Recipe: a ton of meals at once

I'm 9 months pregnant and don't have the energy to cook as much as I did, so what I did yesterday was to buy a bunch of basic ingredients in bulk and am just doing the cooking once for the next 2-3 weeks worth of meals. I bought 10 pounds of ground beef and some bulk cheese & frozen veggies and prepared meals to freeze. I love italian food (and it's healthy for the baby!), so I made a lot of that.
What I did...
1. crumbled and fried about 7 pounds of the hamburger with one large onion until brown, then drained. added spaghetti sauce to some of it and put it aside for lasagnas. added seasonings & a couple tablespoons of flour to some more (use beef bullion, seasoned pepper, etc., then just heat in frying pan later & when hot add a couple cups of water to make hamburger and gravy to serve over mashed potatoes or noodles). With the rest, I added taco seasonings (chili powder, garlic, beef bullion, touch of sugar, cayenne pepper, seasoned pepper) for use in mexican dishes.
With the uncooked hamburger i added a bunch of bread crumbs, a couple of eggs, garlic salt, seasoned pepper, a sprinkle of bullion and chopped onion and made up a bunch of meatballs (350 for about 15 minutes, then freeze) & salisbury steaks (roll out fairly thin, fry, freeze and serve with beef gravy).
2. beat 2 eggs with a softened brick of cream cheese (secret ingredient for excellent lasagnas!), mixed in 32 oz ricotta, 32 oz cottage cheese (cheaper & mixed in the stuff will still taste like the "authentic" ricotta"), about a cup of parmesan & a couple pounds of grated mozarella.
3. in a large pot, boiled up 3 packages of lasagna noodles & a package of manicotti noodles.
4. made up a large batch of alfredo sauce (cheap--white sauce with parmesan & mozarella melted in, extra good--whipping cream, butter/margarine, parmesan & a bit of swiss or blue cheese all melted together --parmesan thickens like flour, do not boil!)

From these ingredients & a few extras to specialize, I made:
--2 batches of lasagna (cheese mixture, beef with spaghetti sauce, pasta, topped with mozzarella)
--2 half batches (9 inch pans) of vegetable lasagna (cheese mixture, frozen italian veggies, alfredo sauce, pasta & mozarella)
--2 half batches of seafood lasagna (same as above with fake crab & cheap tiny shrimp instead of veggies, monterey jack on top)
--2 small batches of manicotti (one veggie, one regular, same ingredients as above)
--2 batches of mexican casserole (in pie pans layer tortillas, refried beans, mexican beef mixture and a little salsa, top with cheddar when reheating near the end of the time & add sour cream & some lettuce & tomato to top when cooked).
--2 servings of salibury steaks (3 steaks per serving-- one for me, two for hubby)
--6 small bags of meatballs (to add to canned spaghetti sauce & pasta or cream of mushroom soup, sour cream and noodles for fake swedish meatballs)
--3 servings of beef & gravy for over instant mashed potatoes, noodles or rice
--mexican meat mixture for 2 servings of tacos (tacos don't need much)

so... 23 meals all pretty much ready to go, and the lasagnas are big enough for company or lots of leftovers. It took barely more time than it would have to cook one meal (albeit a big meal!) & now I can make my husband "cook" while I do the million *other* things that need to be done before this baby comes. :)

Sorry this got so long! Maybe it's one of those "duh" kinda things, but it really helped me. Oh, and this is also pretty cheap and makes food that is usually pretty pricey and very time consuming!). Happy spring!

--Alicia