Saving time by freezing food

Since I love to save money and time, I thought I would quickly share how I save lots of time and money in the kitchen. A while ago I was watching a Rachel Ray episode where she covered ways to save money by freezing black beans. I haven’t bought a can of black beans in forever, but I think a can runs around $.50, but a 1 pound bag runs around $.99. I think it takes around 5 cans to equal one bag, so by buying the 1 pound bag at $.99, I save at least $1.50 on just black beans. That may not seem like much, but I also weigh the fact that with a bag of black beans, I can use it for around 8-10 meals versus 5 meals with the cans.

Here’s the trick to stocking up using your freezer and saving time: we cook lots of food as soon as we purchase the item and then divide it into meal size portions in baggies and freeze it. This week, my husband cooked and froze the beans and rice. For the black beans, he cooked 2 pounds following the directions on the bag and for the rice, he cooked 3 pounds following the directions.

To use these for a meal, we add a little bit of water to the rice and cook it in a glass dish in the microwave until warm. It turns out perfect and saves so much money and time because we aren’t buying the 5 minute rice, which is more expensive. For the beans, we toss them in a skillet until warm.

Continuing to cut our budget while enjoying life…