Start a Meal Exchange to Save Money and Enjoy More Homemade Meals

[The Straight Story]

Start a Meal Exchange to Save Money and Enjoy More Homemade Meals

If your busy schedule stops you from making as many homemade meals as you'd like, a meal exchange makes it easy to stockpile a variety of meals with a minimum of fuss.

Photo by Russell Bernice.

Finance and frugality blog The Simple Dollar shares a guide to putting together an effective meal exchange. What exactly is a meal exchange? They elaborate:

On a certain day, everyone in the exchange meets for coffee and brings along a laundry basket full of frozen meals, one for each family, along with any needed instructions taped to the lid. The members of the club just swap the meals so that everyone takes home one of each meal that they didn't prepare.

It's a very clever idea for several reasons. First, it makes it very easy for people to prepare a variety of home-cooked meals. Second, it drastically reduces the meal preparation time, since there's only one big session of making several copies of one meal and after that one only needs to pull a meal out of the freezer and toss it in the oven. Third, it's much cheaper since you can buy the ingredients for your meal in bulk.

http://lifehacker.com/5701890/start-a-meal-exchange-to-save-money-and-enjoy-more-homemade-meals

As long as you don't include a free toy with the above it should be legal to do in San Fran :)

[Lasher]

1. This is a good idea.

I make great big batches of our favorites such as deer chili and turkey noodle soup. Whatever's left after inviting friends over, we freeze into meal-sized containers. We give some of these frozen meals away but I don't think I'd want to trade with anybody because I'm mighty fond of my own concoctions. But I think these exchanges would be great for a lot of folks.

Thanks for sharing.

[Mimosa]

Lasher, those dishes sound yummy.

And wholesome.

[Lasher]

4. They are both yummy and wholesome, and fun to prepare.

I'm lucky to be in a position to put these things together. Remind me to offer my recipes for big batch treats.

I prepare 5 gallons of chili at a time (not counting beans), for example, with as many local ingredients I can reasonably use. When I freeze, I hold off on ingredients like beans for the chili. After all the red kidney beans are already in a can so why would I open the cans just to freeze them? And why would I freeze noodles with my turkey soup when they are dried and waiting to be used?

Right now I'm warming up to a big batch of deer stew. I don't have all the home grown tomatoes I'd like to have, because I've been sidelined by an injury this year. But I'll make do with what I've got.

I like your screen name, BTW.

[kestrel91316]

2. Great idea until the major multinational corporations that

manufacture processed convenience foods write and present to Congress legislation that prohibits this, too. Because Congress will pass it and Obama will sign it, all in the name of increased food safety.

[pipoman]

3. A potential problem

is that so few people actually know how to cook anymore. The same effect could be accomplished by cooking larger batches for ourselves and freezing the leftovers. I also have apprehension about people's ability to prepare food I/we like, and then to cool it and preserve it safely as to not promote food borne pathogens...but I am admittedly weird about such things.