Bulk Cooking

You all know how much I love planning out my meals. I find that having my dinner menu planned out for the week makes things so much easier. However, cooking dinner each day is still a stressful time for me. Andrew doesn't sleep much these days so he's usually a cranky mess come 5pm. The boys need help with homework, Jenna wants me to play with her......and I'm supposed to cook a dinner from start to finish amidst the chaos. I'm sure most of you parents with little kids understand.

So last week I decided to try out bulk cooking. I figured I could save a lot of time by cooking a large quantity of just a few foods all at once, rather than smaller quantities each night of lots of different foods. On Sunday I pre-cooked a bunch of ingredients to have on hand for dinners throughout the week. My idea was to mix and match the ingredients to come up with 6 different dinners. Here is what I prepped on the weekend:

I prepared: 1 pound of pasta, 4 cups of rice, 1 pound of dried pinto beans, 3 pounds of meat (2 lbs ground beef, 1 lb ground turkey), 4 diced bell peppers, 2 diced onions, 3 heads washed broccoli, bunch of washed kale, 6 cooked shredded chicken breasts, and 6 boiled eggs (for breakfasts). Oh and I also bought a 5 pound bag of russet potatoes but did not pre-wash or cook these.

Here are the 6 meals, plus the pre-prepped ingredients I was able to use for each:  

Dinner 1: Chili, Baked Potatoes (Ground meat, Pinto Beans, Diced Onions, Diced Peppers, Potatoes)

Dinner 2: Chicken Rice Soup, Grilled Cheese, Kale Chips (Chicken, Rice, Onion, Kale)

Dinner 3: Goulash, Roasted Veggies (Ground Meat, Pasta, Diced Onion, Diced Peppers)

Dinner 4: Chicken Burrito Bowl (Chicken, Pinto Beans, Rice, Diced Peppers)

Dinner 5: BBQ Chicken, Mac N Cheese, Steamed Broccoli (Chicken, Pasta, Broccoli)

Dinner 6: Taco Tater (Potato, Ground Meat, Pinto Beans, Diced Pepper)

As you can see, I tried to keep the meals fairly simple, while still having a good deal of variety. And I think I accomplished that! I did find it incredibly nice at 5pm to have my proteins already cooked, and most of my veggies diced/washed. It gave me a good head-start to getting a healthy homecooked meal on the table. I think I will try this again sometime soon, with a different set of ingredients. Have you ever tried any form of bulk-cooking?