The BIG Cook!

Here's how it all begins: Christin and I both  shop for our alotted grocery list from the wonderful spread sheet she's created. We try to save as much money as possible by shopping at No Frills and look for deals up to a week before we shop. Once that's done, we await the BIG day and bring all our ingredients together! Here's a picture of how we organize it - label each meal and put all ingredients for that meal together. (this was our Christmas bake, where we made a ridiculous amount of cookies, bars, squares, cookies, dipped pretzels etc)

This was the Bacon meatloaf that was from the recipe book ' The Big Cook' .. Anyone who is interested in this style of cooking, MUST buy this book. It provides great tips of the trade as well as an abundance of recipes. Some of the recipes are trial and error..but we've found a few keepers...the 'Zippy Porkchops' are a favourite! All of the meals are put into either large ziplocks, or aluminum pans for freezing. Each bag is labelled with recipe name, style of cooking (crockpot or oven), temperature, and time to cook.  No need to keep recipe book handy that way.

Here is Christin in the kitchen, using the processer she totes along each time we cook - what a great tool it is!

Here are a few of the dipped pretzel rods we made. Some were dipped in sprinkles, skor bits, and cookie crumbs. Made for a nice decorative treat.

These were the date pinwheels (Christins nana's recipe) that turned out to be a family favourite for us!

The real bonus to cooking in these large batches all in one day, is the savings on dishes and time. I'm also more apt to invite company for dinner when I've got a frozen meal on hand!

A great idea for busy moms!

 And yes ... the kitchen definitely gets worse before it gets better. We try to clean as we go, and keep an open garbage, a burn box (something that folks in the country have the luxury of having ;) and a recycling bin on hand to keep the empty packaging to a minimum.

 Slappin' the meat in there :) Cooking CAN be fun!

What's for supper tonight???