I bet you’re thrilled that I’ve decided to discuss make-ahead meals during the biggest leftover food week of the year. The time of the year when you would be least likely to stock your fridge and freezer with backup meals. My timing is impeccable, I know.
This weekend I went down to Baltimore, mainly to visit the GS but also to go back to Towson and share some words of wisdom (HA!) with the current AuD students about being a 4th year extern. I also got to have breakfast with my BFF Henry, and he chose green eggs and ham. It was adorable.
On Saturday the GS picked out three meals and we went to the grocery store and got all the ingredients. His choices were buffalo chicken mac & cheese, vegan lentil and sweet potato chili (no longer vegan when he requested that I “add some beef to it”), and farro and vegetable stew, which turned into couscous and vegetable stew when the farro was 8 dollars for a tiny bag.
I made a list of everything we needed, and we broke into our friend Ian’s house to use his kitchen because the GS’s kitchen was occupied with Friendsgiving prep. And by “broke into,” I mean we got Ian’s permission and used the Kevo to get in.
It probably took two hours in total, and could have been done more quickly if Ian had more than 2 burners (how does he LIVE?!) to make all three meals. The mac & cheese probably wouldn’t freeze very well so I recommended that he eat that this week. In total, I ended up making him 18 meals (6 servings of each) for a total grocery cost of $39.64.
This brings us in at a total cost per meal of…
(Drumroll please)
$2.20.
The GS guesses that he spends about $12 when he eats out for lunch or dinner, and therefore calculated that I saved him about $180 by making the meals ahead.
The moral of the story is, if you have some time and a love to chop and stir like I do, it’s worth it to make things like soup, chili, and sauce ahead of time and stick them in the freezer.
And if you’re a kind human and do this for someone else, you might also be lucky enough to receive a Snapchat video of that person enjoying their re-heated chili at lunchtime.
I’ll probably do this again the next time I visit, and here are some ideas for other meals that I think would freeze and re-heat really well!
Butternut Squash and Couscous Stew
spill the beans 
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