(photograph © Kiwidutch)
So… Life is chaotic and you are finding yourself reaching for the cheaply printed menu’s of the local Chinese or Pizza Takeaway instead of cooking even though you are wincing at the financial cost and your body is swimming in new levels of fat, salt and MSG.
How on earth do you find the time and the energy to bulk cook so that you have something healthy in the freezer to thaw and nuke on days where you have worked hard, commuted long and when energy levels are giving readings in the negative?
Well, you start by taking Kiwi’s step-by-step Bulk-Cooking Starter Class which I shall hereby rename as: ” Learn to Cook Like You Are On Crutches”.
But first some background information is needed:
Back in New Zealand when I worked shift work, I worked 80 hours in a week and then had a week off. It suited my (then) lifestyle but it didn’t suit my stomach much.
The first week I was clueless and disorganised and when one of the team said they would do the “meal run” at local takeaway establishments, I forked out my money and put in my order like almost all of my colleagues did.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
After seven days of takeaway meals I was mildly repulsed by the thought of another one, but in my youth and ignorance (and since I never normally ordered takeaway food), the novelty factor was in force and I figured I could rotate various cuisines without getting bored.
I mean: Burger one day, Chicken the next, Fried rice the following etc, it couldn’t be too bad could it?
Wrong.
I was two days into my second week when the mere sight of meals being hauled into the cafeteria in bags with the certain logos on the side had me dreading tomorrows meal choices.
Worse, suddenly seeing how costs were adding up, and knowing that my apprentice pay wouldn’t keep up to match the others I realised with a shock that I had to do something radical.
I was spurred into drastic action. I drove to the supermarket and bought home 10 kg (22 lb) potatoes, 5 kg (11 lb) of rice and pasta, and 20 kg (44 lb) of various meats, a dozen tins of chopped tomatoes and as many fresh veggies as I could squash into the rest of the space in my 12 year old third-hand Mazda.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
I borrowed a business card from a friend and went to a wholesaler and stocked up on plastic takeaway containers with lids, the sort sturdy enough to wash and reuse.
At home I got out my biggest pots and baking dishes and started my power cooking day.
I cooked about 8-10 servings each of meatballs, chicken, meat and tomato based pasta sauces, sweet and sour dishes, stew, soup, lasagna, I added mashed veggies, roast veggies, boiled veggies and stir fried veggies, boiled pasta or rice to each of the meats and at the exhausted end of one day I was faced with more than 90 rectangular plastic containers filled with a strange mixes and matches of my meat , pasta, potato, rice and vegetable options.
Luckily I was looking after my parents house whilst they were posted abroad so I had access to a 2 meter long mega freezer with baskets in it. It sat in the garage and since I’d moved in I’d only managed to fill it with a two packets of frozen pastry and one tub of ice-cream. Soon the pastry and ice-cream were lonely no more.
For the next four years the only thing I had to do in my week off was to add 7 additional meals to plastic containers to replace the ones I’d used on shift the week before. I ate the oldest ones first and replacing them became as easy as cooking a normal meal but doing an extra serving or two for the freezer. It’s as easy to boil a whole head of broccoli as it is to boil half a one.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
It took less than two weeks for some of my colleagues to come begging for me to bring in my dinners for them too… I gave them recipes and advice but no meals, figuring that my free time was more valuable than the cash I would have made.
Who knows, had I been wiser and gone veggie shopping direct from the growers at the market gardens out at Marshlands, it might have been a nice little earner that would have paid for my own meals in the end.
I’m not advocating that you start your crash course in bulk cooking as I did.
I’ll freely admit that peeling 5 kg of onions wasn’t pretty or fun.
But if you are balking at the mere thought and effort of bulk cooking, then here’s the easier version. You know I’m on crutches at the moment, well, sad to say for a fanatic foodie, I’ve cooked three or four times since the end of November. One thing I have cooked though, were two massive trays of lasagna for visitors and for the freezer. My kitchen is tiny and crutches and a chair don’t make for easy working, I get tired easily, so here’s the magic: I spread the work over three days.
Day One: Chop enough fresh veggies to go into two deep oven dishes of lasagna. Put the prepped veggies into a large tightly sealed plastic container in the fridge and go take a rest.
Day Two: Fry off the minced meat, pour off the fat, then add chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, handfuls of herbs and a decent amount of spices to the meat, simmer until it’s looking and smelling good, then cool and refrigerate. It will taste even better tomorrow once the flavours have a chance to mingle. Go lie down as another rest is in order.
Day Three: Dump your prepped veggies into boiling water and boil until they are cooked but still crunchy to the bite. Drain them off and leave to cool whilst you make a simple bechamel sauce(white sauce) and leave the sauce to cool a little while you start laying up your deep oven dishes with the meat mixture, dried pasta sheets, white sauce, veggies and grated cheese. make sure that the very last layer is white sauce so that all the dried pasta is covered and sprinkle grated cheese on at the end so that it will look great when it comes out of the oven.
Bake both dishes of lasagna in the oven and once cool cut into single portions for the freezer.
If I can do this on painkillers, plaster and crutches and spread it out to ease the effort, then you can too. Once you have a “supply” of home made “easy meals” in the freezer it’s fairly easy to add one extra serving from dinner a few times a week to keep things topped up.
Ok, realistically, I’m not in a state right now to be doing this every week, but if you are scared about finding the time and energy to cook in bulk then maybe splitting up the task like I did recently is the answer to getting started.
And once you’ve started, and know that with a tiny bit of extra effort once a week that you always have a homemade “lazy” meal in your freezer, and that it tastes better than a takeaway and is cheaper and better for you, ….you will be hooked.
