A little over a month ago, my mother came up with the idea of sharing cooking duties for three families and my grandfather amongst four of us -- mom, my middle sister, my youngest sister, and me. Each person cooks a meal of our choosing for dinner, one night during the first four days of the work-week. Then we have leftovers and family meals on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We plan three weeks in advance.
So far, it has not only been delicious, but it has been frugal, too! Last week, my contribution was fried chicken and macaroni salad. (The families provided their own salads, fruit and dessert). A jumbo pack of thighs and a jumbo pack of legs made more than enough. The macaroni salad was made from a huge box of macaroni I got for free and some leftover veggies.
Tomorrow, I'm making sausage and pepper hoagies with oven fries and oatmeal and dried fruit cookies. The cost for the sausage and pepper hoagies for 8 adults and 5 children was about $17. Tomorrow, I'll pick up day-old bread from Jimmy John's for $.54/ loaf. Four loaves should be plenty to feed the families. Everything else I've had on hand for quite a while.
I look forward to figuring out more frugal meals for the next three weeks. I think the meals could be much less expensive if I'd prepared a bit better. But $20 for four days of dinners is not bad! And with this plan there's lots of variety, new tastes and old favorites, and the money-saving aspect of it is wonderful! I'd suggest it to anyone with friends or family nearby and a desire to break out of the same-old, same-old dinner routine!
I love this idea! I think I'm going to see if we can't do something like this in my family. I bet you can come up with tons of healthy, frugal meals. Keep us up-to-date!
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