Eating Well by Eating Locally

Stocking your pantry with food grown by local farmers is a great way to eat fresh, interesting, ever-changing meals all year long at low prices. You can find a listing of local foods are currently in season in your state at the National Resource Defense Council's website along with recipes and other helpful information.

More On Multi-Meal Preparation...

Here are links to websites, blogs and forums that may be useful anyone interested in learning more about this topic...

Frozen Assets

Recipe Zaar

Make Ahead Meals

Friendly Freezer

I hope these are helpful!  Until next time...

                                                                Kathy

Eating Well While Spending Less Time - Multimeal Preparation

OAMC ... OAWC ... freezer meal preparation ... multi-meal preparation ... assembly cooking...What do all these terms have in common? 

1. They are all strategies used to prepare more than one meal in a single cooking session and then store the extras so they can be eaten later.  
2. They can shorten food prep time by hours to days each month.
3. Using one of these strateges can decrease transportation, grocery, and utility expenses more than you can imagine.

I generally do mult-meal preparation once each week and store between 4 and 5 meals.  I purchase enough of whatever meat is on sale and double or triple each of 1 to 2 recipes that freeze well.
A few weeks ago, I purchased two 3# bags of fresh chicken tenders.  I had 2 bottles of jamaican jerk marinade, a bottle of italian salad dressing, and the fixins for vegetable soup in the pantry.
-- From the first bag of tenders, I divided the chicken equally into 3 freezer bags, poured jerk chicken marinade over them, squeezed as much air out of each bag as I could and placed the sealed freezer bags flat in my freezer.
-- With the other bag of chicken tenders, I used a third of the chicken for chicken vegetable soup which we ate that night with cornbread.  I sauteed the rest in italian salad dressing for chicken salad dinners, divided the cooked chicken pieces in two freezer bags and placed the sealed freezer bags flat in my freezer.
--Once all the chicken meals were frozen, I turned them on end like old fashioned album covers. 
All 5 dinners took less than 30 minutes to prepare, cost less than $22.00, and used less than 2 inches of freezer space!