Meals

by Ang

First off, I apologize for my absence lately!  We had a great visit with my family which I will blog about next time.  But I wanted to share my latest 'project' first.

I’m just going to come out and say it: I don’t enjoy cooking. I never have, and honestly, I probably never will. When I DO cook, I’m not bad at it…I just don’t enjoy it, therefore I don’t do it much. And I’ve always been the type that HAS to follow a recipe exactly. I can’t ‘wing it’ and just start tossing things in ‘according to taste’. That is a recipe for disaster! No pun intended. Ha ha.

Anyways, I have had three consistent problems with cooking over the years:

1) I don’t meal plan regularly, so when I don’t have a plan, we eat out.

2) When I DO meal plan, I will go to the store and get everything I need, but when I get home from work, the LAST thing I want to do is cook for an hour (or more, because most likely I forgot to take the meat out of the freezer).

3) What to make, what to make, what to make. I get in a rut.
So I needed a solution to not only save us time, but also money. Enter this program:
www.5dinners1hour.com

I stumbled upon it through another blog. The idea is just how it sounds. You cook 5 dinners in one hour. And then store them in the fridge for consumption that week. I was intrigued, so I signed up.

At first I was a little skeptical…I didn’t want just casseroles with all processed food. But when I got my menus for the month, I was pleasantly surprised! BBQ roasted salmon, slow cooked beef tacos, almond crusted chicken, slow cooked Mexican vegetable soup, orange teriyaki chicken bites, tangy baked chicken, etc. Those were just a few of my monthly selections. All served with vegetables, salad, rice, etc. I chose a weekly menu and went to the store. Ooooh and this is another really good part. Each weekly menu comes with a weekly grocery list, that is categorized by area of store (frozen, produce, bread, etc.). It was incredibly helpful.
Each weekly menu comes with 5 meals, although I eliminated one of the meals (tilapia….my husband can’t have tilapia), so I only made 4 this week: Deviled Legs, Hot Ham Cornbread Sandwich, Orange Teriyaki Chicken Bites, and Slow Cooked Italian Sausage Soup. Sounds good, right? I could have made the 5th meal too, because they always give a substitute for fish (like use chicken). But I decided to start off with four for now. Also, each meal serves 4-6, but that will work just fine for us, because we will have lunch leftovers the next day! I even bought some nice Pyrex containers to take my leftovers to work to re-heat.
So today after work I came home, and set out all of my stuff (which is recommended….set out EVERYTHING you will need, which is listed on your weekly menu, even down to the utensils!) and filled up my sink with hot soapy water.
And then I got to cooking! That part went really well. I timed myself, and it really did only take an hour! And the food looks really good. My plan is to do this every Friday so that we will have dinners for the weekends (which is our biggest ‘eating out’ time). I am so excited that I don’t have to think about dinner until next Friday! And even then I don’t really have to think about it….i just have to take my list to the store. Next week’s menu: Slow Cooker White Beans and Ham, Almond Crusted Chicken, Hawaiian Beef, Italian Sub Sandwich, and Slow Cooked Mexican Vegetable Soup.

Sorry there's no pictures....I took one of all of my pretty food ready to go, but I'm having some computer issues and can't upload it right now.  So you'll have to use your imagination!