Happy New Year!

As you can imagine, having started a blog about having dinner as a family more...one of my resolutions would obviously be to eat at the table as a family more often. To start things off, and because for me, planning is half the fun, I'll share a little about how I plan to get those dinners on the table in the first place. No, I'm not going to write a post about cleaning. Though that would usually be the first step in this house...clean off the dining room table. But, let's just imagine for a moment the the table is clean (and the floor and the placemats or whatever it takes). No, the fun part is figuring out what I'm going to cook.
To start with, I have a rather large list of things we like to eat. Yep, I wrote it down because it helps spark ideas and keeps me from forgetting new or old dishes. I also keep a pretty definite list of what's in the freezer. I specifically like to have an idea about what kind of meats I have as well as some notations of foods I have frozen to quick meal prep on those especially busy days. The other components are having a look (online) at grocery fliers to know what's on sale and keeping a going grocery list.
So, I knew I needed some beef. Local store has these...


...on sale. That is a 9.36 pound whole boneless sirloin tip roast. It was on sale for $1.99/lb. Around here, that is a great price per pound for beef. I bought two, because I need to be in a 12-step group for people who cannot stop buying meat on sale. That's another post. I trimmed it well and put the trimmings along with some roasted beef bones in here...

I also added the contents of my vegetable trimmings bag. You don't have a vegetable trimmings bag? Okay, okay, one thing at a time. But I will get back to that! That made 8 quarts of gorgeous beef stock. Then I cubed some and cut some into large roasts.
My 2 9-pound sirloin tips are now 4-2quart bags of beef stock, 4-2.5 pound roasts, and 2-2 pound bags of sirloin cubes. What? You don't want that much in your freezer? Okay, buy smaller. That will make around 8 meals for us. That ends up being about $5 per meal for the meat part of our meals for 7 people. That doesn't even take into consideration the possibility of leftovers as lunches.
What will I make? Oh you'll see.....you'll see.
I wish you and yours the happiest, healthiest and most prosperous 2008.
Blessings,
Amanda