Massive Cook Up - wdyt?

[Bathsheba]

Yeah, our house has floorboards except for the bedrooms (carpet)... I think because our main living area is so close to the kitchen it really helps. In between cooking I read the weekend papers at the kitchen table which is part of the open-plan kitchen/dining. The lounge is around the corner and the heat made that area comfortable... not as toasty as the kitchen/dining but at least the chill was taken away. When I finish using one of the ovens I make sure I leave the door open for it to cool down...

Gotta get it cleaned up so DH can cook fish for dinner...

[briggsy's girl]

If you are going to freeze vegies, you are better off just buying frozen veg to begin with - they are usually cheaper and they certainly are better for you - the vitamin ad mineral content is usually a lot higher than fresh veg these days.

i'd be really reluctant to agree with that statement! certainly food that has been stored for a while may not cook up as well, but how can frozen vegies be more nutritious than fresh?? especially market fresh?? i'll be first to admit that the convenience of frozen vegies means they are usually in our freezer - but if we have the par boiled veg we've grown and frozen, or fresh from the market and frozen food - well, i'll put my hand on that any day - it just tastes better! we also use the "stock" from the par boiled vegies for soup or casserole cooking (as my nan used) - either fresh. or freeze and reuse later...

lulu - i haven't done a month worth of cooking in a day. i think i'd struggle with knowing what DH would want to eat! but, we DO cook a lot of freezable meals - all stuff that can be heated in a single pot or in the microwave. DH takes frozen food away with him for work, and always gets lots of home cooked meals instead of take away crap! works a treat for us... we make up spag bol in bulk, and freeze meals for four or five nights, any casseroles are made in bulk (i'm loving the SC!) and frozen - even things like the meat for burritos, chow mein - we cook in bulk, and freeze in portion sized serves. we have a heap of reusable plastic containers that stack together, are dishwasher and micro safe - and ideal size for a decent meal. with DH away, he's able to stop, set up his portable cooker, and drop everything in a saucepan to heat up gently while he organises everything else for dinner. all of our containers are, if need be, disposable - not that i want to spend extra money (99%of the time they're recycled) - but with DH being in the truck, i'd rather lose a cheapy container than a good Tupperware one!

pasta and spud cooked into something - freeze beautifully - especially if they're "just" cooked - if they're a bit softer to start, when they're reheated they break down a bit - i don't have an issue with that personally though! mashed spud i'd do on the day - though we don't have it often so it's not a drama.

i spent last night making soup - heaps of fresh veg and homemade chicken and vegie stocks - chucked in the slow cooker for a few hours. when it cooled, i chucked it in the blender and made it into a beautiful blended soup - am thinking i need to go and divide it up for freezing about now...

one thing - IF you're going to do something like you're suggesting - plan it out - have as much as possible exactly worked out - what to cook when etc. start one thing cooking, then move on to prep with the next - make use of the excess space for things like SC or electric fry pan so you can have a few things on the go at once - and don't try to do the whole undertaking yourself - yeah, having the kids out of your hair is important - but remember that vegie preparation can take a lot of time - so make sure you've got some one there to help peel etc - and borrow whatever extra equipment you need! be creative - bolognaise doesn't have to be be minced meat - we made the simplest bolognaise in the SC with diced chicken and spag bol sauce from the jar - when it was almost time to turn it off to eat, we put almost cooked spag in, mixed it through the sauce and let it sit there to finish cooking - the kids that were here LOVED it!

good luck with whatever you decide to do

[LimeSlice]

i'd be really reluctant to agree with that statement! certainly food that has been stored for a while may not cook up as well, but how can frozen vegies be more nutritious than fresh?? especially market fresh?? i'll be first to admit that the convenience of frozen vegies means they are usually in our freezer - but if we have the par boiled veg we've grown and frozen, or fresh from the market and frozen food - well, i'll put my hand on that any day - it just tastes better! we also use the "stock" from the par boiled vegies for soup or casserole cooking (as my nan used) - either fresh. or freeze and reuse later...

As mad as it seems, frozen vegetables in most cases retain mor nutrients than store bought vegies. Obviously this doe not refer to freshly picked from your garden or from the a market they have been at for less than 2-3 days. But certainly to the average shop/supermarket, even some green grocers. It largely depends on where the veg is coming fro mto get to the shop you are buying it. The large supermarkets store their fruit and veg in warehouses for days on end, and to ship it around the country also take days. Add to this the time it takes to get them from the farm to the distribution points themselves.
Vegetables nutrients largely dissipate over time as they begin to break down, light and temperature also affect the nutrient content.
The chlorine solution they wash your lettuce with also affects nutrient content...Especially if you are in WA and any thing coming across the border into WA needs to be quarentined and treated before it is allowed to be sold here. Snap frozen veg is usually frozen almost immediately after being picked and processed, usually with in 4 days of harvest.
So yes, if you want nutrient content, often frozen veges are the way to go.
(they will never beat farm or garden fresh though)

[briggsy's girl]

not particularly arguing the point limeslice - i guess i was more looking at it from the POV of myself (and lulu who was saying about going to the markets for her veg) - most of ours comes straight from our own or my bro's garden - spuds we go to the spud farm and get them day after they're picked, so frozen has nothing on that! its not unusual for us to pick the vegies just as we need them for dinner around here!! (there are definite advantages to living in the sticks - esp when the sticks are not too far from prime spud country!!)

plus, whether they're more nutritious or not - frozen carrot, capsicum and the likes - they just don't taste right!!!

just waiting on a reply from DH - this thread (and the delish soup i cooked up) have me motivated to cook some more - just not sure which chicken dish will reheat best for DH in the truck - so have to wait on him telling me what he wants!

