Cooking for a month: Take 2

Well, it has been awhile since I've documented anything here, so I figured I would document my second try at cooking food for an entire month in one day. I first tried this in January, thanks to a friend who piqued my interest through her various Facebook posts about it. I chose a weekend when Derek was gone (he thought/thinks it was/is crazy!), and spent a couple hours shopping and 6-7 hours cooking. It went well and definitely paid off in more free time during the week, so this month I tried it again. This time, Derek helped, I made more food, and I tried to plan it out a bit better! So, here is how it went: 

First, I downloaded a bunch of free monthly recipe plans from onceamonthmom.com. I used the vegetarian menus. Last month, I randomly made the November 2011 menu (closest month to the one we were in of the ones that are free on the website). Well, given my love of Excel, I figured I would venture off the beaten path and make my own plan this month (with all of the recipes still coming from the same website). So I picked and chose recipes from a few different months (including our favorites from last month) to make a plan. I made a grocery list from said plan. 

Then I went grocery shopping. I went to three different grocery stores in about 2.5 hours (door to door) and spent about $250 on food. (I spend about $80/week on food normally.) Just to give an idea, I bought 7 pounds of different cheeses, 11+ pounds of beans, 36 eggs, 15 bell peppers, 4 pounds of onions, 3 bunches of asparagus...

Here are the groceries on the kitchen counter:

And here is what the fridge looked like after:

Canned/pantry items:

Then today, Derek and I cooked! We started at 9 and were all cleaned up a bit before 4. So once again it took between 6 and 7 hours, closer to 7. I thought that two of us might make it quicker, but Derek is infinitely more organized and careful about these things, which probably slowed us down during the actual cooking but will probably help later.

We started by chopping a ton of veggies: bell peppers, carrots (sliced and shredded), broccoli, cauliflower, shallots, asparagus, mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini (sliced and shredded), and onion. 

Then we cooked! I didn't do a great job taking photos of the prepared food (everything from preparing it to letting it cool to moving it down to the freezer happened in many stages), but here is a list with photos for whatever I had photos of. 

Breakfast: assuming we each eat 1 piece per breakfast (should be fine with maybe a bit of supplementing with toast, peanut butter, etc.), we should have breakfast for both of us for 21.5 days

- Pumpkin muffins (with CREAM CHEESE in the middle): 24

- Mini quiches: 19

Lunches: That was one thing I did differently this time... I made twice as much dinner (4 servings) so that we each have lunch the next day. I did make one dedicated lunch (for weekends, for instance), which was one of our favorites from last month: vegetable chowder! (I'm sure the reason it's our favorite has very little to do with all of the cheese in it. :))

- Vegetable chowder (about 10 servings) 

Dinners: each dinner has 2 batches, 4 servings per batch... since we made 9 dinners, all weekday dinners and lunches are planned except 2 (I can just make something small since we will have the soup to eat for lunch the next day).

- Eggplant and mushroom parmesan casserole (sorry so fuzzy)

- Squash wontons (a favorite from last month)

- Black bean and lentil burgers

- Fire roasted vegetables with pasta (ended up being quinoa instead of pasta because I made wwayyyy too much for the next recipe -- they should really specify whether the amounts in the recipe represent cooked or raw amounts!!)

- Roasted balsamic vegetables with quinoa

- Quesadillas (I just sorted out the ingredients... will make these on the day of)

- Chickpea wraps (kind of a Mediterranean vibe... like it should be eaten with tzatziki sauce and a pita or something): pic of what goes IN the wrap below

- Chickpea cutlets (NO IDEA what these will be like... more of an Indian take on chickpeas this time)

- Cheesy chickpeas with broccoli

... And there you have it! We will have to see what I get back in time over the course of the month from not having to cook (all you have to do is reheat, which sometimes takes awhile, but very little active effort). While it is very tiring on the day that you cook, it was well worth it last month, and I'm sure it will be this month too! All of this effort should hopefully provide more time during weekdays to... relax and work on dissertation stuff. I also have a few late nights at work this month, so it gives Derek something to make that doesn't take too much time or effort. I am hoping to get really good at this by the time baby comes it will also save us some time during the first few crazy months of parenthood!

Speaking of parenthood, here is a bump pic at 22w1d. I am currently 23w4d, and I take these photos weekly, however the most recent photo is just not the best. I need to learn that at this point there are some workout shirts that do NOT look good on my anymore!!