I have a new cooking approach that saves energy. My energy. When I bring home a package of meat, I cook it all, freeze it in portions, and finish prep on the day we eat.

Recntly I bought a package of pork steak. The DH grilled it all over a wood fire. That night, we had the pork steak, corn on the cob and cole slow. (There's a hot-weather menu for you.)

Two weeks later, we used some for Grampa's Pork and Beans. Cut the pork steak into strips. (Kitchen shears work well for this.) Flavor a jar of B&M beans with onions, ketchup and maybe brown sugar. Add the pork and heat gently.

One day I thought, why not be more natural and add real tomatoes instead of ketchup? The DH was so upset, you would have thought I had given his puppy away. Now I let him flavor the pork and beans himself.

A couple more weeks passed. We had the pork with an Indonesian flavor. Sizzled the strips with onion, made a sauce with peanut butter, lime juice, soy sauce, garlic, ginger root, black pepper. Served with fried sweet potato, avocado, salad.

I get tried a lot. I find that cooking meals in steps this way makes mealtime more fun.

When I cook pasta, I cook the whole package, eat some and freeze some in plastic bags. It is so much easier to pull out the package and heat it with the sauce than to cook up a small batch from scratch.