So here is the short version of how to do this easily, quickly, and cheaply...
1- Plan meals that use similar ingredients this way there is less waste and less time
2- Figure out what is important and what you can give on. For me I still wanted the meals to be healthy but knew that doing everything natural/organic wasn't going to be an option unless I wanted to run all over town to gather ingredients. So I gave in... I got whole wheat pasta but canned sauces, I got tons of fresh fruits and vegis but did use frozen for a couple meals etc.
3- Have a well laid out plan prior to shopping. I dont follow recipes
but I did scour pintrest for ideas and then made my list of about 10 different meals and doubled everything so that I could make two of each.
4- Buy in bulk. I had to give up my organic nicely grown chickens and get regular chicken breast but then you can buy a huge pack for the same price, I got a giant bag of carrots instead of the smaller ones, big thing of sauce instead of small ones etc.
Then when I was ready to cook, I ensured that I had
everything easily accessible.
Step 1- always have a pot of water boiling... I kept making more and more pasta and put it in large bowls, also made the rice. While these things were cooking I was doing lots of prep work. Chicken for numerous recipes was cooking on the George Forman grill, I was chopping ALL the vegis at once and making piles of them on the counter (counter thoroughly cleaned first). I had separate areas for meat vs veggies as to keep everything clean and I washed my hands a lot.
There were 2 meals that were not cooked, Pot Roast (with potatoes, carrots etc) and BBQ Chicken & Veggies were made to be crock pot meals. Everything else is pretty much fully cooked and just needs to either be thrown in the oven to finish heating cooking (lasagna, enchiladas) or can be heated in the microwave or in a skillet (all pasta dishes, fried rice, etc). Oooh and the meatloaf wasn't cooked either.
All of the recipes were packed with veggies to increase the healthiness and to take up space instead of using crap.
I picked the chicken recipes to work on first so as the chicken was cooked I would put together those meals.
A big tip, SKIP CONTAINERS! Use freezer bags for anything that you can. For all of these meals the only ones NOT in freezer bags was the Lasagna, meatloaf, and enchiladas (for obvious reasons). Everything else is in freezer bags. Place the food in the freezer bag, lay the bag on its side, squeeze out excess air and seal. Then flatten the food into the bag and stick it on a cookie sheet in the freezer. Then the next day you will have a flat bag o'food that can easily be stacked or lined up in the freezer and take up less room. As long as the air is mostly out the stuff lasts a long time in the freezer bags. I always clearly label
everything with a permanent marker as well (name and date) so that I know what everything is!
So there you go... a bunch of rambling that hopefully answered your questions (sorry if it doesn't make sense, I got a impromptu Skype call from my sister in the middle of it so lost my train of thought an hour later when I got back to this!)
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