Bulk Cooking and OAMC

Savory Pork ChopsI have posted before about freezer cooking and OAMC (Once a Month Cooking) which I continue to do. I always field questions about how I do things or for more ideas. Today I was inspired to post a couple pictures of the dish I was making for our upcoming freezer trade.

I found a recipe for Savory Pork Chops, which is pork chops dredged in a flour and dried mustard mixture, slightly browned, and then marinaded in a sauce (mustard, orange marmalade, soy sauce, onion). Since we have four families in our club, I wanted to average about eight smaller portions per family. Pricing out pre-cut pork chops was spendy. I decided to buy a very large pork loin on sale for $12.00 and cut my own. I ended up with eight, good sized-fairly thick chops per family. This means there maybe leftovers and more than one meal out of this one dish. When you break that down, it’s $3.00 for a family meal. Most of the ingredients for the sauce I had, but I bought a jar of orange marmalade and then used part of it for a different recipe (Orange Ginger Chicken).

002Not only is the meal inexpensive and tasty, all that is left to be done is dump it from a bag into the oven or crockpot!

Cheap Mandarin Oranges

cheap mandarin OrangesMy kids love mandarin oranges. For years I have been buying the little cups for their lunch boxes, mostly because they are portioned nicely. However, it is getting expensive to buy them that way, even if I can find them on sale. I have tried buying the big cans, but there is so many in there that the kids get sick of them before they get eaten. If I throw out food, that is wasting money.

A friend suggested I try buying a big can, laying them out individually on a cookie sheet, and putting them in the freezer until the oranges are frozen. I was afraid this would be putzy, but it really wasn’t. It worked great! I was able to easily lift the frozen oranges individually off the sheet and store them in a freezer-safe container. Now I can take out as many or as few as I want. When I pack them in lunch boxes, they are defrosted by lunchtime, but still cold. The kids love it. 

One more thing, I’ve noticed that there weren’t any broken oranges in the big can I opened. I think the oranges break into obnoxious pieces when packed into small containers. I will definately do this again.

Do you have any great money or food saving tips you’d like to share? Add your comments now! We’d love to hear from you.