My Favorite Things

After reading a post a few months back at Money Saving Mom about starting your own cooking club, I knew that it was something that I wanted to try. Thankfully I have some great friends who were willing to give it a try and it has been such a great blessing and time saver.

We each pick a main dish to make and we make one for each person participating in the exchange. Then we meet and exchange meals. This month we have seven of us participating so I will come home with seven different meals. Most of us have small families so we exchange half portions (half of a casserole size dish serving 3 to 4) and we have one family who participates who makes two dishes, in exchange for full size dishes from the rest of us. We have even made a blog were we post the recipes and rate the dishes that are made each month, helping all of us know which dishes would be good to make again.

This has been so much fun and such a blessing for me. Some of the things that I love about the meal exchange is that it makes meal planning so much easier as two to three meals a week are already made and in the freezer, we get to try new dishes that we might not normally make, on busy days it makes dinner prep so easy (all of you with little ones know how that time before dinner can be), I spend about three hours in the kitchen one Saturday a month and have two to three meals a week made, it cuts down on dishes as I am cooking once for many dinners, and I can more easily shop sales for the few ingredients that are needed for my dish cutting down on my grocery budget.

This idea has caught on quickly as my sister who is in California has started her own group, and even her sister-in-law has started her own group. Even if you only have one or two friends to exchange meals with, I think it would be well worth it. Each person could even each make two dishes to exchange. 

Next week I will share with you one of our families favorite freezer friendly meals. If any of you are interested in this idea I would encourage you to read the above posting and comments as there is many good ideas and suggestions.