Did you spend hours in the kitchen preparing a Thanksgiving meal?
I do that every weekend.
Hub doesn't have a stove in his little basement apartment, so he can't really cook when he's away at work at suburban MRU. Moreover, he's not inclined to cook a full meal for only himself. For budgetary, dietary and environmental reasons, we have decided to cook all the meals for the week from scratch at home, box them into portion sized containers, and send them with him when he returns to his work city. He carries a cooler full of ice packs and food with him.
A few months ago, a neighbor in our development approached me and asked if I would like to join a "supper club". Its a communist plot to not cook every night. :) There are four households (8 people) involved and basically we take turns cooking supper for each other. My night is Monday (since I am cooking on the weekend anyway). Then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday a hot delicious meal magically arrives at my door- brought by smiling neighbors.
So Hub and I sit down on Fridays and plan about 2-3 dishes for Hub and a big dish for the supper club. And I/we cook it all in an evening. Hub can cook, and helps, but I have a natural draw to the kitchen, so usually its me in there while Hub keeps Boy out of danger and works on other household projects.
Though I do a lot of the cooking, Hub certainly carries his weight. That's not just my impression... we quantify that by using Chore Wars. And I get lots of points for that huge cooking session. Moreover, I'm getting to be a better cook every week. We try to clean the dishes, but if that doesn't happen, thank goodness our help comes on Monday. So by Monday night, after I deliver the food to my neighbors, I'm home free for the rest of the week, cooking-wise. Additionally, each week I try to cook just a little more than Hub will eat. This way his freezer slowly fills, and if there's a weekend we want to travel (yeah, right), are sick, or just don't wanna, we're still OK.
Wow. I'm impressed with all that cooking. I think cooking all of the meals over the weekend and freezing them down is a great idea. We just inherited a deep-freeze and I *think* I just might slowly be building up the motivation to give this plan a whirl.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Every once in a while I throw all the scraps into a "freezer soup" (soup from stuff in the freezer) and sometimes its yummy and sometimes totally icky!
ReplyDeleteMy hubby and I (well, mostly I at this point) prepare almost all of our meals at home (also for budgetary and health reasons). I always intend to get a lot of prep work done on Sunday, but I usually run out of steam. Then I spend every night fixing dinner and lunches and snacks for the next day. I like the idea of having a few nights off during the week, so I might be trying your plan.
ReplyDeleteI used to do that when I was living away from my husband and hated cooking in my apartment. I got a little uncreative after a while though and then it was less fun.
ReplyDelete