Do You Cook Ahead?

I’ve always been intrigued by make-ahead cooking. Methods like once-a-month cooking or even weekly cooking are very appealing to me and though I’ve bought a couple of books with recipes and techniques, I just can’t seem to find the time to even get organized in the first place!

My favorite book that I’ve found so far is The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet. I actually bought it years ago and didn’t get around to really looking through it until about two years ago. I’ve used several of the recipes for just one-off dinners, though I have doubled up on a couple of them to stash one in the freezer for later.

It’s also taught me a very basic cook-ahead techniques, like dicing up a couple of onions or other veggies at once if I know I’m going to need them later in the week for a different meal, or even browning an extra pound or two of ground beef to use later in the week too.

Aside from initial organization, my biggest issue with once-a-month or even once-a-week cooking is the aforementioned freezer. We just don’t have much room. What do you do in a situation like that? I know you don’t have to keep the meals in the dishes they’re initially prepared or cooked in, and that most of them can be frozen and then packed in foil or baggies, but my freezer space is so limited that even that’s not much of a help.

For those of you who do cook ahead and freeze the prepared meals, how do you deal with freezer space, or lack thereof? Do you end up just biting the bullet and investing in a stand-alone freezer, or just make do with what you have?

[image: flickr]