Bulk Cooking

My sister is cooking up a new little niece for me, so the least I could do was fill her freezer with easy prep or no prep meals. We had a great day working in the kitchen, and I remembered the joy of bulk cooking
Bulk cooking, also know as once-a-month cooking, is a handy way to reduce your work load at times of high stress like the first month or two of a baby's life. You take one day and cook everything, throw it all in the freezer and voila, you are set. I was introduced to the concept by my beloved sister-in-law who knows that a cookbook is always a good gift idea for me. She gave me a copy of Once-A-Month Cooking by Mary-Beth Lagorborg and Mimi Wilson. While that got me started I've found that everyone is much happier eating food they know and love, so I adapted the idea to meet our family's tastes.
Here's the basics. Choose two or three meats that you'll use for the bulk of your recipes. We chose turkey, ham and ground beef. It's also a good idea to make a vat of spaghetti sauce. Using those meat selections as a guide, select recipes containing those ingredients. We made Lasagna, Mexican Chicken/Turkey Lasagna, Turkey Tetrazini, Saucy Chicken/Turkey and Bow Tie Pasta, To Be Baked Ziti, Turkey Burrito Meat, Taco Meat, Ham and Macaroni and Cheese, Ham and Fettucini Alfredo with Peas, and a vat of chili. There was left-over spaghetti sauce which we froze in bags that will be used with purchased meatballs and ravioli.
She's set. We used purchased disposable 9x13 pans and lots of freezer bags, but you can also line your glass 9x13 pans with plastic wrap and freeze the food in place. You need to grease the pan with Pam, but after the meal is frozen just pop it out and wrap it with aluminum foil or use 2 gallon freezer bags to store it. When you make the homemade spaghetti sauce it is likely that you'll have a giant can that was full of the tomatoes from the bulk food club. Rinse the can out and put your freezer bags over the can to make filling simple and neat.
Enjoy. This is a great gift to give anyone you know who is having a baby soon.