About once every 10 days, I run production on 3 main courses, cooking up enough to last through a good many meals. For example, this might consist of spaghetti sauce, seafood Alfredo and chicken marsala. One portion of each goes into the frig, the remaining portions into the freezer. In the morning, I pick which one I want, let it thaw during the day then microwave it later. Rice microwaves fast and so do potatoes. A thawed half-slab of pork ribs broils in about 20 minutes. Baby backs are even faster. While things are heating or cooking, I'm free to do something else until the timer goes off. Want your fruits and veggies fast? All you need is a blender, juicer or food processor. I have them all. There's just no excuse for not eating well at home.
BINGO!!!!
I admit to keeping a bunch of packaged stuff on hand, makes meal planning easier - but the vast majority of meals in this house are from scratch.
A week or so a go a friend, who's husband is a farm manager, gave me a boatload of potatoes - I prefer when I get chicken from them, but potatoes are good, too - Dinner last night was homemade potato pancakes with homemade applesauce. There are enough potato pancakes left for about 3 or 4 more meals.
I don't know where I get it from, but quantity cooking has always just come naturally to me..neither my mother, nor my grandmother ever did it and there are only 3 of us. I just find it far easier, and less expensive, to do up a lot at once and then store it.
We used to live where we had a big lawn to mow and DH had long hours at work.
End result was I had to take over the grill duty if we were ever going to have grilled food. I started grilling a little extra each time. By the end of the week, we'd have a big pile of some of this and some of that in the fridge. Fire it up a bit in the microwave and enjoy the "mixed meats grill platter."
Yum!