Saturday, October 27, 2007

Whatcha Got Cookin'

Friday night there was some fun happening at this house! Myself and seven other homeschool moms joined together for the first Whatcha Got Cookin' party. We made 64+ meals total in about 3 hours to be stored in the freezer for a later time.

This is what we made:

Chicken Devan
Beef Stew
Wet Burritos
Stuffed Shells
Egg Rolls and Teriyaki sauce
Chicken Calzones
Macaroni Cassarole
Chili

This is how it worked:

About three weeks ago each lady submitted a 2 recipes of her choice. Each recipe serves a family of 8. From this list we narrowed it down to make a good balance and variety.

Each person was responsible to provide all the meat her own family would be eating. This way they could pull from what they already had or buy on sale and hopefully save some money.

After being assigned a recipe each lady multiplied that recipe times 8 and then purchased and prepared all the non-meat ingredients for the entire group. Any prep work like dicing, boiling or chopping was done at home. This allowed us to buy in bulk and save some time and money.

That night we all brought our meat and all of our prep work together and began to assemble each recipe one by one for our individual family. It was nice to be able to control the spiciness or leave out an ingredient that our family wouldn't care for. There was nothing to actually cook, so it went fairly quickly. Each recipe cost between$4-8 depending on if it was divided into one or two meals due to family size.

More than anything it was an opportunity visit and share and we did something productive at the same time! We may see each other at homeschool group each week, but for some of us it was the first time ever that we have had a uninterrupted conversation.

The night ended in the early hours of the morning with chocolate, caffeine and great conversation.

Wanna see?



4 comments:

Kacie said...

So did each family get enough to feed each family member a meal from each recipe?

This looks really cool!

Catherine said...

What a great idea to have people bring their own meat!

Kacie said...

Thanks for clearing that up! I think this sounds like a fantastic idea.

I saw from your profile that you're in Indiana. That's where I'm from--I was born in Indianapolis, lived in South Bend for a few years, lived in West Lafayette for a few years, and went to school in Bloomington. I love that state!

Anonymous said...

That's so cool! have you seen the book "Cooking among Friends" by Mary Tennant and Becki Visser -- it's designed for this kind of thing.