Here's the "Scoop".  Once a month cooking saves time and money. The major shopping, preparation and cooking becomes a monthly chore instead of a "daily hassle"! This is much more cost effective than thinking about dinner as you leave work and stop at the supermarket and spend whatever is necessary to hurry and get food on the table that night. The "power cooking" eliminates all that stress and "crisis cooking", but you do need to spend a little time and effort in planning, shopping and then your day of cooking. I watch for sales of meats during the month - I can always get boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $1.89 lb, boneless pork loin for $1.99, pot roasts for $1.49 lb, whole chickens for $0.79 lb, ground chuck for $1.89 lb, etc.        To start, you may want to just do 2 weeks, but really, a month's supply isn't that hard. I try to limit it to about 10-15 main entree items and do a double or triple recipe of each - voila- 30 meals!  To avoid too much duplication (though we don't mind being in a rut, as long as the meals are good!!), I'll make 3 meals of meatballs, but do one in a brown gravy - toss in some mushrooms for poor-man's stroganoff and use pasta as the starch; do one in a cream gravy and put it over rice pilaf; and one in tomato sauce with spaghetti. The major time saver, I think, is in prepping all the onions, celery, garlic, green peppers, carrots, mushrooms, bacon, etc. at once.  I write out my list of entrees, starches and veggies. Mostly, these are plain and simple foods that I don't need a recipe for (although if I see a recipe that really sounds good, I'll toss it in even though I have to take the time to refer to it when prepping stuff). Then I'll count how many "meal items" need onions or celery or carrots, etc. I use "hash marks" and then just estimate how much to chop. Say for example, I'm doing 3 meals of meatloaf, 3 beef stroganoff, 3 chick pot pie, 3 scalloped potatoes and ham, 3 chicken marsala - - well, basically, I put onions in most everything, so I'd have 15 hash marks under onions for those 15 items. Since there are only 2 of us, I usually use 1 small onion or 1/2 large onion for 1 meal's meatloaf or whatever.  So, I'd chop 15 small onions or 7 or 8 large ones and it should be enough for all.        Hubby Bob is good in the kitchen and he's the official "veggie prepper". He gets all that stuff chopped and into bowls or containers in no time; then he cleans and cuts up the fresh broccoli, cauliflower, squashes, carrots, corn (corn, we just clean and freeze raw, it cooks so fast).  I do up the sauces and gravies - like making a big batch of white sauce and from that can make cheese sauces for the broccoli, cream sauce for scalloped potatoes and ham; water some down with Marsala wine for the chicken marsala, etc. - - are you getting the picture? - just sorta go with the flow. - but planning is of utmost importance.  I tape my menus and lists to the cabinet doors so it's easy to refer to and scratch off things as they are completed. I usually try to have the refrigerator pretty empty (aside from all the stuff to be cooked) and as we finish something, we toss it in the refrig to cool down a bit, then bag it (or put in plastic containers, but bags take a lot less room in the freezer). We have a small upright freezer (11.5 cu. ft) and I use the 1 shelf for entrees, 1 for starches and veggies and 1 for soups, breads & misc.. Use good quality zip lock bags and containers as it keeps the food better. I've read in several articles that potatoes don't freeze well, but I always do a big batch of garlic mashed 'cuz we love them and also other potato dishes. On the mashed, you just have to stir them around a bit when heating them up; actually  I like mine cooked in a fry pan on a little butter - yum!   We're on our 4th batch of "power cooking" and we love it! In the morning, we'll usually look at the inventory and pick out what looks good, take it out of the freezer and toss it in the frig. Then when we get home from work, it's either a "nuke" in the microwave, heat it up on top of the stove or pop in the oven for awhile, while we sit and have coke or wine and commiserate with each other over how hard a day we had at work!