How an Aussie mum-of-two whips up healthy family meals for just $2.50 a serve.

You may think cooking enough dinner to include leftovers for lunch the next day is an impressively organised feat, but stand aside, because you have not seen a single well-planned thing until you’ve seen Kaitie Purssell in the kitchen.

Last week alone, the NSW mum-of-two and Healthy Mummy consultant cooked and prepared a cool 50 healthy and nourishing meals all for the grand sum of $125. That’s $2.50 a pop.

“After thinking about how I’m going to keep my belly warm this winter, I had a look through the the recipe hub [a service on the Healthy Mummy website] and I was overwhelmed by all the winter friendly food,” Purssell told fellow users.

A post shared by Kaitie Purssell (@lm_healthymummy) on Nov 7, 2016 at 7:21pm PST

“I wrote my shopping list and headed off to the shops, I was even more surprised when my shopping came to just under $125,” she said, adding, “I didn’t need some of the dried herbs and spices but I did buy a large majority of the ingredients for all the recipes.”

What followed was five servings of ragu, nine servings of ‘hidden veggie bolognese’, four servings of curry, six servings of chilli con carne, six servings of soup, five servings of enchiladas, five servings of Spanish rice, four servings of vegetarian pasta and six servings of pad thai.

Listen: Madeleine West talks about the preparation that goes into getting lunch ready for her six kids every day. Post continues… 

“After a couple of hours in the kitchen I ended up with 50 very decent sized meals,” Purssell said, explaining her love of batch cooking comes from not only the savings she makes but also the fact that it allows her to avoid unknown ingredients.

In a similar scale cook-up earlier this year, Purssell managed to make a whopping 90 meals and 148 servings of snacks – all for less than $500.

“I cleared my schedule, planned out what I was going to make, ordered my groceries online to be delivered early in the morning and got stuck into it,” Purssell said, claiming the whole endeavour only took her one day.

A post shared by Kaitie Purssell (@lm_healthymummy) on Jan 11, 2017 at 10:08pm PST

For those overwhelmed at the prospect of preparing that much food and wondering about their freezer’s capabilities (me, okay, it’s me feeling those things), Purssell says the trick is to start small.

“It doesn’t have to be this extravagant, start by making a few extra serves each night to pop in the freezer, perfect for those nights you don’t feel like cooking or you are thinking about takeaway.”

Please excuse me while I pull out a notepad and run to the grocery store.