Once-a-Month Cooking

 One way to be frugal is to cook an awful lot of food at one time.  You buy in bulk, cook in bulk, freeze in bulk, and then eat it slowly over the next few weeks.  This is called "once-a-month cooking" or sometimes, "freezer cooking" and it is something that both intrigues and frightens me.  My freezer is constantly being used with best intentions and then stuff just sits.

After the jump find some resources for how to plan such an endeavor and a treasure trove of recipes to use when you decide to take the plunge.

 

This is what it should look like

My neighbor is super awesome.  She went shopping with me last week and when I bought those chicken breasts on sale, she jumped right in and bought some of her own...without realizing they were bone-in and included skin.  This is not something that she has ever dealt with before but rather than panic, she did what I suggested earlier we should all do more of...she used the Internet as her menu-planning friend.  I've included my own summary and a copy of the recipe below the fold...

Household Tips

Tips are great.  But I find myself overwhelmed when I try to remember all those handy little tips people pass along.  Invariably, I only remember them when I see someone else doing something smart.  Thank goodness for the Internet.
Tipnut.com

This is one of my favorite go-to sites for tips.  I don't feel so bad when I can't remember everything my mother and grandmother taught me anymore, it's all archived on this site.  It's like Google for household help.  Take that 7th grade Home Ec!



This short blog post inspired by last night's dinner guests who were shocked (shocked!) to see me using lemon and salt while washing the dishes.

• Basic Morton's salt is what I use when I need a quick and easy scouring powder when doing dishes.
• Lemon juice is what I use when I have deep stains that need to come out (like beet juice on a wooden chopping board)
• Salt and lemon juice together is what I use to clean copper cheaply.

You know what? Tipnut knows all that too and more:
25 Household Uses for Salt
15 Helpful Household Lemon Aids

You might want to bookmark them.

Credits
Image: lemon tree a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from Darwin Bell's photostream

True Budgeting

So I was reading an article on CNN today which was absolute RUBBISH.  It purports to tell you how to save $500 by Christmas and then suggests things like "eat in at least once a week" ... ::cricket cricket:: what, that's not a mind-blowingly awesome suggestion? Oh, you mean you already do that and more? I think this comment speaks for pretty much everyone reading that article, "unkatharos: This was no help at all. *disappointed"




It's no secret, food is a big expense because you gotta eat.  How to save money?  One of the first sites I found that helped me learn menu planning and budgeting was:

Hillbilly Housewife

They are great.  Not only do they provide recipes and menu plans, they often provide step-by-step instructions for everything along the way....ex:

Sunday Night: Mix up the dough for Overnight Bread.  Set it aside to rise.  Mix up a gallon of milk and a gallon of Tea. Put both into the fridge to chill.  Clean the kitchen.  Go to bed.

It may seem silly, or a little outdated to some...but sometimes, when you are panicked and scared, straight-forward instructions like "clean the kitchen" "go to bed" are very handy.

If you are hungry and desperate, please check these links out:

$45 Emergency Menu (for 4-6)
$70 Low-Cost Menu (for 4-6)

They used to offer menus planned around the Angel Food Ministries Boxes.  Those menus are still archived there but are no longer updated (as of Feb. 2010) but please let me recommend them anyway as a great start to budget meal planning.

How to REALLY save for the holidays without increasing your revenue...
So, if you are currently spending more than $25/week for a singleton or $50/week for a couple or $100/week for a family of 4...use one of these menus for a few weeks and use the savings for Christmas (or a holiday of your choosing, or your looming debt).

Credits
Image: Empty Plate a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from Conway L.'s photostream

Starting with a Chicken

Roast chicken is one of the best ways to get a lot of food for a little.  But the more I've shopped this idea around the more I've come to learn that few people really know how to roast one.

I make this for my friends all the time and they are blown away.  I have people come up to me in the grocery store (abashed) asking how one prepares a whole chicken.  Even more impressively, I had my mother over and while she can cook a chicken, she never learned to carve one.  I have a secret: this is one of those things that I learned from the Internet.

  
Here are some of the best links to get you started:

How to Roast a Chicken
This page from about.com is spectacular.  A no-fail basic roast chicken recipe complete with links to making no-fail basic gravy and no-fail basic chicken stock AND teaches you fancy French words for things you already knew how to do.  Adding chopped veggies to the roasting pan? You've made mirepoix.  Gravy? You've probably made a roux and bechamel or veloute sauce.  Aren't we fancy?

How to Carve a Chicken
This video is great.  I love watching chefs do things because they make it seem so easy (and not scary).  The first time I watched this I actually went to Target and bought a fresh new carving knife just to try it out.  It wasn't expensive (about $3).

What to Do with the Leftovers
Cheap Healthy Good is one of my favorite food blogs.  They have helped me out a lot when I'm in a pinch for fast recipes.  "1 Chicken 17 Meals" is one of my all-time favorite posts. All recipe links are included and they are easy to manipulate with whatever ingredients you have on hand. The sesame noodle/peanut sauce recipe might have redeemed my cooking skills in the eyes of my mother.  Powerful stuff.



Credits
Image: Roast Chicken a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kirybabe's photostream