Freezer Cooking
When I was pregnant with my second daughter, I came across a couple of books at the library about cooking meals ahead of time and freezing them. At the time, I was like cool! That will save me a lot of time later on. Boy does it ever. But you know what I found out? It saves a heck of a lot of money too. Here's why:
1. You always have meals ready to heat and eat, so no more last minute cave ins to getting fast food or go out to a restaurant when you've had a long day and don't feel like cooking.
2. When you cook more of something, you buy the ingredients in bulk, which usually gives you a better price.
3. You can watch the sale ads for great prices on meats. When you find a good deal stock up! Here's what I just did. I found ground meat and chicken breasts both on sale for, get this....$1.00/lb!!!! There was a limit of 10 lbs, so I bought 10lbs of each.
4. If you shop with coupons, and are able to stock up on some cheap or free pantry items, you can choose recipes to cook that contain the ingredients that you already have in your pantry. Sometimes I find that I do not need to go to the store at all. I love that!
5. This is not so much a money saving tip as it is a nice thing to be able to do, but you can easily give a meal to someone in need if you have a freezer of ready made food. At my church, whenever someone has a baby (and that happens quite a lot in our small congregation =P), we make a sign up to bring them food for a couple of weeks. Doing freezer cooking has allowed me to be able to take part in that more often. I love that too.
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