Off shoot of vegetable recipe thread

[Lexee15]

I really don’t like cooking…don’t get me wrong I cook just fine I just don’t like the clean up:blush:. Anyway I was reading the vegetable recipes on the other thread, which sound great, and I started thinking about the everyday cooking.

I grew up in a home where you could eat the same thing for 3 days, you know beans, soups, stews, etc. There were only 4 of us, but for some reason my mom always made a lot of food and the kind that would last that long. I don’t like eating the same thing for three days straight, but I do have a hard time figuring out what to cook everyday for lunch and dinner which is a drag.

I talked to a friend who told me that she makes all her meals for the week on Sunday and goes from there. I thought that was brilliant, now she’s a personal trainer so she has a very specific diet so I didn’t ask her what she made…but I want to ask you folks.

Do any of you do this? If so, how? What do you make and do you freeze it? How many courses do you make? Do you only make main courses and which ones? Can you do this with vegetables? I want my meals to be nutritious (trying to lose some weight), but I want to be able to give them to ds…I don’t like making separate meals since it’s just the two of us.

I would love any and all (name removed by moderator)ut on this subject…meal ideas, recipes, shortcuts and tricks, etc. to making this an easier and more flavorful task. I like the idea of spending just one day cooking and not worrying about what I’ll make for lunch or dinner all week. It seems like a very good and time-saving idea…what do you all think?

 

[Just_wondering]

Well, I don’t exactly do that, because I love having fresh meals. But what I do is I pre-chop and cook vegetables for the week. I chop oodles of mushrooms, peppers, onions, zucchini, carrots, and garlic. Then I fry them (all together, but you could fry them separately if you like) in a drizzle of olive oil. I don’t season them when I fry them because I like to do it later. I divide them up into little baggies, and half the baggies go into the freezer, while the other half go into the fridge.

Then I use them throughout the week to make ultra-simple meals.

Omelette: mix eggs, milk, ham, and veggies. Fry in a non-stick pan. Serve with toast or rice.

Pasta: cook spaghetti. Fry ground beef. Add tomato sauce and veggies. mix with pasta. serve.

Pasta 2: cook macaroni. Add cheese, a speck of milk, ham, and veggies. stir on low heat for 2 minutes. serve.

Pitas: cook a chicken breast. reheat veggies. Put sliced chicken, veggies, (optional rice,) lettuce, and cheese on a pita. Serve.

Fried rice: take cooked rice, add veggies and a raw egg. Fry for three minutes. top with hot sauce.

Curry: cook some rice or other grains (couscous, whatever). Grab a curry flavour pouch (I stock up on them from the foreign food aisle), your favourite meat, fish, or poultry, and the veggies. Toss them all together, cook following package directions, and serve over rice.

I know it still takes a few minutes and makes dishes mid-week, but a healthy dinner with lots of veggies now takes me 20 minutes instead of an hour.

Something else that I make at the beginning of the week is meat buns. I take the fried veggie mix and put some cooked steak or ground hamburger in it. Flavour it up nice. Make a simple bread dough (recipes pulled from the internet) - it must be a yeast bread. I use flavoured oils in the recipe to make it taste nice. Then I grab a tablespoon of veggies and a few chunks of meat, plunk it into a small lump of dough, close it up, and put it into a lined muffin tin. Bake for 20-30 minutes or so, until the bread seems done. Then I let them cool and put them in baggies - half in the fridge, half in the freezer - for lunches. I also experiment with oriental flavour pouches - thai curry paste mixed with meat and veggies, indian spices, whatever strikes my fancy. I make several different batches of meat fillings, mark the top of the buns with different herbs so I can tell them apart, and mix and match them for lunch. To serve, just re-heat them in the microwave or on low heat for a long time in the oven. Yummy!

 

[Teakafrog]

I talked to a friend who told me that she makes all her meals for the week on Sunday and goes from there. I thought that was brilliant, now she’s a personal trainer so she has a very specific diet so I didn’t ask her what she made…but I want to ask you folks.

I personally can’t get organized enough to do this, but it’s called Once a Month Cooking (OAMC). If you google it, there are lots of recipes and cookbooks on the subject. Some people literally cook all day, like on a Saturday, freeze everything, then eat for weeks, just thawing individual servings of different dishes every night. If you make 7 different things, you have a different dish each night, and only repeat once a week. Sounds great if you like to plan ahead.

