Cook It With Love Once, Eat It Many Times

I am a huge fan of the multi-purpose meal or follow-up meal or the big batch for freezing. Cook something lovingly in huge batches when a staple item like meat or vegetables are on sale. This can save you later in time, money and effort and make warming up something turn into a great eating experience instead of a so-so dining experience where you nuke a tin of something.

Roast Beef:
A big roast can make many meals. Do your traditional roast beef dinner on day one with a big giant roast. Don't forget the yorkshire pudding and real gravy!
Here are ideas for follow-up meals:

-Day 2, hot roast beef sandwiches (open faced) with leftover gravy or roast beef submarine sandwiches with mozzarella

-Day 3, beef soup or stew. This is a great way to deal with leftover vegetables too! (note, whatever you don't use by today, freeze it for use later.)

4th meal, etc..Beef pot pies. If your batch of stew is huge, you an do a follow-up meal with that with a beef pie by buying ready made or homemade pie crusts or rolled biscuit dough and filling the pie crusts with the stew. Delicious! They freeze well also. I sometimes make a pot of stew on day two or three (max) and half the batch is for dinner and the other half goes into pie shells and straight into the deep freeze.

I always make double or triple batches of spaghetti sauce, meatballs and chili and my husband does a very coveted batch of cabbage rolls that can feed an army and freeze wonderfully. Most times though, they don't make it to the freezer because his recipe is so wonderful family and friends beg for some to take home.