We have all the meat cooked, veggies prepped and cheese grated before cook day. Another thing that is a big help is that we divide all the groceries into recipe families. For example all of the non-perishables for our chicken spaghetti will be together, labeled “chicken spaghetti”. (We put the cans etc. in grocery bags and tie them together and label them.) This way if you ended up substituting something when you were grocery shopping, it helps you know which ingredients go with which recipe and it also makes the day run more smoothly.

I’d love to hear how it goes!

I like to freeze as much as possible in freezer Ziplocs since our freezer space is at a premium. Some of the women use reusable plastic containers and then each month we have several meals that will go into a 9 x 13.

You do have to have some basic similarities between the regularly cooking families, but it is nice to have a couple slots open for people to try it out or cook only occasionally. We’ve never had a problem filling the open slots and usually have several families who want to cook waiting for an invitation. It has been a huge blessing to our family.

Blessings,
Kimberly

I am hoping to do more bulk cooking posts, but time will tell.

Blessings,
Kimberly

I popped over after you left a comment on my blog and I have to say I love your blog! Great ideas.

Thanks for the questions. Currently two of the women that do all the shopping and they do it together, going to many different stores and keeping track of where they get the best prices, etc. They also buy spices, foil, powdered milk, etc. Then at the end of each cook day they do an inventory of the supplies to see what we still have left . This allows them to know what we have on hand for next time and helps to figure the total costs for these particular meals. For example, we may only use half a box of powdered milk so they will only add half that expense to the total for the groceries and they know that next month we have a half box of powdered milk on hand.

We do split the total cost for all the items between the families. Because of this we measure and divide carefully when we are putting the food into each families containers.

I’m not sure what you mean by the first two questions. Sometimes we don’t keep everything straight. ) But this is generally how the day works. I start on a recipe, say chicken enchiladas. I make the whole recipe then I go and gather the containers or dishes that each family brought. I know according to the recipe that each family will get 20 chicken enchiladas. So I divide the recipe evenly into each families food containers and LABEL them. The label for my family may look like this: Kimberly Chicken Enchiladas. Then I take the dishes and place them in the area where finished food is stored, each family has their own section. (I have that in one of the pictures) Several of us are doing this and then others are helping or washing dishes, etc.

At the end of the day we make notes on how the recipes worked, if we changed the recipe while we were making it (like adding the wrong type of cheese) and any adjustments that we would like to make for next time we prepare that recipe. Just generally put our heads together with any thoughts. Then one of the mom’s in our group goes through the recipes and emails everyone with cook day directions. For example, the chicken enchiladas will just need to be thawed and heated, but the beef and spinach bake will need to have some buttermilk biscuit dough made into a crust and then it gets cooks. You get the idea. Sometimes we have separate bags of cheese or spices for topping some of the recipes and these are also noted in our prep directions email.

I hope that helps a little. If I didn’t really answer your question, please let me know. This has been such a blessing for our family, I would love to help others do this also.

I love questions and comments. It lets me know that someone is interested in what I’m writing about.

Blessings,
Kimberly