Some people call this once-a-month cooking, once-a-week cooking, or freezer cooking.  The names may be different but the concept is the same.  You block out one day and do the bulk of your cooking for the designated time period.

This can really be a great money saver for those families who don’t feel like they have enough time to cook on weeknights and consequently eat out frequently. This is also great because you can build your weekly cooking around the sales, buying in bulk, or those items you are able to use coupons to buy for pennies.

If this is the first time you’ve ever done this, I suggest planning on cooking for one week.  Carve out a day where you know you can cook with minimal interruptions.

Make a list of what you are going to cook for the week.  Try to build some meals that are different but have similar ingredients – perhaps a chicken stir fry that includes onions and bell peppers for one meal and chicken fajitas that also include onions and bell peppers for another meal.  They will taste different enough that it doesn’t seem like you are eating the same things over and over, yet they are built around the same ingredients.  This saves you preparation time and money.

Purchase or assemble the ingredients you will need for your cooking marathon.  To organize yourself, first look at all of your recipes that you will be making for the week.  A prep list is a great tool when you are cooking this way. Sit down with your recipes and write down everything that needs to be done for your cooking marathon. If one recipe calls for you to chop garlic, write the amount of garlic down that you need. Then if a second recipe also calls for chopped garlic, add the amount to the previous “chop garlic.” This will keep you organized and working on things in the fastest way possible. Or let’s say you are going to have tacos and spaghetti this week.  You will need ground beef for both of these.  Instead of browning beef once for tacos and then a second time later that day for spaghetti, you’ll want to do it all at once in one big batch.  The same is true for cutting up vegetables.  If three of your recipes call for chopped onion, cut the onion you need for all three recipes rather than cutting it three times.

Once the items are cooked, you want to let them cool and then either freeze the whole dish or cut them into individual servings and freeze those.  The nice thing about the individual servings is you can use these for dinners for one or to take your lunch with you. This can be a tremendous money-saver.  Instead of eating out or buying convenience items in the store you have a healthy and home-cooked frozen entree to reheat at work.

Make sure you wrap things very well that are going in the freezer. First wrap the dish with plastic wrap and then cover that with foil. If you are freezing something in a plastic bag, try to get as much of the air out of the bag as possible. Also, label everything with the name of the dish and the reheating instructions.

To streamline this process for the future, keep the recipes and the prep list all together in a binder. Once you get four or five of these weeks worth of meals built up in your binder, you can start cycling through them. This will save you even more time. You won’t have to gather recipes and make a prep list each time you do this. Just pull out a week’s worth out of your binder and make those for the week.

With a little bit of ingenuity and planning, you can make home cooking a huge time and money saver for your family!

There are many more tips and ideas for saving money on your monthly grocery bill. Sign up for a free mini course to learn the strategies at http://www.KeyIngredientPublishing.com

There are a few guidelines you need to beware of that will help your freezer cooking session be more productive and free from stress. If you have the right basics and tools you will have some great tasting meals and stress free kitchen time.

1. Don’t experiment with new recipes – It’s always best to freeze a recipe you have eaten and liked. That way if you don’t like a recipe you don’t have 3 or 4 more of them in the freezer that you won’t want to eat later.

2. Make sure your food is not too hot or cold when you put it in the freezer – Food does not have to be cooled much to be able to put in the freezer. If you let food sit out too long you run the risk of having bacteria growth which could cause everyone in your family to get sick. You probably only need to let a meal sit for 15-20 minutes before you put it in the freezer. If you think the meal is too hot and will damage the other food in the freezer, you can just put a piece of cardboard under it until it is frozen. Then you can slip the cardboard out.

3. Get good containers – Square and rectangular shaped containers are the best to use. The meals will freeze and thaw more quickly. They will make the best use of your freezer space too. If you use plastic bags for your frozen meals you can either put a piece of cardboard between each bag or put the bag in a box or container and remove it once the meal is frozen.

Freezer cooking doesn’t have to be a chore or a disaster. If you follow these simple tips you should be able to have your freezer stocked in no time.

Do you want to know more about saving time in the kitchen? Grab your free report “Time Saving Kitchen Tips” at http://www.hjresources.com/freeck Heidi Johnson specializes in helping families find resources to simplify and improve their lives.