As a busy home school mom I needed a way to have easy, quick, inexpensive meals without going out. I did not even have one day to do once a month cooking. So I cook half the month. I make a menu for 15 days. On day one for instance, we might have meat loaf, well I make enough for two meals by putting the meat loaf in muffin cups and freezing half. This works with most things like hamburgers, chili, soups, etc. For pastas I make the sauce and freeze and cook the pasta when needed.
LOVE your muffin meatloaf idea. I also homeschool, am VERY low income/budget, and must make do with EVERY scrap of food, etc. I pour juice from canned fruit into koolaid, and freeze. I reinvent left-over meals and freeze. We have a house bunny, kitten and pet white mouse who eat whatever drops on the floor of the fridge or tiny preparation scraps and luckily outdoor grasses/seeds.
I needed a great idea to use donated ground beef for, and the plan ahead frozen meatloaf is PERFECT. Oh, since my garden produces so poorly,skimpily I just chop the few items into whatever soups or casseroles I make. Now I can add them to the meatloaf too.
FYI I add one can of tuna, a boiled egg, left over hot cereals, and any herbs, veggie root/stem/leaf I have left to most every soup I make. There are no complaints so far.
I'm about to learn to eat dandelion greens since I found out they are natural cures for SO MANY ailments and disorders. I've learned to add wild wood violets to salads, and that several plants I have are actually edible! God Bless you.
I've been doing this (in a way) for years and thanks for passing it along! I think since I've been doing it for so long, I forget that a lot of people don't think about it. I actually mentioned this to a friend of how we cook and she was amazed that you could freeze all the things we were freezing.
Basically, I double the recipe and then after baking/cooking put the "leftovers" in freeable containers/bags. Perfect for dinners and lunches -- we never "make" lunch.
I also freeze any extra veggies/rice/meat/pasta for soup and any leftover soup for next time.
We've found by using everything we have and not throwing anything away that we are more humbled by all we have
I do this only not a half a month. I will buy ground beef on sale and brown it all at once with a little onion for taste. Then I freeze some in ziploc bags. Some of the meat I go ahead and assemble such as tater tot casserole. Ground beef, cream of chicken soup and tatertots! I mix the soup with some water adn mix with ground beef. Then I cover in tatertots. I put it in a baking pan lined w/aluminum foil and freeze. It bakes up nice and does not seem to have that "freezer" taste.
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