Five Meals in the 'Bag'

I came across Hip2Save's link last week and thought about it some.  While the recipes were pretty much in my ballpark taste-wise, there were a couple of curves.  But I thought I would broaden my horizons and give it a try.  The thought of having 5 meals all ready to go was the deciding factor.

I also wanted to see if it would help drop my grocery bill a bit.  Tuesday, after work, I did my grocery shopping for the month - or at least my main purchases.  I did come in under $200, but that also included stocking up on diapers, a bag of laundry soap pods, and a few staples that needed replenishing.

So Thursday morning, while waiting for UPS to deliver a package, I pulled everything out, labeled my bags and started chopping and dicing.

Please note the large glass of sweet iced tea in a prominent position on my counter.  We finally hit the 90's here in Helena and we don't have air conditioning.  Luckily, a fan, open windows and the fact it really cools off here in the evenings and doesn't heat up until later in the day, makes it tolerable.

So with Lady K happily getting into everything and Texter on the couch monitoring her activities (and the status of the UPS delivery), I put together my 5 meals.

So we shall see.  They are all in the freezer now, awaiting use.  One thing I noticed was that the meals made up enough for what I consider 6 - 8 servings a bag, especially since you serve them over rice or noodles or as tacos.  I did change out the sausage in the far right bag for polish sausage instead.   The cilantro lime chicken I included the cilantro, even though I don't really care for it.  

My biggest issue with this, and it's just a quirk on my part, is I'm not really into 'mixing' my food.  I like everything in it's own place on the plate.  So, for example, to have the green beans in the Creamy Italian Chicken mixed in already is a bit hard for me to take.  But my desire for good meals with easy preparation won out.

I figure that we can get at least 2 dinners out of each bag, with leftovers for me to take to work for lunch from each bag.  That means these meals should last me about 2 weeks if I did nothing but these meals.  I will do sandwiches, salads and the like in between preparing them.  

A taste report will be forthcoming as I fix each of them.  If it works out, I may check out the cookbooks on fixing a month of meals in a weekend.  I don't have the freezer space for it, but I could do half a dozen meals and have them ready to go.