{"id":1436,"date":"2014-01-05T11:58:13","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T16:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2016-12-09T14:06:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T19:06:13","slug":"does-cooking-in-advance-save-you-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2014\/01\/05\/does-cooking-in-advance-save-you-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Cooking in Advance Save You Money?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My primary motivation for prepping freezer to crock pot meals is not to save money. Please don’t faint.<\/p>\n

I do it to save time<\/em> during the week.<\/p>\n

It does save money. It saves a lot<\/em> of money.<\/p>\n

I did not do much in the way of freezer to crock pot cooking this November and December. In looking at my budget book, I spent an embarrassing amount of money on groceries. Yes, yes, it was the holidays. Yes we cooked things we don’t ordinarily. Yes, we ate out more. But when I looked at what we spent on food for December 2013, I cringed. Even with<\/em> the inflation factor, I’ve fed four adults and two kids on less, and my household only has three adult appetites at present.<\/p>\n

The problem was two-fold. I didn’t make bento as often as I ordinarily do, so we bought lunches more than we should have. I also did not have any freezer meals ready. We were busy, so that meant more expensive convenience food items and more eating out.<\/p>\n

You see that picture? That’s going to make about 20 dinners \u2013 meals for weeknights and some leftovers for various lunches. Let’s say five meals person per crockpot full. I spent $200 on the food. This wasn’t cheating by shopping from a semi-stocked home pantry. That sucker was bare.<\/em> I even had to restock my spices.<\/p>\n

Friends, when I do the math, I find it comes out to $2 a meal for people who are not light eaters. Please understand that I’m not claiming I’m feeding the family on $200\/month. We’ll spend another $150 or so on food for breakfast, lunches and weekends if we’re not feeling excessively frugal.<\/p>\n

That’s still significantly less than I spent on food for December! So yes, doing the prep-ahead thing saves money like you would simply not believe until you do it.<\/p>\n

\"\"I would also like to point out the picture on the right. My artist husband likes to draw illustrations on the family calendar. He is gently needling me for pointing out that bento are really just food in a box.<\/p>\n

I suppose I should have said meals<\/em> in a box. Doughnut holes are breakfast, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My primary motivation for prepping freezer to crock pot meals is not to save money. Please don’t faint. I do it to save time during the week. It does save money. It saves a lot of money. I did not do much in the way of freezer to crock pot cooking this November and December. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Does Cooking in Advance Save You Money?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bento","category-food","category-frugality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}