Accomplishment!

This day has been SUCCESSFUL! :D I'm so pleased!
On Friday, a friend and I ran to the store, armed with my sorted-by-department grocery list. I'd made a list of things I wanted to buy ingredients for, I'd found some coupons I wanted to try to use, and I had checked the ad so I knew what things would be on sale. A way full cart (and way more money than a usual grocery trip later!) we were on our way back.

Today, I had decided, I would plan to do a bunch of cooking, getting things either prepped for future meals, or actual entire meals prepared and frozen to be pulled out and cooked later.

I bought some convenience things (taquitos, anyone? ;) but mostly core ingredients to blend with what I had on hand.
One of the Major purchases I made was 20lbs of ground beef (I know- seriously!?), which I KNEW I would have to deal with today!

So, this afternoon, I have...
- browned (via this method) 15 lbs of ground beef
- put 10 lbs of browned beef into 1 qt bags & into the freezer
- put 3 lbs of raw ground beef into 1 qt bags (1 lb in each) & into the freezer
- made a double batch of meatloaf & put them into freezer bags & into the freezer
- browned 3 lbs of sausage for breakfast burritos
- made an Enchilada Casserole (sort of like this)
- made 2 lasagnas (both uncooked, put directly into the freezer)
- filled 2 boxes worth of manicotti (simply stuffed the pasta & then put them into the freezer; when I want to cook them, I'll add spaghetti sauce and the shells to a baking dish and bake as usual)
- filled 2 boxes worth of jumbo pasta shells (same deal as the manicotti)

I bought some frozen meatballs so we can make meatball subs sometime this week (because I didn't want to make meatballs in addition to everything else) and I have frozen chicken breasts that I'm going to cook up at some point this week, probably.. some I'm going to chop and freeze once they're cooked, just as a sweeto convenience thing, and some are going to become part of some chicken/rice and mexi/chicken/rice dishes I found.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to make these breakfast burritos, using the sausage I cooked up today. This should give us another way simple + cheap + good breakfast option.

I don't want to try to break that all into total meals, but it is a LOT, and the ground beef that's cooked up now will help make other meals faster to prep too! Hooray for helping to trim back our eating-out spending by having good easy meals ready at home! :D