I got together with another friend whose family is similar sized to ours for a cooking day. A successful cooking day is made possible by spending a couple of days getting ready for the cooking day. We planned out our menu, made the grocery lists, went grocery shopping, did prep work and then finally spent 6 hours together assembling and cooking the meals on the actual cooking day.
Here is a list of what we made:
120 Meatballs
4 9×13 Chicken Stuffing Casseroles
4 9×13 Poor Man’s Casseroles
6 9×13 Sloppy Joe Casseroles
4 Gallons Black Bean Chowder
50 Beef, Bean & Cheese Burritos
40 Calzones
Chicken Tenders — were on the list but we decided to make them up separately since I forgot to thaw out the chicken ahead of time
Spent $332.33 for 56 meals which comes out to $5.93/meal or $0.74/person. (We both have 8 people in our families.) These meals are main dish only in most cases and will require additional sides such as bread, salad, etc…
Prior to cooking day we split up the following list of items to prep:
Cook ground beef
Cook chicken
Make chicken broth
Make bread crumbs
Chop onions
Chop celery
Chop carrots
Cook black beans
On cooking day we tried to be as efficient as possible. Here’s how we worked through the recipes.
1) Started the Calzone Dough
2) Made the mashed potatoes for the Poor Man’s Casserole
3) Made the white sauce to use in the Chicken Stuffing Casserole
4) Boiled the pasta for the Sloppy Joe Casserole
5) Assembled the Sloppy Joe Casseroles
6) Cut up the cooked chicken
7) Prepared the stuffing (from mixes)
8 ) Assembled the Chicken Stuffing Casseroles
9) Assembled the Poor Man’s Casseroles
10) Made the meatballs
11) Flash froze the meatballs
12) Took a break — yeah! look at all we accomplished so far!
13) Made the Black Bean Chowder
14) Assembled the burritos (the whole crew helped with these which resulted in some crazy looking burritos but boy were we done fast with 8 kids helping!)
15) Assembled & baked the calzones (again with all the kids helping)
16) bagged up the meatballs, burritos and calzones
17) bagged up the extra ground beef all cooked & ready to go
18) divided up the food and dishes
19) Cleaned up the mess (well, partly anyways)
20) Rested! Shew! That was a long day but so worth it!
