Meals Made Ahead: swapping day

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

June 2010 Swap

We met this morning to swap our foods. Our total for our June menu items was $107.64 which came to just $26.91 each.

Let's see what that $26.91 got us:

28 pancakes from Alton Brown's recipe (I made 2 full batches of the dry mix which meant 6 times the "wet" ingredients)

1 Creamy Baked Pasta casserole (will serve my small family at least 3 meals, or great to take to a pot luck)
24-48 (depends on your will-power!) servings Peanut Butter Bars
8 Parmesan Chicken breasts
1 Monica's BBQ marinade
1 Caribbean Jerk marinade
1 Polynesian marinade
2 bags Lemonade Chicken marinade

Sorry, no pictures. You'll just have to imagine us all in the parking lot of the local park, trunks open, transporting food to and fro. It was kind of like trick-or-treating for busy moms!

Monday, May 17, 2010

The swap!

We swapped our meals this week. And we all agreed that we'll continue to cook meals at home and get together to swap them, at least for the summer months. We'll reevaluate in the fall when the kids are back in school.

It is slightly more complicated to to figure out the finances when everyone does their own shopping for their meals, but it makes it much easier to calculate the cost for each particular dish. For this swap:

$10.53 for two meals of Freezer Quesadillas = $5.26 per meal
$7.26 for up to four meals of Black Bean Lasagna (depending on family size) = $1.82 per meal!
$7.09 for one Cheeseburger Quiche which is enough for a family dinner and probably leftovers for a lunch or two.
$10.01 for at least two meals of Dr. Pepper Spaghetti = $5 per meal
$4.80 for a Bacon Swiss Meatloaf; add a potato and a salad or veggie to round out the meal and you can feed for your entire family dinner for less than $10.

Bacon Swiss Meatloaf loaded in my cooler and waiting to swap.

Black Bean Lasagna

Freezer Chicken Quesadillas

Cheeseburger Quiche

Dr. Pepper Spaghetti

About this blog:

We are a group of moms who get together about once a month or so to cook Meals Made Ahead.

Meals Made Ahead are great because it's nice to always have something in the freezer for those nights that are busy, those nights when you can't think of anything to make, those nights when you have nothing to cook with because you didn't feel like dragging two screaming kids through the grocery store, those nights when you just don't feel like cooking.

Sure, we could do this on our own. But it's much more fun to cook with friends (and share the clean up!)

The secret ingredient

"If a woman could see the sparks of light going forth from her fingertips when she is cooking, and the substance of light that goes into the food she handles, she would be amazed to see how much of herself she charges into the meals that she prepares for her family and friends. It is one of the most important and least understood activities of life, that the radiation and feeling that go into the preparation of food affect everyone who partakes of it. And this activity should be unhurried, peaceful, and happy because the substance of the lifestream performing the service flows into that food and is eaten, and actually becomes part of the energy of the receiver. It would be better that an individual did not eat at all than to eat food that has been prepared under a feeling of anger, apathy, resentment, depression, or any outward pressure."
~Maha Chohan, Electrons