It started off as just one Saturday and a few meal options, and it has grown into weekends with so much food that I had to buy a chest freezer!
The first few times were definitely trial and error, because we had no idea what we were doing. We were also randomly picking recipes off google and not all of them worked. But now we have our system down to a fine art, and have an arsenal of recipes that are tried and tested, and it really is just the best thing ever!
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January
The first cooking day of the year was in January - it turned into our first huge cooking weekend, as we embarked on a quest to make probably the most amount of food we've ever made before! Let's face it, we cook this way because life is so hectic for both Tara and I... but 7 weeks between cooks is a long time!
We headed out on the Friday afternoon to do the shopping - we go to the Pendle Hill Meat Market, which is in Western Sydney. Obviously this won't be convenient for everyone, but if you can find something similar near you, it is just sensational! We get all of our meats here, as well as some of the fruits and veggies, some cheeses and deli meats, and the dry goods (mostly tinned tomatoes!).
We always get some crazy looks when we go there, because we literally buy 20+kg of meats at a time! On this particular visit, we bought:
- 2 x pork scotch fillets (~2kg each)
- 2kg chuck steak
- 3kg beef mince
- 8 double chicken breasts (weight I have no clue... it's a LOT of chicken)
- 4kg point end beef brisket
- 4 large rump steaks (probably about 1.5 - 2kg)
This is just my half of the weekend cook, and is 42 days worth of food for 2 people.
That's 84 portions of food.
That means we made 168 portions of food, to feed 4 people for 7 weeks (6 days of meals + 1 day of eating out/takeaway per week).
So insane!
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March
Our March cooking session was at my house for the first time, because Tara had already packed up her kitchen, since they were moving house in a couple of weeks. Exactly the same deal as before - this is just Tara's half! We did a lot of snack foods this time, like spinach and cheese triangles, empanadas and pizza pockets. These were a huge hit - so good for a quick dinner or light snack.
This was the first time we had done a cook with no definite idea of when the next cook would be. Tara moved to Melbourne in April, and so if we were going to keep this up, it would now be an interstate adventure...
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June
And an interstate adventure it was!
I took the long weekend in June, and I spent all day Saturday driving down to Melbourne from Sydney (for those playing at home, it's about 10 hours). I got there just in time for dinner on Saturday night (and wine... so much wine haha).
We then cooked all day Sunday - and I mean all day, all the way until 1am when we finished all of the dishes. This time was less about quantity and more about variety, and also more veggies. We noticed that it had become really easy to make slow cooked meats or stews or pasta dishes, but we were not getting enough veggies, and the dishes were very tomato based haha.
Something we made last time that was wildly popular this time was marinated chicken. I'll post a separate blog outlining the marinades soon, but the idea of freezing marinaded chicken breasts, and then just defrosting and cooking as required was just so excellent.
June's cook looked like this - a huge variety of different meals, and still about 6 weeks worth of meals!
Until next time.
H x
