Once a month cooking!

We start our cook off yesterday! It took us two days to complete it this time due to back issues, but that is okay! We got many meals again. I will have to post later, but I just wanted to give a quick tip!! We made meatballs for one of our meals this time, Joey wanted meatloaf but I completely forgot as I was cooking stuff up, and had started the meatballs and used the ground beef up already. I stuff them but this time I used wild rice. We also ran out of bread crumbs last time we made burgers. The only thing I had left in the cupboard was All Bran! My youngest son really enjoys the mortar and pestal so I got him to grind 1.5 cups of bran for me and we used that in the burgers and meatmalls for the month! Half a cup of all bran has nearly 50% of your daily intake of fiber! That is a crazy high amount. The more the better I say! And since you have to use something as a binding agent with the egg that you use, you can't even tell the difference. They tasted fabulous (we had those for dinner last night as they were already made :) I added tomato soup and let them simmer for an hour. Not even any complaints from the kids!

Meatballs
1lb extra lean ground beef
2 eggs
1/3 cup all bran
1/3 cup wild rice
3 tbls mustard (secret ingredient to yummy burgers!)
Worcestershire sauce, about a tsp
pepper
spices to taste (I used the organic no salt flavour from Costco)

Roll meat into balls about 2 inches. Brown balls on medium heat until brown all around. Bake in oven at 350 for about an hour, or until cooked all the way through. I like it with tomato soup flavour so I had a can of that with water, and simmer in the oven. Serve with extra rice and any side veggies you like mmm mmm mm I would have used a photo of the meatballs, but the kids ate them too fast to get one ;)

New stuff!

I've been really lacking in the posting department! I'm back to it though.

Our next big job to do in the kitchen is once a month cooking. It not only saves time but money as well. Last time we did this job, it took us only about 3 hours to do all the cooking, and we had enough dinners for 26 days (approximately) and saved about 300$ on doing this. Not only that, but we completely controlled what we put in our meals, mouths and what we decide to have each night. It definitely isn't boring, but you need to take the time to plan out what you like, and what you want to spend. We did a lot of research on meals, what we could make the most of with what we decided and really, the ideas are endless!

Our last batch had chicken, ground beef, and many vegetables dishes. We were short on time, and also because of my back, we cut time by purchasing roasted chicken instead of raw, so we didn't have to deal with the extra mess. I think this time around we are going to do the same thing. I'm not very fond of raw chicken parts! And the bones made the nice soup stuck just as well as if they were raw. We were both satisfied! So tomorrow is the big day that we will be spending deciding what to make. We are going to go with beef roasts, chicken and ground beef. Our last lists of meals were:

Ground beef:
Lazy mans cabbage rolls
lasagna
Shepard's Pie
spaghetti sauce
chili

Chicken:
Soup stock
Chicken flavoured rice
Curry chicken
Butter chicken
Chicken fajitas
chicken cacciatore

All of this was made with 2 roasted chickens, and one of those large containers of extra lean ground beef. Vegetables are generally cheap (and healthy) so we filled the containers with fresh stuff. We get the take out tins with cardboard lids, they are easy to label and recyclable! One container is large enough for both of us to have dinner for one night, or since the hubby was sailing a lot I would cook one meal, have half for dinner, and bring the other half for lunch. We also have a lot of choice which helps make dinners a lot less boring. Flavours are our friend!! I will post our list of interesting ideas tomorrow once we have figured it out!! Happy eats!