Reducing Food Costs: Cooking with a Friend
Editor's note: When we heard about Jennifer Maiser's plan to make a week's worth of cook-ahead meals with a friend as a way of saving money and reducing food waste, we asked her if she'd blog about the project on Serious Eats. Today is the first installment.
I'm really lucky to have a good friend, J., who lives in the same building. Both of us are struggling with how to eat great food at a reasonable price, and have been counting our pennies when it comes to our food budgets. I tossed out an idea last week and she bit: How about if we pool our, cooking together one day a week and taking home our individually packaged food to eat throughout the week?
Both of us see the genius in this: It forces us to plan menus, it's more fun to cook together, and we'll be able to get more variety than if we were to cook for one person. I have never really learned to cook individualized portions, so a lot of things I make end up being eaten all week or wasted. Since January, I've had a resolution of cutting my food waste, and this will help me toward that goal. I quickly get bored with fridge choices, so I need to have a lot of variety in the menu in order for this to work.
Luckily, J. and I have similar tastes. Between her dislikes (curry, olives) and my dislikes (sweet entrées), there is a ton of crossover of flavor. We're both compulsive planners (Virgos), so our detailed emails back and forth work with our personalities. The menu has gone through a few iterations and I think we've settled on our first week's plan. My goals for next week's menu are not to do anything too gourmet or labor-intensive, and to make dishes that we are used to making. I want to get comfortable with this idea before we start introducing new recipes into the mix.
I wanted to create a few entrées and a few sides that could be interchanged with one another so that I wasn't locked into eating one entrée with exactly one side. We're trying to cook for lunches and dinners to get us through the week. Here's what we're planning:
Entrées
- Baked ziti with spicy sausage and spinach
- Lentil soup
- Pork stew with rice
Sides
- Sautéed greens (or similar vegetables from the farmers' market)
- Salad greens and dressing
- Farro salad with various vegetables (dressing on the side to be mixed in on the day of eating)
- Potatoes au gratin
- No-knead bread
With two ovens and two stovetops and a crockpot, I think that this menu is doable. I usually eat savory things for breakfast so I foresee having the potatoes and bread for breakfast. Also, I like that a lot of the dishes are freezable if we overcook. The next step in this plan is to make a shopping list and try to keep it economical.
What do you think, Serious Eaters? Is this this menu too ambitious? Too boring? What's worked for you in your menu-planning forays?
More: Cooking with a Friend, Week One
About the author: Jennifer Maiser writes about locally and sustainably grown food. She is the founder and editor of the Eat Local Challenge website and writes at Life Begins at 30, her personal weblog.
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17 Comments:
Sounds like an awesome idea. I wish I had someone to do this with.
atxgirl at 10:28AM on 03/18/09
This is a great idea, and even better that you are including lunch as well as dinner. I am all about menu planning (to an obsessive point sometimes). Can't wait to see how this goes for you :)
imafoodblogdotcom at 10:42AM on 03/18/09
living alone has been difficult for me for this reason only -- if i make a big dish i get sick of it before all of the leftovers are gone. and even if i freeze stuff i rarely remember to reheat and eat it before freezer burn gets to it.
problem solved recently with the addition of a partner. the fact that he likes to cook as well, and we can learn from each other, really helps. for example, tonight, i'm leaving town for the weekend so we're making some kind of fridge-clearing pasta (half a red pepper, half a zucchini, half a red onion, etc.)
and to answer the question, no, this does not look like a boring menu. good luck and i can't wait to read the second installment.
anysuchname at 11:20AM on 03/18/09
Looks like a great menu to me, too! And I love the idea of cooking together and exchanging meals. Smart, smart.
How about throwing in a healthy baked good, like some super healthy + delicious muffins or a healthy apple crisp for breakfast, snacking, and/or dessert?
jbeach at 11:42AM on 03/18/09
What a great idea! I also love that it will save time for those frantic weeknights. I personally love to make pureed vegetable soups and freeze them in ziploc bags - I'm looking forward to hearing what else you come up with!
margaux at 12:34PM on 03/18/09
Sounds like a great idea! My son does this a lot with his friends in Brooklyn. When he lived in my hometown, I would cook a cheap chuck roast in the crockpot and send it over to him - he had a big soup pot and he would call his friends and they would all bring whatever vegetables they had and make a big pot of vegetable soup - they would live on it for days at a time.
floridayaya at 1:40PM on 03/18/09
After a few weeks of the honeymoon phase holler out to us for suggestions.
