Author: Sarah

I ordered and downloaded the Mega Menu Mailer from the Saving Dinner site on Friday. I’ve actually used one of their weekly menu mailers in the past, but because my parents live so close and we do spur-of-the-moment meals with them or just don’t feel like cooking sometimes a 6-meal-a-week shopping list and recipe plan just doesn’t work well for us. But this seems like it will work better: you prepare and freeze 20 meals, then defrost and use them when you feel like it.

So yesterday Carrie and I went shopping. We spent not quite twice what we’d normally spend in a week, so we’ll have to see with the next few grocery bills whether this is more or less expensive. (I’m going to guess it will be slightly less, but we’ll see.)

Denis and I spent a bit less than 6 hours while Carrie was napping and after she went to bed preparing the meals and cleaning up the kitchen. (We were pretty inefficient about it, but I seriously doubt anyone could possibly do it in the two hours the menu plan claims.) We had some extra meat and veggies, so we made a total of 24 meals. That works out to 15 minutes per meal of prep work and cleanup, which is less than you’d spend on each meal individually if you cooked every day. (Well, some of them were really super-easy, but others required a lot of chopping, measuring and dirtying of bowls.)

I think there will be two big benefits to doing this: first, we only messed up the kitchen (a lot, too!) once, and it’s all clean now; second, we’ll have creative, healthy meals even when we’re both tired from a whole day of work – and the temptation to go out will be much, much less.

We’re thinking we’ll go through three or four a week – they’re almost all meat-based, so we’ll throw in a batch of lentil soup or some pasta a couple of other days, and plan to eat out once a week – so I’ll know in about six weeks whether this was a good idea or not.