Once A Month Cooking

We can spend a lot of time cooking. Some of us love it, some not so much...... If you'd rather be spending that time doing something else, have you considered cooking once a month?

No, really. :) Make a list of the foods that your family likes. How many of those keep well in the freezer? Well, how about grabbing the kids and spending one day each month chopping and boiling and baking, then making individual- or family-sized portions and freezing them? It's really not much more trouble to make a large pot of soup instead of a pot big enough for one meal or get a larger dish and bake a dozen chicken breasts instead of just 2 or 3.

Try a few of these, then follow the links below for more:

-Make a batch of spaghetti sauce, then freeze it in ice cube trays. Once frozen, turn the cubes out into a freezer bag. When it's pasta night, just boil up the noodles and melt a few cubes of sauce.
-Cook a bunch of chicken breasts in a frying pan, adding lemon juice and black pepper to taste. Freeze each separately or make sure they are frozen before putting them all in one bag - no fun trying to pry frozen chicken breasts apart.
-Cut steak into useful portions, then place in a ziploc bag with your favorite marinade. Freeze. Want beef tomorrow night? Pop a bag out of the freezer and into the fridge to thaw overnight.
-Chili and lasagne work well, too. Just make too much and freeze in portions. :)

http://tinyurl.com/9or525 (Food Network page with looong URL)
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/357170
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html