June 2010 Bulk Cooking Menu

This took me a bit of time to get together.  Like I said before, planning is key!  First I came up with my meals and the recipes.  I have a list below that show what I am making, how many it serves and the total number of meals I am making of it.  To make things easier, I linked the recipes for you.  Some I had to type out and post, some I changed the recipe from how I would make it to one that was already on the web.  For some of you, you may have never thought about cooking in bulk like this before, so I want to make it as easy as possible to follow along.
Menu List

Chicken	Servings	# of Meals
Creamy Chicken Casserole	6	2
Chicken Pot Pie	6	2
Chicken and Sausage cassoulet		2
Jambalaya	8	2
Ground beef
Lazy Lasagna	6	4
Cheeseburger Pasta	6	4
Tuna
Tuna Casserole		3
Tuna Cakes		2
Sausage
Red beans and Rice	6	2
Stuffed Shells	6	2
Beef Tips	6	3
Beef Stroganoff	6	2

Alterations:
Jambalaya: I will be using canned tomatoes (diced) instead of fresh tomatoes.  I will be browning the cooked chicken and sausage as it says.  I will make the mixture and then freeze and will cook it later in the crock pot.
Tuna Patties: Calls for bisquick in the recipe.  I am not buying it.  I found a recipe for baking mix here.
Beef Tips: This recipe is for a huge amount, I am cutting the recipe in half and assuming it will suit 3 meals of 6 servings.

Now, sorry I did not type it all out, but it is so much easier to hand write my ingredients for each meal.  So I scanned the pages for you.  Here they are:

Just click and you should be able to print.
Now from here, I consolidate my list to create my grocery list to shop from.

I then check my pantry for what I have, so I can delete it from my list.  From this list, I am using my $0.68/lb whole chickens and the 4 pound can of tuna I already have. 
After, I cruise sam’s club (website) to see what I can buy in bulk and mark it on my list.  I also check out the weekly ads to see if it can beat the price.  I plan to buy first at walmart to price match anything and then go to walmart.  My initial approximation is that this will cost me $200 for 30 days.  Now if you read about my frugal finances, I get $300 every 2 weeks.  So for the next 2 weeks no doubt, we are eating from the freezer.  But the following 4 weeks, we will eat about every other night.  This way I can make our favorite, fried meat, rice and gravy with green beans.

As for cooking this bulkiness, that will be a later post.  The nice part is after all this work, I can always repeat this bulk planning with just the shopping and cooking effort.
If you bulk cook!  Please leave me a comment and send us a link to your blog where you post any of your recipes.  Coming up with the meals I want to eat is my hardest part.

~trish