And if so, what do you make, how do you organize it, how do you store it? I tend to do big pots or casseroles of things a couple or three times a week, but I’m not very organized about it. I’d like to try and do it more, and more efficiently. We eat a lot of stews, baked pasta, and soup.
So if you do cook once a week, what do your menus look like, and tell me about your methods. People who cook a couple or three times a week welcome, too. 
I’ve never been that organized (or that disciplined about leftovers) but I really, really want to hear from people who do it. There are some websites about it as well.
I cook once a month – more or less. Since it’s just the hubby and me, one batch of cooking lasts a LONG time…
I almost always make a couple of our favorites – spaghetti sauce and black bean soup are staples – and vary the remaining recipes by season or taste. In winter, I’m more likely to make chili or lasagna, for example, and in summer I’m less likely to make anything that requires the oven to be heated up.
A typical cooking session might include:
1 big pot spaghetti sauce (12 meals)
1 big pot black bean soup (10 meals)
4 or 5 meals of chicken breasts frozen in marinade (can be grilled or baked later)
1 crock pot full of kielbasa in a sweet/spicy sauce. (5 meals)
(Note that many OAMC cooks would suggest that my plan isn’t optimized – i.e., I’m only making one recipe from each main ingredient. I suppose for larger families, optimization makes sense. But for just the two of us, this gives us plenty.)
I freeze pretty much everything in Ziploc™ bags because they take up less space when laid flat in the freezer.
For organization, I’ll make a list of how many meals of each type I actually end up with – I’m not anal enough to measure servings precisely – and stick that on the freezer. I’ll count down as I use each one.
When I make lasagna, I make it in loaf pans since it’s just the two of us. (I tried using 8x8 pans, but that meant we ate lasagna for dinner two nights in a row and I still got at least one lunch out of it… I don’t mind leftovers, but that’s ridiculous.)
Hmm… can’t really think of anything else I do. I’m happy to answer questions, though.
If you’re interested in “freezer cooking,” my mom is a fan of 30 Day Gourmet. She’s been making stuff out of their books for ages.
I don’t do that now, but when I was single and working a corporate job at FedEx, I’d do a week’s work of cooking on Saturday afternoon and refrigerate everything. I also did a week’s worth of ironing on Saturday morning.
You mean only once a week? Or at least once a week. 'Cause we cook at our place 7 nights a week. Well, we have maybe a couple of nights a month when we don’t…
Only once a week - as in, you cook your ass off on Saturday or even on the first of the month and you freeze and refrigerate by a plan.
I work the evening shift, so cooking is sort of a problem for me. I feel funny waking up to make a lasagna before leaving for work (at 2pm) but I’m not going to start cooking at midnight when I get home. So I try to cook on weekends and make stuff that I can freeze, or we’ll have lots of salads on weeknights, with grilled chicken or steak off the Foreman grill. I’d like to use my slow-cooker more but I feel like it’s more of a winter thing. Who wants soups and stews when it’s 90 degrees out?
I’d love to learn how to be more efficient at batch cooking, though, so I’ll be paying attention to this thread. I checked out the website ZipperJJ linked to, and it looks like it’s something I might be able to pull off. Weekly, anyway. I don’t see myself managing to cook a month’s worth of food in a weekend.
I just cook for myself and I do tend to cook a casserole for the week. I get the Gladware containers and divvy it up into five or six portions. This way when I am grabbing a lunch in a fog in the morning, it’s already ready for me. Or it’s a portion that’s ready for dinner if I choose to have it then.
That’s an interesting site. Cooking with intent to freeze it is different than making stuff for leftover meals.
My cooking mirrors Kurillas:
spaghetti sauce & meatballs
a ginger based kielbasa/shrimp jambalaya
Manhattan clam chowder
steak with mushrooms/onions cooked in butter/wine
meatloaf
tuna casserole
beef stroganoff
Basically anything that sounds good and will freeze well. Having problems with the beef stroganoff. Might have to make it without the cream and then add it as needed.
