What to do with 20 pounds of ground beef

It's that time of year, again. When it seems like time speeds up. Between now and New Years, the calendar may say there are about 44 days, but it will feel like a week and a half to me. With family birthdays, baking cakes, wrapping presents, baking pies, decking the halls at church, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, decking the halls at home, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents again, baking cookies, open houses, a musical performance or two, (and all of the rehearsals that go with those), Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day dinner, unwrapping of presents and New Year's Eve dinner and festivities -- there will be less time, before there is more, when it comes to making weekday dinners.

Coincidentally, ground beef was on sale at Cash & Carry, last week, in 10-lb chubs, for $1.99 per pound. I bought 2 chubs (20-lbs). Ground beef is great for make-ahead meal items. I can make so many of our family favorites with it, such as meatballs, taco/burrito filling, Salisbury steak, and of course, hamburger patties. And, with a little up-front work, I can have these all in the freezer and ready to go, for an easy dinner.


Last Friday afternoon, I took a couple of hours to divide up these large chunks of ground beef, precooking/seasoning some of it, and pre-portioning other amounts.

I made a 48-ct batch of 1-oz Italian meatballs,

3 pounds of cooked and Mexican-seasoned beef for filling tacos and burritos, making skillet dinners, quick chili con carne, and bun tacos,

flattened 3 pounds into hamburger patties for 15 burgers,

and portioned the rest into 1-lb packages.

The pre-cooking and pre-patting saves money over similar offerings in convenience frozen foods. Cash & Carry sells 1-oz Italian meatballs, in a 5-lb bag, for a little over $3 per pound. My meatballs, in a 3-lb batch (and also now conveniently in a zip bag for easy access), cost about $2 per pound. Cash & Carry has pre-formed beef patties (same 80% lean/20% fat as the ground beef I bought), on sale this week for $2.49 per pound. My hand-patted patties cost $1.99 per pound.

I saved both time and money, by cooking and/or forming the beef, in one large batch.

Meatballs are a favorite for our family. I would be making them anyways, with ground beef on hand. So making a large batch will save me time for future meals. Once upon a time, I actually did buy them, pre-made at Cash & Carry. So, this is a "real" savings for us, not just hypothetical. And those hamburger patties that I formed? When I gave my son some choices for his birthday dinner, this week, he chose hamburgers. Our home-cooked burgers will cost about $2.50 for meat and homemade buns, or 50 cents per burger -- far less-expensive than anything I could get carry-out.

One more perk to doing a little extra prep work this last week --

in addition to there being less time for cooking, before there is more, last week reminded me that there will be more colds/viruses, before there are less. So having some easy to fix, meals-at-the-ready may be very useful in coming weeks.

This doesn't just happen . . .

it all takes planning.

I was trying to explain this to an acquaintance the other day. You all know that I run our household like I'd run a business. Because it is a business!

Merriam-Webster defines business as "dealings or transactions of an economic nature". Aren't we carrying out dealings of an economic nature? We have an income that comes in and expenditures which go out. And somewhere in between, we have all of the activity which has the ability to grow, preserve or deplete our finances. I am CEO, manager, labor force, and accountant for this enterprise.

As the CEO, I set the direction for the activities which will bring us the greatest financial rewards. As manager, I make the detailed plans for how to activate this direction. As the labor force, I do the grunt work of carrying out these plans. And as the accountant, I look at the numbers to ensure we are, in fact, making financial gains with our activities.

That's the big picture.

On a smaller scale, yesterday afternoon, I finally made the year's supply of salsa. I didn't just head into the kitchen and say to myself, "gee, I'd like to make some salsa. I think I'll run to the store and buy everything in my recipe". I could make our salsa in that spur-of-the-moment fashion. But my accountant tells me that the figures don't add up. I would be spending more in ingredients for the homemade version than I would spend on commercially-made salsa.

Making my own salsa is a valuable use of my time, if I obtain each ingredient or supply at our area's lowest or close to lowest price. But doing this takes planning. I need jars, right? Fortunately, I have a large supply of jars that have been given to us, or that I've purchased at second-hand stores in the off-season, or that I've scrounged from free bins at garage sales, and some jars that I bought on sale at the local discount store. At the end of the canning season, I check the discount stores for marked down lids and rings. I watch for ingredients to be at their lowest prices of the season at the wholesaler near us (Cash & Carry), for items such as canned tomatoes, garlic powder, vinegar and onions. I grow, harvest and dry or freeze my oregano and cilantro. I collect and save little packets of red pepper flakes from my kids' pizza outings. And when I have everything else I need, I buy my jalapenos at either the local produce stand or at my favorite year round ethnic market.

Once I have all of my supplies, then I schedule an afternoon to make a 12-pint batch. I spend about 3 hours, start to finish, to make 12 pints. If I just shopped dollar sales at the supermarket, I would spend as much as $24 on this amount of salsa, when the 8-oz jars are on sale for $1 each. If I shopped at Dollar Tree, I would see about the same cost for this much salsa. Buying salsa in a 64-oz jug would cost about $1.48 per pint, at a store like Wal-Mart, which is an improvement over buying salsa in the half-pint jars. But, by making salsa at home, using my best buying/acquiring strategies, I spend under $5.50 for the 12 pints, or under 45 cents per pint. That's a savings of about $12 for our supply of salsa.

My accountant says that saving $12, doing an activity that is one of the more "fun" homemaker activities, and not displacing any other work which could bring in income, is a good use of my 3 hours, on a Sunday afternoon.

My labor force is looking at the jars, all neat and in rows, and feeling satisfaction on a job well-done.

My manager is pleased that the salsa could be made affordably and under budget, with some planning.

And my CEO is thrilled that the bottom line is more money in our pockets, and less going out the door.


Who else, here, thinks of their household as if it were a business? Judging from many of the past comments, I believe I'm in the company of quite a few other CEOs!