I made crockpot chili yesterday, other than the time it took to brown the meat...the crockpot did everything else for me! It will give me about 4-5 meals this week, and I froze the rest for another time!
What's Cooking? This Monday's Work at Home Meal Menu
Well, it's Monday and everything that brings along with it. So, we'll be digging out my favorite time saver again, the crockpot. This time, dinner's more Italian in nature. Haven't even had time for your lunch break yet? No worries. That's covered too.
My husband loves pasta. He'd have spaghetti for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I'd put it on the menu. And, I have to admit, I can almost always count on an Italian recipe to pull off a lot of pizazz and flavor when money's tight. Tonight's dish? Spaghetti with red clam sauce, grated Parmesan and a bottle of table wine. The red clam is a variation I make from a basic red sauce base used to form a variety of sauces. I put it in the slow cooker this morning and it'll be set to go at dinner time after taking the 10-15 minutes to boil water and cook the pasta. The time I spent assembling the sauce? About 7 - 9 minutes. Not including crock pot time, that's well under the half hour mark. I'm sure I'd be closer to 40 minutes if I was doing a green salad and garlic bread, but like I said, it's Monday.
Lunch was pretty no frills, as both of us were out straight with other projects. In addition to homemade lemonade we had left over oatmeal raisin cookies from yesterday, and an Asian style cole slaw with ramen, cabbage and almonds. We included some diced cooked chicken for extra protein. I really like this particular salad recipe because I can make dozens of the dry ingredient packages ahead of time and use it as a once a month cooking item that I don't have to find freezer room for. (Great for those of you in an apartment that are looking to save time in advance but don't have the full freezer option.) If you have the dry ingredient packs made up ahead, this salad goes together for lunch or a dinner side in a flash.
So that's it. Our work at home meal menu for today. Literally. If you have any great last minute or make ahead dinner ideas, I would love to hear about them.
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You know what? I'd forgotten about good old chili. You've just inspired me to rediscover it! Thanks.
Every once in awhile, I buy a large amount of ground beef, come home, and cook it right away. Then I package the cooked beef in about 1-1/2 lbs. quantities. When it comes time to make spaghetti or chili or anything else with cooked, ground beef, the meat is all ready to go! Saves a lot of time!
You know, I'm so glad you posted this. I used to do this but now that I'm in transition I haven't been. It's amazing how relocating can throw you completely out of wack.
Cooking the meat ahead is a huge help, I agree. Have you tried the "freezing the bags flat" thing? That really helps with efficient storage. Thanks for taking the time to post your suggestion.
I do this with chicken thighs in the slow cooker. The cooking ahead and the flat freezing thing! I'm not big on ground beef, but maybe I'll precook sausage!
We don't have kids so having ready meals isn't as important but one big change my wife and I made is to put our all meals in to individual containers, this means if she feels like lentel soup and I don't she can have it. The reason was we were making loads of meals that never got eaten so single serving containers did the trick.