I like to see people cook together, an italian thing for me, and I like to see people eating good food. I think you are going to enjoy it.
JerzeeTomato at 2:56PM on 03/18/09
I like your menu a lot! One suggestion I've got though is instead of the No Knead Bread, go for the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day approach (recipes are posted all over the internet) and make enough for the next week or two.
hausfrau at 3:01PM on 03/18/09
Economic difficulties cause people to reevaluate current behavior. Sometimes it is cheaper to cook at home, other times it is not. A lot of ethnic food in larger cities can be a better deal. Instead of fresh ingredients for fried rice, you can get a ton of it at most Chinese places for about $6.
Look at the ads, cook your meals around them and consider less expensive cuts of meat. Flank steak v. filet, Pork instead of steak etc..
You can always use fillers to stretch it out a little as well.
This is a good idea though.
wouldibuyitagain at 4:49PM on 03/18/09
I've just started doing this with my mom, kind of. She's recently separated and there's only two of us in my house. There always seems to be about one serving leftover that never gets eaten. So I bought divided storage containers, pack up one meal for her, date it, mark what it is, and stick it in the freezer for her. I deliver the meals to her about once a week and she returns the empty containers. It works out great.
coltsfanchris at 1:08PM on 03/19/09
colts, we've been doing this as well with my mom and dad. Since my son moved away and i'm still used to cooking for him and all his friends, I freeze the leftovers and invite my mom and dad over for dinner every Sunday and she takes home all my frozen leftovers. She hates to cook but is a great bargain clothes shopper so she brings me clothes, I give her food - win/win!!
floridayaya at 8:25PM on 03/19/09
This is a great idea. Especially in these times, sharing ingredients makes a ton of sense. And adding a friend---brilliant. Soups work real well. So does lasagna. There's a group in NJ (and Denver, I think) that does this. It's called "the cooking with friends club." They have a website and a Yahoo group and people make cooking dates and share recipes etc.
Exit117A at 11:41AM on 03/20/09
Hi Jen.
I am always excited to discover people like yourself who realize the "genius" in Cooking With Friends. I run a website, e-newsletter and cooking community called the Cooking WIth Friends Club. Here's the link: www.cookingwithfriendsclub.com and have indeed been embracing this lifestyle for many years. As for your menu, I think the soup is especially terrific. Soup is the perfect food to make with a friend -- We've found that it can be made in bulk, it doesn't cost a lot and it freezes and then reheats extremely well. The Baked Ziti with sausage is also a good bet, as it can be frozen in individual portions. I would think the Pork stew would be best made to enjoy as a night's dinner with maybe a lunch or another dinner as leftovers. If you're planning to get together for the day, then your menu is certainly doable. If you only have a few hours, we've found it best to focus on fewer meals that yield higher amounts.
Thanks for sharing your cooking with friends excitement.
Alison
AJBCWFC at 2:05PM on 03/20/09
I had stuffed shells florentine on my list of things to make with a few friends. Our plans fell through, but I made a big pan of them anyways (now that I FINALLY own a proper 9x13). I had a few for a snack, two servings in the fridge for today and tomorrow, and three more servings in the freezer.
joyyy at 12:06PM on 03/22/09
This is a great idea! Most of my recipes could feed at least 4-6 people and there are only two of us at home. Planning is key!
Panda444 at 12:50PM on 03/23/09
That's a great idea! I haven't cooked meals with a friend, but have split grocery shopping before (buy one get one). I'm not a very good meal planner, except for the fact that I do shop by the weekly grocery ads. Recently I cooked a roast and a boston butt in the crock pot and used the leftovers to make different meals such as quesadillas, open face sandwiches, philly cheese steak sandwiches, bbq sandwiches. It's really helped with grocery costs, since it seems I spend an awful lot for three people and really only two of us are home to eat!
dlourie at 10:47AM on 03/25/09
This is an excellent idea. I run an Indian cooking school in Chelsea and am introducing a class in May where people can come and learn to make 5 or 6 Indian dishes which they prepare in class, and then take food home with them. They get to have food for the week (or more if they freeze some) without even having to go shopping or doing any clean up. I think that is quite a good deal.
http://www.Indianculinarycenter.com
hameshahungry at 12:46PM on 03/27/09