what a brilliant idea..Im the one out my friends that could burn water :) even men can put me to shame of cooking and baking..Im not much help but I can cook an amazing stew I use up things so nothing gets wasted .I just finish off whats leftover so could you do this so nothing is wasted..I also do a theme night for example Ive done a mexican night/chinese/etc etc..LOL for the mexican we all wore hats picked them up cheap and made paper moustaches.. friends brought food each..we played games mexican theme.. had the best night ever ..

allrecipes.com has some great easy recipes - easy search too - by ingredient, by food name etc

also try pinterest :)

also try pinterest :)

also try pinterest :)

also try pinterest :)

also try pinterest :)

sorry ..ds and my laptop

Ive searched EVERYWHERE on the net lol, I'm hoping to get some recipes that you guys have used personally. I'm actually not a Pintrest fan....it's annoying and often things are in the wrong category. I've browsed my cook books, hit up every website google offers up :). I also find that most recipes are things that take six hours to make, and we need things that take two hours at tops. Since we want to do several dishes and while stove top and slow cooker (we will all bring ours) can do multiples anything in the oven is a one at a time thing.

I hope someone comes up with some for you..Ive not really had a chance to go in pintrest just some think its good so that was just a thought..Im uk here we have a supermarket that gives a free magazine of menus and its been good although I only ot it for a lady when I was doing community care..Anyway all the best and hopefully someone ..a brilliant money saving cook will appear

Jolene, a term you may want to search is OAMC or Once A Month Cooking. There are entire websites devoted to this and I've found a few good recipes that way.

Something to consider is that most of these recipes involve assembling the ingredients raw and freezing. You take the frozen dish out the nite before and throw in the oven (or otherwise finish the dish) as soon as you get home.

I haven't done this style of cooking in a while since our household schedule is different than it used to be. However, here are a few things I used to pre-prep:

Meatloaf (freeze raw, defrost night before and bake the nite you want to serve)

Cook a quantity of ground beef/chicken/turkey - drain and freeze. Use for tacos, sloppy joes, pasta sauce.

Pasta Sauce - cook a batch and freeze in muffin tins. Defrost however many 'sauce muffins' you need for a meal. Add in some precooked ground meat if you wish.

Precook and shred chicken - use for soup, enchiladas, sandwiches.

Precook and shred pork. Use for BBQ pork sandwiches.

Here's a site I found with some OAMC recipes:
http://www.food.com/recipes/oamc-freezer-make-ahead-main-dish/popular

And one of my favorite fast soup recipes (this can also be done with a shredded rotisserie chicken):
http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/southwestern-chicken-soup-10000000780308/index.html

Best of luck to your group! I know once you get rolling you're going to be a smashing success!

One more quick add - I NEVER use Pinterest but found a page with a bunch of OAMC links there that may be helpful.

http://pinterest.com/2stinkingcute/oamc-freezer-meals-once-a-month-cooking/