Bulk cooking for one?

It seems a little crazy, but you can do some bulk buying and cooking for one.  It's a great way to save money and make sure that the ingredients you are using are definitely gluten free.

I was thinking about this as we were getting ready for the arrival of my gluten-intolerant friends from Texas.  My friend Lynn comes to visit when I have a baby for about three weeks to help around the house with laundry, cooking, cleaning, kid-watching, etc. (we do the same for her when she has a baby)  It's a great arrangement! I wanted to make things easy for her to feed my 4 older kids and her 3 kids.  It can be a challenge when we're both up and running and becomes really challenging when one of us is hanging out in bed!

Anyway, to make things run smoothly it works best if we don't have to worry about cooking meat or beans; ingredients we need for almost every meal.  Sometimes, you just want to grab already prepared ingredients, throw them together and feed a pile of people.  Since we can't have most of the easy, pre-prepared/processed foods, we make our own.  Some of what you can do will depend on your freezer space. Investing in a small chest freezer may be a good idea if you find that you enjoy cooking this way.

Quick Note on Containers
You can re-use sour cream or yogurt containers if they have lids, or you can buy the re-usable/disposable gladware style containers you find in the store. Both are easy to label and stack. I don't recommend using ziplock bags- they break easily and it is difficult to do quick thaws- especially if you are using a microwave to thaw. Empty mayo and pickle jars are also handy to have on hand for saving leftovers in the fridge.  However, freezing with them can be difficult since glass doesn't give the same way plastic does and you can end up with broken jars in your freezer.

Roasted chicken
I have a lot of mouths to feed, so I cook 4 chickens at a time when they go on sale.  It takes the same amount of time in the oven for 4 as it does for one.  Then, I strip the chicken from the bones, chop it and put it into freezer containers that are about what I need for one recipe.  For me, that's 2-3 cup containers.  For you, one cup containers probably make more sense.  I'll use this to put together things like the Tabbouleh salad or chicken tacos as well as a quick lunch where I grab chicken and frozen peas, thaw them and put them in front of the kids.  Protein and a vegetable make lunch, right?

Recipe for Roasted Chicken:
Rinse chicken and remove the giblet bag (very important!  I've had friends accidentally cook the chicken with the bag in it...yuck!).  Make sure the chicken is all the way thawed.  If it starts frozen in the middle, it will stay raw in the middle and overcook on the outside.  My quick and dirty way to flavor it is to peel and quarter an onion and stuff it inside the chicken. You can also halve and throw a lemon or orange in for flavor if you have an old one in your fruit drawer... Then rub olive oil inside and outside the chicken and sprinkle with salt and pepper. If you can stick some salt and pepper under the skin on the breast, it's even better.  Put in in a casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees for about an hour.  If you prick the leg or thigh the juices will run clear.  It should register at 175 on a meat thermometer.

Roasted pork
This works on the same principle as the chicken.  I use pork shoulder roasts, since they are inexpensive.  They have the added benefit of being very tender and forgiving. Its hard to mess up a pork shoulder. There's quite a bit of fat in it, so it can be cooked multiple times without much trouble.  It shreds well for pork tacos or sandwiches.  It's also darned tasty fresh from the oven!

Recipe for Roasted Pork
Get a rub you like, or mix equal parts salt, pepper, cumin, chile powder, paprika, and brown sugar (start with a tablespoon of each) then add a teaspoon of red pepper if you like a little spice (or more to taste) and a dash of nutmeg. Rub it all over the outside of the pork roast and put it in a 325 degree oven for four hours. This WILL heat your house up, so I usually do this when the weather is getting cooler. The roast is done when a meat thermometer reaches 185 in the thickest part of the roast, near the bone. At this point Dan and the kids start picking bits off the outside of the roast - samples are big in our house! Let it "rest" for 15 minutes so the juices can re-distribute throughout, then carve into whatever you want to serve. You can do 1/2 inch slices and serve with vegetables for dinner, then chop the rest into recipe-sized chunks and freeze in 1 cup  containers for easy snacks, meals and recipe-sized portions.

Dried Beans
Dried beans are significantly cheaper than buying them canned, but if you're doing them on the stovetop, they take forever and are kind of a pain.  However, if you have access to a crockpot, you can soak the beans overnight in a bowl, then throw them in the crockpot with an onion and any spices you like, cover them with water that goes about 2 inches above the level of the beans and turn the crockpot on low for 10 hours.  They end up about perfect.  Then, you can use what you'd like and portion the rest out into your freezer.  If you are going to freeze the beans, I find it best to drain them before freezing so they come out looking like beans instead of mush.  If you make a lot of bean soups, though, you can freeze it with the liquid.  I'll try to remember post my favorite black bean soup recipe for you.

Boy this ended up being a long post.  I hope it's a little useful as something besides bedtime reading when you're suffering from insomnia!

-Jennifer (with quite a few edits from Dan)