Sorry to kind of hijack this thread (though a slow cooker would go hand-in-hand beautifully with OAWC; you could have a big double or triple batch of something in a 6qt slow cooker while you have something else in the oven), but I use my slow cooker a lot in the summer. I love it because it doesn’t heat up the whole kitchen the way the oven does.
Some of my favorite warmer weather recipes are:
BBQ (pork or beef short ribs, maybe chicken)
Deviled chicken (a low-carb high protein deliciosity)
Creamed chicken with biscuits
All recipes available on request.
I meant cooking a whole lot once a week/once a month. I probably cook about every three days right now, and every couple of weeks I do a whole lot of maybe two or three things (stew, brisket, pot roast, pasta sauce, whatever) and we eat them gradually over a period of time.
And I would love recipes.
I certainly do - though it tends to be just one dish, about three servings or so worth. The other days I am often working late, and will just grab cereal when I get home, or eat at a bar.
This week I cooked up a big pot of chicken thighs in a basic curry sauce, with some taters and veggies in it, and a separate big pot of rice. It shoudl be all done by Friday, when I jet off to Blighty.
I’ve also been playing with a new smoker, so I will often smoke up a lot of meat on Sunday, especially as it has been hot, and eat that cold through the week.
My kielbasa recipe comes from their site. I wasn’t a fan of the book, though. I preferred Deborah Taylor-Hough’s books on the topic.
I am interested in the recipe for this one. Thanks!
I like to throw a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in my crockpot, throw in some taco seasoning and some salsa, then shred when cooked through. Great for tacos, burritos, salads, etc.
Here ya go:
This recipe is low-carb but very much not low-fat, so brace yourself!
5 boneless skinless chicken thighs
6TBSP butter
6TBSP good brown mustard
1/2tsp each ground nutmeg and crushed red pepper
16pkts Splenda
Salt and pepper
Season both sides of each thigh with salt and pepper. Put them in your Slow Cooker. Add the butter (cut up) and the mustard, seasonings and Splenda.
Cook on low for about 6 hours, stirring a couple of times.
I serve this with brown rice and gingered glazed carrots.
Gingered glazed carrots
2C frozen baby carrots
2TBSP each brown sugar and butter
about 1/2" ginger root
salt and pepper
Bring carrots to a simmer with a tiny bit of water in a heavy saucepan, season with salt and pepper. Once the carrots are as tender as you like, add the sugar, butter and ginger root (grated) and stir until the butter and sugar work together to form a glaze.
I cook mostly once a week. And it is mostly just basic staple… Rice mixed with something (vienna sausages, beans, tomatoes, garlic, onions, mushrooms, beef, chicken, etc.).
I either put the whole pot in the fridge (I live by myself, there is plenty of room in the fridge), or place the food in plastic containers (again in the fridge).
Sometimes I cook ground beef for tortillas, or make meatballs with white rice and red beans (or black beans or white beans). Other times I go fancy and make hummus.
But really, I just cook whatever I want and afford (and there are ingredients) and then everything left goes to the plastic containers and the fridge.
I frequently cook once a week with the occasional meal tossed in.
6 qt crock pot is my favorite cooking toy. although I have been looking at that 8qt out there.
my dishes kinda randomly made here and there as needed to restock
Split pea soup, pretty basic recipe but I use bacon instead of a ham hock, sorry I am not wasting space in the pot for what is essentially a friggin spice. one thing I found that works great is bacon ends, big fat chunks of bacony goodness. taters carrots, the usual stuff other wise.
Chili, Chicken usually and DARK MEAT (cant stand white meat, the words juicy and chicken breast in the same sentence are only used be people who do not in fact Eat said dry ass concoction. also for the health food nuts, dark and white meat chicken are damn close when it comes to fat and all that nonsense)
usually black bean or pinto with a mix of the 2 being common, 3 pounds chicken, lotsa cummin and chili powder, also a pinch of cinnamon and salt, corn meal for thickener as needed (plus if you accidentally spill a ton of corn meal into your dish you have just made a nice thick chili dip. and also garlic is common.
