Cooking challenged

I never cooked. even when I had 3 kids and even 4, I'd have much rather spent $20 on pizza or mcdonalds rather than buying $20 worth of ingredients to cook something for supper. I hated the cooking, and i REALLY detested the clean up. Lately though I seem to be coming into my own as far as the kitchen is concerned.
It all started with an agreement with hubby that i would cook ONLY if he cleaned up. I never thought he'd keep up on the kitchen... i was WRONG. So i slowly started to look at cook.com recipes and all recipes.com and started making some things.. EASY things... i also went for a LOT of boxed mixes. Slowly the boys stopped making fugly faces at my food and started to say yum.
Then I started thinking about Once a month cooking some friends on a message board talk about it on and off... and while i have the best of intentions i just don't have that kind of organization to do it.. (yet). I also like to bargain shop and a message board friend posted about buying a whole pork loin and dviding it up and freezing it into chops, roasts etc... i thought it sounded great plus it saves us money (we are feeding 5 very healthy apetited kids) LOL.

SO the first month i bought one..... AND it went bad in the bottom of my fridge (have i mentioned i can be lazy). So i gave up, then after a couple months I tried it again. and this time.... i cut it up right away and threw it in the freezer, but i kept forgetting to thaw it so i never had it on hand for dinner... so it got freezer burnt and went in the trash... LOL (Domestically challenged doesnt' even begin to cover where i was at in my starting point). SO i resolved to use the damn thing next time. So i did.. i finally got into a routine of remembering to thaw meat and therefore started looking ahead at dinners at least by a couple days. Thawing the meat ahead of time changed my cooking thinking by a little.

Then there was the leftovers.... I HATE leftovers i never ate them... they just sat in the fridge and went bad. My grandmother watching from above though kept me from throwing them right away LOL. My next challenge was to learn to utilize my leftovers. Hubby started taking them to work insteasd of eating in the work cafeteria (which saves us $6/day). Then i started feeding them to the kids and they actually ate them and didn't mind. Then my horizons got bigger..... I could use the left overs to make other actual meals! (some of this might seem kinda DUH to you, but to me, it was all new territory).

I already started buying a lot of fresh ingredients peppers, onions etc.. and using them since i didn't have to worry about the clean up anymore LOL. So anytime i had leftover sitting in the fridge for more than a couple days i'd just throw the baggie or container in the freezer to keep it from going bad. I also buy the 3 lb pkgs of ground beef and usually only use 2 lbs at a time so i'd brown all 3 and throw the extra lb in the freezer So that brings me to todays feat! I made a roast last 3 days!
First night we had a beef roast with potatoes and carrots.
Second night we had shredded beef and BBQ sandwhiches
TONIGHT.. we will have veggie/beef/pasta soup!
I used the roast we had left after i shredded some for last nights dinner, i used the left over potatoes and carrots, i had 1 lb of frozen ground beef in the freezer, i also had a zip lock of frozen onions, mixed green and yellow peppers, and some frozen corn. Add some garlic, salt, pepper, beef base, and some uncooked egg noodles! VOILA!
I'm sooo proud of myself.