Preparing Food for While I'm Away

Tomorrow morning, our whole family leaves for the beach for a week with my parents and siblings. Then for the two weeks afterward, my girls and I will be staying with my parents down in North Carolina, while my husband comes back here to work.

My husband is not a cook, but he does appreciate homemade food and is just about as much into saving money as I am! Both of us were committed to having him not eat an expensive and unhealthy diet of takeout while I'm gone, but at the same time I I knew that he would not prepare anything complicated for himself.

My solution: preparing simple food in advance. I've tried to get everything that he needs prepared so that all he has to do is grab it and put it in his lunch bag for work or heat it up for dinner. Here's what I've purchased and/or cooked:

Breakfasts and lunches (for work)

- individual cups of yogurt

- frozen sliced homemade bread with cold cuts to quickly put together a sandwich

- individually wrapped frozen quarters of homemade pizza - just grab and go

- individual baggies of snacks: trail mix, chips, homemade snack bars, regular granola bars

- a bag of apples (will keep a long time in the fridge and are easy to grab)

Dinners

- frozen lasagnas (I froze them in disposable 9-inch square pans, so they wouldn't be too huge for one person)

- frozen chili

- pre-formed hamburger patties & hot dogs to grill

(What can I say - he wanted "man food.")

Overall, this is pretty simple stuff, much of which I make anyway, and it didn't take too long to prepare. Probably the most time-consuming item was the lasagna. Hopefully it will make it easy for Michael to get what he needs to eat, so that he can concentrate on the projects on which he'll be working and be able to relax too.

Check out Frugal Fridays for more frugal living tips.