Do You Like to Eat Home-Cooked Meals But Can't (Or Don't Want To) Take the Time?

Are you exhausted at the end of the day, with standing at the stove cooking being the last thing you want to do? 

According to my husband, his paternal grandmother cooked a whole week's meals on Sunday. Around here we are not organized enough yet to Cook Once, Eat for a Week, which is the title of a cookbook by Jyl Steinback, or to delve into Once-a Month Cooking, another cookbook, by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg. Maybe next month. For now, I will offer some of my tips for cutting down on cooking prep time, and preparing some meals ahead, which maybe you are already doing, they are so easy. 

I bought four "Extreme Value" packages of meat today at Safeway. Two of chicken, and two of beef. There are fifteen thighs and six half-breasts of chicken; a two-pound package of stew beef, and a three-pound package of ground beef. I have stripped all the fat off the chicken. As I write, half of each of the packages of chicken are baking in the oven; the other halves are now neatly packaged in plastic bread bags and freezing in one layer on plates in the freezer. When I want to cook them, they won't take as long to thaw, and I won't have to deal with the fat. When the chicken is done baking, I will cool it and strip the meat from the bones, chop it into smaller pieces, and freeze it in two-cup Ziploc containers, ready for use in casseroles, fried rice, enchiladas or other entree. I will either make stock from the bones, or stockpile them in a bag in the freezer for later. Whenever I make stock, I will freeze some or all of it as well, in the two-cup containers. Again, easy to thaw for recipes. When my kids had the flu last month, and only up to sipping broth, I was able to simmer some bones, celery, carrot and onion, and have nutritious broth ready within the hour.

 I am planning on beef stew for dinner tonight with the two pounds of stew beef. I will make a double batch and freeze half for another meal. I will fry up two pounds of the ground beef with onions at the same time, and freeze it in two-cup containers for casseroles, etc.; easy to thaw in a saucepan. The other pound I will either make into hamburger patties and freeze between sheets of wax paper, or just freeze as a large patty in itself. 

Whenever I make a lasagna, casserole or enchiladas, I will either divide the portions into two smaller square pans rather than one large one, or else make twice as much,  divide into a big pan and two small ones, and freeze. That way, when I either can't stand the thought of cooking, or am not able to be home to prepare dinner, there will still be something to put in the oven, whether frozen or thawed.

I'm only limited by the size of my freezer and whether I can think ahead one day to thaw the raw meat......