Time for some cookin'

Since we've been travelling more than normal lately, we have let our pantry, refrigerator, and freezer supplies deplete. Now it's time for a refill. I started working on a menu and grocery list on Monday, and on Tuesday I was pleasently surprise to get the Albertson's grocery flier in the mail. Usually it is scanned quickly and trashed, but I saw that they were doing a big "Buy One Get One Free" sale and was thrilled. In case you are new to my blog, we cook only once in a while, but then we cook a lot. I planned for 31 meals -- that gets us through at least 6 weeks since there are leftovers, we eat out occassionally, and sometimes we are out of town. I prepared to get as much for my dollar as I could, and that took only a bit more planning. With my mega-list in hand, I loaded the kids in the car, and drove to the store where Allen met me after work in his car.

Together we had two carts each with two kids. Two hours later, we went through two check-out lanes, and we loaded two cars and headed home. In all we spent $443.88 and saved $216.50 just from the sales. I found it funny that we only paid $1.51 in sales tax for the freezer bags that I store our meals in -- everything else was food, mostly produce and around 40 pounds of meat. It took a long time to put everything away when we got home, but we finished.

What do we do with all of it? Allen and I spend a weekend cooking and freezing so that all we do on a daily basis is thaw, heat, then eat. Since all of the recipes are new to us, I won't post the recipe until we know if it is worth sharing, but here is our task list (aka: menu.)

Done today - 19 meals
2 meals - Blackened chicken salad & dressing (I will blacken chicken for 2 meals, but we always have salad stuff on hand.)
3 meals - Gardenburger patties
2 meals - Brazilian beef and black bean casserole
2 meals - Salmon packs (salmon steaks, veggies, & spices)
3 meals - Sweet & Sour pork
3 meals - Chicken dijon
2 meals - Chicken a la Provencal
2 meals - Roast Chicken in a bag

To work on tomorrow
2 meals - Creole bean patties (eaten as sandwich)
2 meals - Beef & veggie 5-spice stir fry
3 meals - Stay-in-bed stew
3 meals - Pot au feu
2 meals - Pasta Primavera with Chicken

We had the garden burgers tonight -- a vegetable and whole grain patty that we ate like a burger (on a bun, with tomato, lettuce, pickles, ketchup, mayo, etc.) They turned out very tasty, so I'll share that recipe tomorrow. Now I am going to get a drink and sit down with Allen and watch Iron Chef America.