Cooking Made Easy - a great way to save money and time. (2024)

Annette Economides – the mom of America’s Cheapest Family talks about how she saves money and time Cooking Double, Bulk Cooking, Crockpot Cooking and Once-A-Month Cooking. She isn’t a gourmet chef or foodie, and she doesn’t love to spend hours in the kitchen.

Annette’s into nutritious and efficient meal planning and meal prepping. Follow her steps and you’ll spend way less time and way less money on feeding yourself and your family.

No-Stick Spaghetti?

Pasta Cooking Tip: Add a tablespoon of cooking oil or margarine to the water you cook spaghetti or noodles in. The water won’t be so eager to boil over and the noodles won’t stick together.
Carol M – Scottsdale, AZ

Cooking Double

I love to cook, but don’t always have the time to make a great meal each day. I’ve started to cook double portions when I do cook. Then I freeze half of what I make. This way we can always have homemade meals. Linda Brown – Leland, Illinois

Teamwork & Once a Week Cooking

I was intimidated by the idea of trying to cook a month’s worth of meals all at once, especially considering I never really learned how to cook. But my husband and I decided to try a week’s worth and thought surely we could expand from there.

Our kitchen is small so we split the task with me inside at the stove and him outside at the grill. I browned several pounds of ground beef (bought in bulk for savings), with some finely chopped onion and some Cavender’s Greek Seasoning on some of the ground beef (a good all purpose mix).

He grills several pounds of chicken breasts, bratwursts and steaks — basically whatever we bought on sale. Then we divide the meat up into meal sized portions and either refrigerate or freeze it depending on the schedule.

We use the ground beef as a base for stroganoff, spaghetti, soft tacos, taco salad, or a variety of casseroles. The chicken is cut up into bite-sized pieces for chicken Caesar salad, fajitas (steak can be used here too), casseroles, or combined with cut up smoked sausage or brats for jambalaya.

I still do quite a bit of cooking out of boxes and cans (mixes and sauces) but it is still a family meal and not fast food. The great part is that dinner is ready in 30 minutes or so, and takes the stress out of trying to figure out what to prepare after working all day.

My husband and I take leftovers for lunch, and our teenage daughter does too — which also saves money. We now are planning up to two weeks’ worth of meals. Eventually, I hope to work my way up to a month’s worth of meals, but none of this even would have happened if I hadn’t started bulk cooking!

Thanks Annette and Steve, for giving us your knowledge and tips, and the tools and encouragement to use them!Dena McVay — Fayetteville, AR

1 Chicken – 3 Meals Cooking Tips

Here’s how I get 3 meals out of 1 chicken.

1. Divide the meat into two piles.
2. De-bone and de-skin the chicken.
3. Boil or Roast a large chicken – include onions, celery, and other spices.

• Lunch #1 – Chicken Salad Sandwiches.
• Dinner #2 – Use the second pile for Chicken Stir Fry or Chicken Stew.
• Meal #3 – Put the bones, with a little meat still on them, in a pot of water. Add onion, celery, carrot and other veggies you have handy. Throw in rice or pasta and you have Chicken soup or broth.

You may find different ways to stretch the usefulness of a chicken, but the key is to think and plan and waste not. Ruth Irvine – Scottsdale, AZ

Once-A-Month Cooking is Better for the Family

Cooking with Pressure Cookers

We live 20 miles from the nearest fast food restaurant, so I have devised my own fast food menu.I keep my pantry stocked for a few easy meal nights. When 4 PM hits, and I don’t feel like cooking or have not pulled anything out to defrost, I look at my pantry.
Debbie Bottom – Courtland, NE

As a single mom with three children, I have found that cooking with beans is a cost-effective and healthy way to stretch my monthly food budget.Here’s one way I include beans into our meal rotation:

1. Cook a pot of beans in thecrock potand serve with rice, biscuits or corn bread. I usually serve a salad too.

2. Place the leftover beans in a food processor to make your own “refried beans” for bean burritos the following night.

3. The remaining beans can be placed in smaller plastic containers and frozen for future usage. Whitney Gilchriest – AZ

Freezing Meals Ahead for Dinner

My goal is to double and freeze one meal on my menu per week.I can take 5 lbs. of ground meat, make one meatloaf for dinner, prepare a second meatloaf to freeze, and use the rest of the meat for meatballs. I freeze the meatballs on a tray overnight (covered with wax paper) and then pop them in a bread bag in the morning. They freeze well, but I don’t like to put raw meat into my zipper bags. That’s why I use an old bread bag to put the meatballs in first, according to family portions and company portions. Then I put them into the zippered bag to store in the freezer. The meatballs are versatile because you can cook them with a BBQ sauce, Sweet and Sour sauce, or use them with spaghetti. Debbie Bottom – Cortland, NE

Making Bread Crumbs from Old Bread Ends

This tip is not so much a recipe, but a clever way to make the most of your unwanted bread ends.
I save the crusts and end pieces of my loaves of bread in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator.When it’s full, I make my own breadcrumbs in the food processor. I add whatever spices I want, such as Italian seasoning. Then I use these breadcrumbs to coat chicken and my family loves it. They are much more flavorful than the canned bread crumbs and way less expensive.Sue Lankford – Scottsdale, AZ