Fresh 20? Once a month cooking? Other meal planning tricks?

[shevacc]

I just heard about Fresh 20 -- it's a subscription-based meal planning site where they send out a weekly shopping list of 20 fresh ingredients that get made into 5 meals. I've also read about, but never tried, once a month cooking (freezer meals).

Have you tried either of these two approaches to meal-planning? Other strategies? Any thoughts/tips? My end goal is to have a gourmet, kid-friendly dinner each night that takes less than 10 minutes to prepare and costs $150/month, lol. One can dream, right? I'm still figuring out which tradeoffs are more important to me between time, money, and taste,

[Deleted]

Someone come tell us how to do this!

[EmmieB1025]

I tried E-Meals for a few months in the past. You pick which store you want to shop at (Kroger, Publix, etc.) and then receive a weekly meal plan and recipes based on what is on sale at the store that week.

It worked well, but DH didn't like some of the recipes. I think they have samples of past plans on the website that you can view.

[muppetinma]

Freezer meals are attainable and really easy, but they take up a lot of space. When we get a bigger house, I plan on getting a chest freezer for things like this. I'd check out www.sixsistersstuff.com for ideas.  They've got a lot of meal planning/bulk freezer meal ideas. 

[shevacc]

My current approach has been reasonably fast and easy, but very boring. We've done a chicken week, a beef week, and are now doing a pork week.

Chicken week: either grill a bunch of chicken breasts or buy a rotisserie chicken. Then we have chicken with rice and broccoli, chicken on salad, chicken tacos, stir fry chicken, chicken soup, or any other way I can think of to slightly modify chicken.

Beef week: grill 2 London broils with different marinades, then have it sliced with several side dishes, steak salad, fajitas, roast beef and cheddar paninis, beef w broccoli stir fry, etc. With ground beef, make hamburgers, tacos, shepherd's pie.

Pork week: smoke or slow cooker a Boston butt roast (pork shoulder) then have pulled pork quesadillas, pulled pork rice bowls, pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork tacos, crispy pork stir fry, pork friend rice, etc.

[bigapple]

I still have fucking lasagna gifts from C's birth in the freezer, so I don't think freezer meals are a go here. We don't have a microwave, and I don't have the patience to rewarm a frozen item in the freezer.

[creamsiclechica]

I did freezer meals before A was born, and truth be told, they were a godsend. I did it as cheaply as possible too, and over a few days, got most of the cooking done. I plan to do it again in a few weeks to get ready for baby #2. With a toddler, it might be hard to cook nonstop enough for a month's worth of food, but if you had a weekend where your DH could handle G while you rocked it out, it's feasible. I'll try and dig up my list of what I made. I know I spent about $150-200, rounding for the ingredients I already had in my pantry. I know offhand I made 2 chicken pot pies, 2 bacon, egg, aspargus stratas, turkey chili, veggie chili, beef chili, chicken noodle soup, bean soup, 2 lasagnas, banana bread, blueberry muffins. But I'll see if I can get my exact list and let you know for sure!

[laurack]

I made a ton of freezer meals before M was born too and we ate all of them, some things don't freeze well but if you avoid those you are fine.

Stuff like pot pies, mac n cheese, fried rice, soups, etc. are great.

I made a giant batch of pasta sauce and froze in ziploc bags, a batch of shepherds pie filling (then I just had to make the mashed potato.. potato doesn't seem to freeze well), the center of beef mushroom pie and then I'd use puff pastry sheets to top it, I made a big batch of rice and separated it into bags with stir fry veggies and some with shredded meat as well. Then when time came to cook I'd just heat oil and cook it with an egg or two and add soy sauce etc.

I also made pea soup, chicken soup, chili, enchiladas.

Really need to get on that again