after my husband came home from work and then cook on Saturday (Valentine's Day) before our planned dinner and a movie.

We went to the store Friday night with the shopping list in hand.  We managed to find everything on the list.  I think our foil pans were different, but what we used worked fine.  We used the 8 x 8 square cake pans.  These didn't come with a lid, like the ones she used on the website, but they worked.  I just purchased a long roll of foil to cover the pans.  Our grocery bill was $219 but that included a few items not on the list - including some fruit, cereal bars, and a few other items.  So, I would say you could buy everything to make these freezer meals for less than $200.  

We ran into a little snag in that the large grocery bill set off the fraud detection alert on my out of state debit card!  So we had to take care of that.  Hopefully you won't have the same problem. 

On Saturday morning, I got started early making the items.  It wasn't easy in his tiny kitchen and with his hand me down cooking supplies!  But we made it work.  

Here is what I ended up making:

6 pans of lasagna

6 pans of broccoli cheddar chicken pasta bake

4 pans Tex Mex chicken and rice casserole

1 9x13 glass casserole of Tex Mex chicken and rice casserole

6 pans basic chicken casserole

2 gallon bags marinara sauce

4 gallon bags chili

12 hamburger patties

5 chicken breast patties to be cooked and put on salad

4 one pound bags of meat to be used for tacos/spaghetti sauce, etc.

Plus, we had spaghetti for lunch using some of the marinara on our cooking day.

Lasagna

Broccoli Chicken Pasta Bake

Classic Chicken Casserole

          

Chili

Tex Mex Chicken Rice Casserole

And here is what his freezer looks like now:

The picture doesn't include the hamburger I made into patties and the 1 pound bags of hamburger.  I didn't make all the recipes from the original website because there wasn't enough room for any more pans in his freezer!  So that is why I had some meat left over.

I think these casseroles will probably last him 3 months!  Each one is probably 3 or 4 days of dinners for him.  He already baked the 9x13 glass pan of Tex Mex Chicken Rice Casserole because we couldn't fit that into the freezer.  I was a little concerned about him liking that particular casserole because he is not a fan of Mexican food.  But he said it was good.  He baked it and then put a little salsa, sour cream and jalepenos on top!  

I am currently in the process of converting some of his favorite recipes into this once-a-month-cooking style and hope to have a shopping list made for the next time.  Stay tuned!