Fryxie: We're not grocery shopping until December!

Today I cooked all day--literally. My goal is Mike and I won't have to go grocery shopping for anything but milk and produce until December. After visiting four stores yesterday and a lot of couponing and planning (about 4 hours), we now have over 50 meals in our freezer!

From my last freezer meal cooking:

3 peanut stir frys
3 chicken enchiladas
1 buttermilk chicken

And then today:

4 lasagna soups for two
4 apple squash soups for two
4 french onion soups for two
6! butternut squash lasagnas (and we just had one and it seems to make 2 meals per pan! That's 12 meals!) (also, this is amazing!)
4 lettuce wrap fillings (PF Changs knock off)
6 frozen pizza doughs
4 pizza casseroles
4 white cheddar chicken casseroles

Plus! We have:

6 pizzas (from costco)
2 bags of potstickers
10 lbs of chicken

Combine that with the ridiculous deals I got on uncle bens side dish rice and cereal (hot and cold), we can pretty much survive a zombie apocalypse.

Oh and I got 24 yoplait yogurts with 4 coupons that were save .40 on 6, those coupons double (but I think it didn't, now that I think about it) and then I got $1.25 off my next transaction with the purchase of 12. So I bought my yogurts first and then used those catalina coupons ($2.50) off the rest of my groceries! I'm going to figure out how to be an extreme couponer for our December shopping trip.

Basically: couponing + once-a-month cooking = win!

2 comments:

Anonymous10/16/2011
Please give me.your receipes and how you are storing it all. I have the couponing down but living a crazy hectic nyc lifestyle does a number to our eating habit and eating out equals a number on our budget. you are totally my hero in this dept. ~raisa
Courtney10/17/2011
Raisa, I've linked most of the recipes up above (the lasagna is ridiculously good!).

Unlike living in NYC I'm guessing, we have room for a separate freezer in our garage.

But even if you don't have a huge freezer, the thing that has saved my life: FoodSaver. It isn't cheap (but you can find coupons for like $10 off) but it allows you to cook in huge batches without worrying about freezer burn. I cook two to three times what the recipe says and then store it in 2 person portions. So even if you don't have a giant freezer you can do this with a normal recipe.

Also, I get these tiny pans with lids in the bakeware aisle of the grocery store and put lasagna, casseroles or enchiladas in them. You can write the instructions on the top in sharpie and then I wrap them in saran wrap and pop in the freezer.

With all the meals, before I go to work I pop them out and throw it in the microwave to defrost (not on, just protected from the dog and cat!). By the time Mike gets home, dinner is defrosted and he just needs to follow the directions on the to or whatever I wrote in sharpie on the foodsaver bag.

I hope that helps!