It’s getting yourself into good habits, thinking about things you may use things for and also splitting the food you’ve made up accordingly. When I make a roast veg/tomato sauce I do a massive vat of it, whizz some up and leave some chunky. I use silicone ice cube trays and muffin trays to flash freeze it before putting into bags per portion. The ice cube ones I leave in a cup on the side to melt down and use for jazzing up grilled cheese sandwiches, or for smoothing onto a puff sheet or ciabatta topped with cheese and herbs. The muffin tin sized ones can be plonked (once defrosted)into individual pie tins with a chunk of frozen fish to bake in the oven and serving with rice, or as an even quicker pasta sauce. I make chilli and divide up too, add a defrosted portion of it to a bag of tortilla chips, coriander/lime(at the end), grated cheese and frozen corn, heat up and you’ve got a really yummy plate of nachos. I also find that by doing the small portions they defrost quicker and of course are handy if everyone isn’t eating at the same time as you don’t want to keep reheating stuff that’s already been cooked and frozen. Hunter’s chicken, chicken Kiev, packs of pancetta, bag of shredded mozzarella, ice cubes of wine, herbs in oil, lamb stock, beef stock, puff jus-roll pastry, tonnes of veg soup, tortilla wraps, red sauce, bechamel, frozen chunks of pollock, cream, milk, buttermilk, lemons, more herbs, meatballs (homemade), burgers (homemade) and a shit tonne of bread stuffs - bagels, ciabatta, focaccia, burger buns, brioche, bread crumbs. All this is in my freezer right now and all of it can go into different directions for a meal. I definitely try and present stuff differently too, so the same dish isn’t boring. The meat sauce I made for shepherds pie will become 1. Another shepherds pie, 2. Fillings for pasties (thanks to the puff pastry), and 3. I will defrost and add corn to it, too with thinly sliced potatoes and bake. Texture totally different and sweet thanks to the corn. I also make curries back into curry, another day samosas for a picnic. Once you start freezing everything, you’ll realise how much time you wasted previously. I pretty much chuck extra stuff in my oven any time it’s on. If I know I’ll be in the kitchen for a while then I’ll cook down some veg, garlic and onions to freeze so I’m not wasting time. If I make pancakes for the kids, I also make Yorkshire puddings as the mixture is the same, plus I’m standing there for ages doing the pancakes anyway. I also have stopped putting leftovers in the fridge unless I’m dead certain they’ll be eaten within 24hrs. It’s actially better to keep it for the week or so later and less boring. Get something you made last week out for tomorrow instead! If something fresh is highly unlikely to be eaten, chuck it in a bag into the freezer, experiment with whether or not it freezes well, you’d be very surprised. The dinners I’ve cobbled together with almost no fresh ingredients is unbelievable, no crap, just having a good variety there. I would say that a decent store cupboard and seasoning properly are very helpful when you’re in the batch-cooking/money saving zone. It’s nice to be able to jazz things up you don’t want the exact same dinners resurfacing every few days.