lulu - another thing i was thinking after posting earlier - have you thought about communal type cooking with others? we do it all the time with my bro and SIL - we cook for us and for them - they cook something different - we play swapsies - makes for more variety of meals without extra stress... would be a way of getting things that you don't have room to cook - you could do the SC type stuff (i'm assuming you have one - shoot me if you dont) that takes up minimal room - and someone else could make the more space-intensive things (lasagne and the likes that take up room for cooking spag base, white sauce, assembly etc) - win win for everyone...

bellalass - we do something like that with vegies - little bit of everything, white sauce, pasta if we want to add some more bulk and have it as a meal on it's own - no pasta if we're serving it with meat. spud, sweet spud, carrot, zucchini, onion, peas, corn, parsnip, turnip, swede - whatever else we can find (cept pumpkin!) - fry it lightly in a small amount of garlic butter - boil some cauli and broccoli - make white sauce - mix it all up and bake it in the oven - we have requests for it when we're going out for dinner - that's my contribution most of the time - kids love it and it's got so many vegies - half of which they can't see!

[Rouge]

Most fruit and veg we get at supermarkets we don't necessarily get "fresh". So if you can go to a Market Grocer you will be way better off. But they did do a study on frozen vs. fresh and frozen turned out to have more nutrients than the majority of the stuff we can get from coles etc. Not arguing the point, just saying you are both right :P

Besides its better for the environment to support local grower markets

[bellelass]

Yeah! Eat local! (better for the economy, too...)

[briggsy's girl]

as much as possible, i eat as local as the backyard!

[Pandora]

Someone I know does this, Once a Month Cooking, on a permanaent basis (in her own home though) and has written an e-document on it and everything that she sells on her website.
I think I have a copy of it i will look for you, but most of it is fairly obvious. It does have good hints though for dcoling times prior to freezing, and how par through to pre-cook things..stuff like that.
If you have a chest freezer it will help a lot as you can store things for a lot longer.

[Lulu]

Yeah, you are right on the veg BG. I wish I knew of a spud farm around here. The last lot I bought were OLD and I wasn't happy.

I also want to choose where my veg comes from, I live close to the Yarra Valley and I want to be able to take advantage. I'd rather die than buy veg from a supermarket (truly - there is no actual food in supermarkets at all), but some times I get stuck. I was half thinking of getting together a co-op type thing together, I will see how I go sourcing things first.

I am pinching back my slow cooker FOR SURE, I was drooling reading through the slow cooker chat. At this point I'm still going to do the big cook up -soups, pasta sauces, lasagnes, veg meals for the teenrager. I will plan it with precision!

Thanks for all the tips, I'm looking forward to it all. Hopefully I can get my own apetite back too...

[briggsy's girl]

hun - i should be coming down next weekend (or whenever the do at your place is) - want me to grab you some spuds on the way (even if they're just from the spud shed at Traf or the berry farm at garfield - not sure anyone will be back to thorpdale this week in the next week or so) - and pumpkin - well, i reckon i could almost say ours will be ready for picking by then (and they're HUGE so you'll be able to share with someone else if you wont eat it all)....

[Lulu]

She comes bearing veggies!!!!! Yaaaayyyy!

[suse]

Lulu - do you have a slow cooker? Our oven is utter crap and it heats the house up in minutes (great in Melbourne but not the desired effect in Nth Qld), since I got the SC I do a huge casserole (curry/tagine/etc) once a week or fortnight and freeze it. It only takes an hour at most to prep and I usually get about 7 nights dinners (for two). We have it with either rice or pasta - I cook enough for a few nights then reheat it as needed, or instant couscous with frozen vegies.

I miss baking so much though - I haven't baked in months.

[bellelass]

We used to do once a month cooking when I was growing up (7 kids in the house, give or take at any given time, we had no choice) and the key is planning, planning, planning. Write out your plan of attack. Maybe take two days to do what you need to do, also.

We would do one day of chopping/prep work/ boiling chickens to make stock and for the meat. The next day was actually putting the meals together. I've found pasta and potatoes are ok, if they're in something and they're a little underdone. I don't freeze rice or potatoes or pasta if something else is going to be put over them, I just do them on the day I'm going to eat them. Like, I'll freeze the chicken stir fry alone and have noodles or rice in the cupboard.

A note on re-freezing... Probably everyone knows this but my DH didn't even though he's relatively domesticated. Don't thaw meat and re-freeze it. Bad to do it with anything, but especially not meat. You can thaw it, cook it into something, then freeze it.
Also, its usually a good idea to allow the food to cool down to room temp. before freezing it, just so you don't accidentally thaw other things in the freezer.
Label the containers with what it is, how to finish/serve it, and the date. The date one is important, its amazing how quickly you'll forget how old something is.
One last food-safety thing (I used to work in restaurants, does it show? ) is don't cross contaminate- use different knives and cutting boards for vegetables and for different kinds of meat. It can be kind of a pain in the neck but important to remember.

If you're looking to save money, watch the grocery ads and cook with what's on special. Like, right now broccoli is cheap so I have a lot of stir-frys with broccoli, as well as several lunches of broccoli cheese soup in the freezer right now. The beauty of it is I love broccoli and can have it now for next to nothing, and will have it for next to nothing 4 months from now, too.

If I don't make a soup with about to go off withered veggies, I chop them up and chuck them in a pasta sauce. DH and I like chunky veggie filled pasta sauces, they're especially nice with chunks of mushrooms, zucchinis, grated carrot (it cooks into the sauce), and handfuls of wilting spinach. I don't even bother putting meat in those sauces half the time, and we don't miss it. Nor do his carnivore mates who come round for dinner sometimes, they love my veg pasta and ask for it.