Freezable Dinners: It's All About Prep
In our inaugural DIY-reezable dinner session, we ended the night agreeing that we should do it again. The primary lesson learned from our first experience was that the load
on the organizer to select and quadruple the recipes was a heavy
burden. We made some tweaks and planned on a future date to get together.
Mother's Day eve, we gathered at Blair's house intending to make dinners for our five families. On the menu was:
- Chicken Tinga;
- Caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms, and bacon quiche;
- Korean spareribs;
- Meatloaf; and
- Cranberry walnut scones.
We emailed the recipes to the "organizer" who undertook the huge task of shopping for the ingredients. Fortunately, Olivia came with the Chicken Tinga bagged for everyone which meant we could focus our efforts on creating and assembling the remaining meals. The result was four yummy meals, and some terrific scones for breakfast or snacks. With each experience, we walk away with more tips to make it easier on our busy schedules. Some changes for our July gathering:
- Do as much prep work prior to gathering. Caramelizing the onions and sauteeing the mushrooms proved time consuming. The quiche also needed to bake prior to taking home which meant additional time. Not that we minded each other's company, but streamlining the process makes gatherings more efficient and means more time for drinking wine after.
- Our best friend is the food processor. I can't even count the number times we used the food processor for chopping veggies, shredding cheese, crumbing bread, etc. The more the better and the next time we might even make sure to have more than one on hand.
- Print out recipe labels. Good thing JJ had impeccable handwriting, but I'm certain that on the 10th bag of spareribs, she was ready to toss the trusty Sharpie aside. Next time we will assign someone to print out recipe labels to facilitate this step.
- Recyclable containers. Ziploc bags and disposable aluminum containers were used for all of our recipes. Next time we might try to bring our own dishes and containers from home.
Do you have any great tips to share with others thinking about doing an assembly party? As always, we are looking for additional recipes for future gatherings.
Some friends and I have doen something similar but different based on our experience/efforts over the past year or two. First, two families agreed to make dinner for each other every other Monday night. So we cooked for ourselves and them on two Mondays, and they cooked for us and themselves the other two Mondays. Idea being you doubled something you were (supposedly...) already making, then reaped the rewards by getting a cooked meal the other weeks. Turned out to be fun selecting recipes but somewhat of a burden making and delivering the meal on a given day (since we might well have just had pb&j that night!). We also tried a mass party/assembly when the kids were little, and it turned out to be a lot of shopping/recipe organizing work for one person and a lot of work putting it all together and watching the kids at the same time. Also a container disaster, which could easily be fixed. Overall that scheme seemed like more work for the food than it would have taken individually. So now we are trying another system: every month make triple a recipe for a freezable entree and deliver it to the other 2 families anytime during the month. Recipes are vetted. The beauty of this is that it's on each family's own schedule. The downside is that recipes must freeze well and we do vegetarian dishes which I think are more challenging to freeze. We are only in month 1 of this new world order, and being the only one to have not yet coughed up my meal (ingredients in the fridge...) - it's working great!! :-) The nagging feeling I keep getting is that we should abolish the whole thing and just buy it all at Elephant's or Whole Foods (but be broke!).
Posted by: Lisa | May 22, 2007 at 03:36 PM
when my friend and i (and then, later, a third friend) had our second children, around the same time as each other, we found ourselves struggling to get meals on the table. we both enjoyed cooking a lot, and trying new recipes, but never seemed to get the chance.
that is what led us to start our dinner trade. each sunday (usually after the kids were asleep - from about 9PM til midnight!) i would cook 2 meals for both of our families to consume on monday and tuesday evenings. each tuesday, my friend would prepare 2 meals for both of our families to consume on wed. and thurs evenings. it was wonderful!
it took a lot of work for 3 hours or so once a week - but we had full meals for our families for M-F for the effort!
and we would often split shopping too - one of us would go to trader joes and the other to the farmers market or produce market and we'd bag up the stuff for the meals we were making separately and just swap bags. saved on shopping with kids in tow.
we did this for a long time. and then later, i did the same thing with 2 friends - each of us making only one meal but for all three families - that worked great too!
my first dinner trade partner and i even made a "dinner trade cookbook" from all of our favorite recipes. then, after my family moved to portland (this was in CA), we made a long distance dinner trade cookbook, with all the recipes we continued to share by email and phone.
i wish i still had this arrangement with someone, even though i have more time to cook now - it was so nice to have someone *else's* cooking every week thrown into the mix!
Posted by: Lyla | May 22, 2007 at 07:19 PM
Gorgeous kitchen, Blair!!
Posted by: Monica | May 22, 2007 at 09:41 PM
What a great idea! And thanks for the follow-up suggestions...really helpful.
Posted by: Lise | May 31, 2007 at 02:47 PM