Bulk cooking day - with a friend!

Two toddlers, 20 serves of dinner, some yummy treats - what a day! A friend of mine teamed up with me to dip our toe into the world of joint cooking, and ultimately it was a success! We decided to start small, since we weren't sure howmuch we would be able to get through.

 

How we did it:

- We decided what meals to make ahead of time. She was buying and making food for chili con carne and some banana bread, and I was in charge of the Bolognese. We kept track of how much we spent and fixed up the difference at the end.

 

This became ten small family meals of Bolognese

- She brought all her ingredients and her beautiful almost one-year-old to my place. The girls had lots of 'practise' at sharing toys. Both are eldest/ only children and are both used to having the run of the joint. To have to share toys was a good learning experience for them! They had a lovely time together and Chubs was talking about her little friend all evening after they left.

- One of us was on cooking duty and then other was chasing the girls, and then we switched.

 

I'm suprised that any of the banana bread made it to the freezer -it was sooooooooooo yummy



 

We started small, since we didn't want to have a massive cooking day with half finished meals and screaming children. Now that we have a good idea of what we can do and what meals our families like, we'll probably scale up next time.



Chilli con carne - some for last night's dinner, some for the freezer.

We made just the main part of the meals, not complete meals. This is a very effective way to take the fuss out of dinner and just put on some spaghett, rice, potatoes or similar to go with the meat. (Dear Husband and I had sneaky corn chips with our chilli last night as well.)

What we made: (a 'dinner' is a dinner for our families - two parents and one toddler)
- Two dinners of crumbed chicken strips (just me)
- Six dinners of Bolognese (three each)
- Four dinners of chilli con carne (two each)
- Two loaves of banana bread (one each)

As well as making all that, we cleaned it up (well, the dishwasher did most of it!), chased little girls, cleaned up spills and wet pants, changed nappies, fed and ate lunch, played with blocks and toys and books and generally dealt with usual play date madness. The best part is, we got to take five dinners home and yummy banana bread too!