Bulk Cooking

Cooking for two can be pretty boring but just as time consuming as it would be if you were feeding 6. It is easy to resort to quick freezer food especially on nights that the hubs is at school late so then it becomes cooking for one which is as far from thrilling as cooking can get.

So you can see that if cooking regularly is such a challenge then eating healthy is quickly thrown out the window. The way I combat this is to bulk cook. I make several meals at once and then just pop them in the oven or crock pot the day of. That way its no more effort when dinner time comes around than grabbing unhealthy food from the freezer would be so no excuses!

I actually do enjoy cooking so cooking several meals at once is great. The part that is always hard is compiling a list of recipes. Deciding what you feel like eating for the next month is a daunting task. So I try to choose some new recipes as well as ones I know we will love.

This time I decided on 13 meals. 2 of them were for breakfast so that left us with 11 dinners. Since many of them feed 6-8 and there are only 2 of us each meal will last at least one dinner and a lunch later that same week if not a third meal. I did a lot of recipes that Paleo friendly, meaning they are made up of mostly meat and vegetables.

It took me a little less than 4 hours to prep all the food, you cut down on prep time when you bulk prepare because you can cut all the veggies at once and then just separate into the different dishes rather than doing the task several separate times over the month.I put the dinners mostly in zip lock bags but put the casseroles that would usually be placed in pyrex into foil pans so that they could just go straight to the oven with out any additional prep work.

I like to do the shopping on one day and the prep work on another. That way its not TOO long of a day.  I also want to say there is no need for a HUGE freezer. Sure there are just 2 of us but still all these meals fit on one shelf in the freezer and one in the fridge when I was done. If all were in the freezer that wouldn't have even taken up half the space it offers. So still room in there for the necessities like Ice Cream!

Fridge prior to the cooking, looked like a butcher shop with all the meat in it

After the prepping, all the meals fit on one shelf! There were only a few items I left in the fridge that were going to be meals that day or the day after.

Below is a list and links to the meals I made this time around.

Dinners:
Loaded Baked Potato and Chicken Casserole
Italian Style Chuck Roast
Balsamic Roast
Taco Roast
Finger Lickin' Chicken
Salsa Chicken Rice Casserole
Tex Mex Carnitas
Chicken Fajitas
Dijon Chicken
Lemon Garlic Chicken   (the amount of garlic on this one scared me so I adjusted it ALOT)
Split Pea Soup

Breakfast:
Breakfast Casserole
Cinnamon roll