Chicken Stew, its pretty much chicken soup but the pot is stuffed with chicken and veggies to the top, then broth added to that.
Pot roast, cooked to rare, eaten and then cut up for storage. (reheating t pot roast cooks it to well easily, so if you store it well you end up with a reheated hockey puck)
Roasted Veggies (thanks to the dope for this one)
Taters, usually reds
carrots
onion
red/orange/yellow pepper one only
garlic
salt
pepper
oil
I have a large roasting pan that I use but a cookie sheet will work fine, cut up taters and pure a couple teaspoons of oil onto foil lined cookie sheet, add salt, more than you would for just the taters alone also add pepper at this point, drop in taters and mix until coated evenly
bake in oven for around 30 min on around 300 stirring every 15 min
add carrots and continue for another 30 min with stirring
add onions/pepper/garlic and continue as above for another 45 min or so. should be done if not try another 15 min.
the thing about the veggies is that they are perfect with the roast AND
Bacon and Eggs!!, thick cut pepper bacon, cook it and set to drain
eggs, I use a mix of a few real eggs and pure egg whites (you can buy them, looks like a quart of milk) real eggs for some yolk but mostly whites for the whole health thing.
now i usually freeze up some roasted veggies for serving by them selves (or with the roast) but when I do breakfast I make a big batch of veggies and another big batch of bacon and eggs then mix it all up and freeze that as one meal (note chop bacon into smaller more bite sized pieces first)
for freezing, I have a food saver vacuum thing that rocks, I make bags and write what it is and the date made on the bag before adding food.
for freezing soups and pretty much everything else heres my trick
http://www.boscov.com/StoreFrontWeb/Product.bos?assortmentDepartmentNumber=7059910&assortmentId=3&itemNumber=23297&type=Product
the ones I use are about 9 inches long and are perfect for the large bags the food saver uses/makes just pour your soup into one of those, freeze it like a big ass ice cube, then into the vacuum bag it goes, a nice square block of food that is a nice serving size. (you can fill them with more for bigger servings or less for smaller as well)
I also make pulled pork and use the same containers but I separate the pork down the middle for 2 large sandwich sized servings per container.
so I usually cook stuff on Friday then maybe a bit more here and there, and I try to make more than a weeks worth since my diet is so messed up I have to eat my own food most of the time so for me its lunch and dinner and breakfast I am cooking most of the time.
I’ll spend 3-4 hours each Sunday morning cooking all my lunches and dinners for the work week. It’s just for me* so I don’t tend to make dishes too big. One dish is usually pasta or a casserole, another some kind of meat dish w/maybe a starch (I like couscous a lot), and then maybe some other one-off that I have leftover ingredients for. Sometimes, I’ll preprep a large salad that I break up into 3 or 4 smaller containers.
I tend to be fairly well-stocked, but usually will go to the farmer’s market and/or the grocery store on Saturday to get anything specific I need or am low on. I usually go through my cookbooks (mostly Cooking Light or WW) to decide what I’ll make on Friday night. All my tupperwares are good quality and secure so I never worry about things going bad.
I usually stagger my dishes about half-hour apart, so if I notice that (especially for a new dish) I’ve made more than I expected or estimated, I’ll simply table one of my planned dishes for the following week (freezing any perishable ingredients, if appropriate). I’ll also, of course, make any adjustments if I know that I’ll be eating out or have some other event that week that will reduce my final meal total from 10 to something smaller.
I love it. I can’t say I’m the most efficient cook, but for me it’s never about speed but just about enjoying the process and getting better each time.
*she usually eats her own thing, but after smelling all the cooking I’m doing, she inevitably does some poaching, so I always make a couple extra portions to account for this, too.