No Time to Cook? Start a Freezer Meal Cooperative

by Katherine Gustafson · 2010-02-16 06:00:00 UTC
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Creating a healthy, sustainable food system requires people being interested in cooking fresh food for themselves. As long as we keep buying frozen meals and processed snacks in bags, the companies who make them will have all the funding and motivation they need to continue glutting the market with crap.

Modern life is busy, however, and it's a tall order to serve your family healthy, fresh, home-cooked meals every night of the week. What's a health-conscious, sustainable wannabe to do?

Angie Gubler or Blonde Designs' blog offers an intriguing solution: start a freezer meal cooperative. It's a simple idea: a group of people pool their time and split up the task of making fresh meals, each agreeing to a certain number a week or month. The key is that each must make enough for everyone in the group and freeze the portions for the other cooks. The portions are then distributed to the freezers around the group, and fresh meals are ready for the thawing and eating.

Gublers' group has six members. "About every 6 weeks, we decide on a selection of 12 meals, each taking 2 meals and making 6 servings of each," she writes. A couple of her offerings were Chicken Enchiladas Verde and Cuban Braised Beef and Peppers. Skeptical at first, she has found the group to be an excellent experience:

I love that I can walk to my freezer in the morning, take out a meal to defrost and know exactly what we're having that evening for dinner. The stress relief is unbelievable. Ironically, it is actually motivating me to want to cook again! I suggest you try it for yourself. You'll be happy you did.

Of course accommodating special diets and food allergies will take some doing, and you'll want to be sure you are confident of the cooking skills of all in your group. But all in all, it sounds like a great way to make home-made, healthy food a sustainable option.

Photo: Blonde Designs

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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