 

[SeekerJen]

I personally can’t get organized enough to do this, but it’s called Once a Month Cooking (OAMC). If you google it, there are lots of recipes and cookbooks on the subject. Some people literally cook all day, like on a Saturday, freeze everything, then eat for weeks, just thawing individual servings of different dishes every night. If you make 7 different things, you have a different dish each night, and only repeat once a week. Sounds great if you like to plan ahead.

My former boss does this; in fact, sometimes her sister drives over and stays with her for a weekend, they spend the whole weekend cooking, and then split up the food between the two of them.

I’m also not organized enough, and I don’t mind cooking a few times throughout the week, so I’ve never tried it. Sometimes I do double-batch things like soups or casseroles, then freeze half so that if we’re having a really busy or bad day, at least dinner will be easy.

 

[DL82]

I don’t do this, but if a meal calls for something elaborate like marinading meat overnight, I will put the marinade on then freeze it. It marinades for 3-4 hours while it’s still freezing, then another 6-8 hours while it’s defrosting, so the same as leaving things overnight, but you can use it whenever.

A really good thing to do this with is pork belly with soy sauce, paprika, plums or cherries, honey and star anise. When you defrost you get the nicest Chinese roast pork from it.

 

[puzzleannie]

I have done this for years, and now can’t manage any other way.
I only make big pot meals once a month or less, and freeze in quart containers or pint (enough for the 2 of us, plus a bit leftover for lunch the next day).
stuff like chili, beef stew, taco filling, soup, chicken stew (with mash pot. or biscuit on top it becomes pot pie for instance.

I have 4 sets of recipe and shopping cards, so in any given month eat about the same. have revised these as kids left, diet change due to diabetes etc. but basic system remains
28 basic meals, shop and cook on Fri (my day off, used to do it sunday). lunch and breakfast are the same almost every day
boiled egg and sometimes piece of ham or sausage for breakfast with fruit
soup and salad for lunch (salad in bags, deli meat, cooked chicken, tuna or similar protein topping)

basic framework of main dishes (which some days are eaten at noon, somedays in the evening depending on work schedule)
2 fish meals a week
2 chicken meals a week
2 beef meals a week
1 pasta or rice or grain or bean meal a week

8 fish meals:
poached fish, spinach and sweet potato or squash
tuna and (casserole, melts, salad w or w/o macaroni, steak)
salmon and (croquettes, patties, steak, strips, florentine)
basic fish fry eaten out
chowder or bisque, with salad or slaw, potatoes, green veggie

8 chicken meals (in reality we end up with more fish, less chicken these days)
mexican (flauta, chalupa, taco salad, salsa verde, veracruzano, con mole)
Italian (parmesan, marsala, w/artichoke & angel hair, florentine)
basic breaded w/potato, veggie
BBQ, baked, pot pie or fricassee

8 beef meals
steak (3 oz filets individually packed in marinade)
roast beef (slow cooked and frozen in meal size packs)
stew, in gravy, tomato sauce, red wine or other sauce (crock pot and frozen in meal size containers)
burger and (actual burgers, meatbals, taco or sloppy joe type, meatloaf)

pasta or rice, Italian, stirfry or similar, with veggies

in actual fact, one week I cook beef meals for a couple of months, another week I cook chicken, and so forth.

putting an actual meal together is a matter of thawing, adding sauce and steaming some veggies, takes less than 15 min.

we don’t eat a lot of pork, maybe one of those chicken or beef meals a month is pork.

working now on bean soup (from Christmas hambone)
same cooked beans will become chili when the soup is gone
still 3 quarts left.

just finished baked chicken, friend is bringing a hen for stewing Monday, so will have soup, fricassee, and pot pie filling, one hen will make 2 months of chicken meals. Some of those chicken meals also end up to be turkey meals if it is on sale.

will put beef stew in crockpot tonite for dinner Sunday, enough to freeze 2 or 3 more meals

just finishing ground turkey from freezer, had as spaghetti sauce last night, taco filling tonight, have had at least 8 meals since Thanksgiving from leftovers

I think there is rice in the freezer, will do stirfry Monday noon with one leftover chicken breast

had tuna steaks Friday, marinated, grilled on salad greens with citrus, good bread sticks, asparagus and shells