The key to Cooking Ahead is to start with a roast or another dish, such as rice or beans, that can be easily incorporated into other meals to save time cooking. When you cook a meal, you often have leftovers that can be used as ingredients in other meals that you may not otherwise have, such as Corned Beef for Hash & Eggs or Reuben Sandwiches, or Red Cooked Pork for Won Ton Soup or Pork Fried Rice.

I never have enough ham left over from a roast - it can be used in so many ways. With breakfast foods, in Brian's Chicken Roll, Ham salad for sandwiches, Scalloped Potatoes and Ham . . . and that bone makes wonderful soup.

Leftovers also often provide wonderful sandwich fixings for packed lunches. Why pay high deli prices for sliced meats when you can simply use "leftovers" from a meal? Deli meats are simply roasts that have been cooked and sliced.

For a nice article on cooking ahead, see Doubling Down on Leftovers by Bridget Lancaster of America's Test Kitchen. She gives great tips for intentionally cooking extra (doubling a recipe) so that she has these ingredients ready for other meals.