In a previous post, Goal for the month: No Fast Food, I wrote about the benefits of cooking your own meals vs. dining or eating out. Frugal Pinoy reader Jinoe sent the following comment:
I would love to do this also for similar reasons (esp #4). But lately Im in a rush. Cooking my own food takes more than an hour plus cleaning up. So fastfood was an option.
If you still want to cook for yourself, but don’t have the time or energy to do so every day, you can cook in batches. On weekends, days off, or whenever you have a lot of free time, cook one big batch of food that you will heat up for the rest of the week. (An exception to this might be the rice, which you can cook once daily with no hassle using a rice cooker.) Here are some pointers:
- It requires a bit of planning. Since you’re cooking food in big batches, you need to plan ahead. This includes ingredients, what meals you’ll be having, and the quantity of food.
- Use your freezer. Most of the food you’ve cooked should be stored in your freezer to prevent spoilage. Just pop them up int he microwave or heat them up in your stove when you’re ready to eat. It’ll take roughly 5 minutes to do this per meal for one or two people.
Click here for a very informative article on batch cooking. It includes notes about shelf life of certain foods, a list of foods that don’t freeze well, recipes, and more tips. It’s like Batch Cooking 101.
hi frugal pinoy, good idea! i have two househelp who help me with the house chores and there was a time that my busy life got the most of me that i depended on them too much. they were doing their best of course, but even then, I realized i have to make sure i look in the fridge regularly or check the consumption or else too much food (and money) goes to waste! thanks for the post. its very enlightening. regards
cooking in batches and portioning it out into tupperware containers is also a great way to lose weight by planning quick meals
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