Ok…I have been neglecting answering my comments…….
MIDWESTBLAHS –
Menu – I write my menu for a month since I hate to do it!! I print out the list and put it on the fridge. I cross out the items as I make them. I will switch things around a bit if needed. If I didn’t make sometime I will put on the menu again the following month. As for shopping I shop every week, but usually shop once week for two weeks of the menu and the next week is just milk, produce and sale items. I would prefer to only shop every other week. I go to Aldi for a big stock up once a month as well. My grocery budget is only $75.00 a week so we have to plan everything out.
COOKING SESSION – I have a group of friends, we are actually the Special Deliveries Committee at our church. We provide fellowship and support to young families in the congretation. We make meals and take them to new moms after they have their babies as well in addition to other events for small children. We decided to start batch cooking since we were all so busy and wanted to give our family homemade meals.
As a committee we usually pick 4 recipes made with the same meat – like this time was a chicken session. We each contirubte a recipe and we use the 30DAY Gourmet Freezer manual as well. THey have a website too www.30daygourmet.com
One committe member is in charge of the session – we do a test session first with about 5 committee members to get experience with the recipes and how to best run the session. That is what we did today, a run through before we open it up to others.
The member in charge of the session does all the shopping and brings all the groceries to the church. We buy most things at Aldi and Sam’s club. We then prepare and cook all the meals at the church. We bag them up or put them in foil pans to be frozen. We divide the the meals up and divide the cost of the groceries between each of us.
Today’s session cost each of us 25.40 for 5 meals.
Next we will be planning the larger session. We limit that session to 12 people. We charge each person about 28-30.00 and make 12 of each meal. We all cook together and it goes very fast. We will make about 50 meals in less than 3 hours. It is a great time and money saver.
Let me know what other questions I can answer about this.