Once A Month Cooking

Do you find yourself scrambling to figure out what you're having for dinner every day? Do you find yourself running to the pizza place when it's too hot out? Is the local burger joint getting too many of your hard earned dollars?

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, you should try Once a Month Cooking or OAMC for short! With this method, you can cook once and eat for a month! It is well worth your effort to try out this method! You will save wasted trips to the grocery store, money and time. As a bonus, you will find that OAMC can be much healthier than those fast food joints!

Now, I can hear some of you saying, "I don't have enough freezer space" or "I don't have enough time all at once to do this". Don't worry! Some people do this method with only the small freezer on top of the fridge! And there are alternative ways of doing this method that will help if you don't have a block of time to devote to cooking. Ok? Let's get started...

Step one: Creating your menu! The first step is deciding what meals to create. Let's start our OAMC with dinner menu's. I think dinners are the most beneficial to have done ahead of time. The first thing you will do is take the time to list all the meals you and your family normally eat for dinners. I group mine according to type. For example, all meals with chicken, or all meals with hamburger.

Meatloaf	Meatballs	Burritos
Chili	Hamburgers	Beefy Noodle Bake
Goulash	Lasagna	Ground Beef Casserole
Mexican Dish	Shepherds Pie	Hamburger and Onions

Keep in mind that many dishes have multiple uses! For example, chili can be used in burritos or other Mexican type dishes and meatballs can be used with spaghetti, in meatball subs or even BBQ style as a main dish. This makes your cooking much easier because you only have to make one recipe in multiple.

Step 2: Pick one menu You should pick one menu to begin with. This is called a mini session. We'll stick with my hamburger menu. It's much easier to deal with one thing at a time although as you get into it, you will be able to deal with multiple menu's at once.

Step 3: Ingredients Begin step 3 by listing all the ingredients for the whole menu. Obviously, the first ingredient for my menu is going to be hamburger! Once the list is complete we need to figure out how much we'll need. The biggest purchase for this menu is hamburger. I'll need quite a bit as you can guess. Most meals require a pound of hamburger but a couple are different. All we need to do is add up the pounds required and then we'll buy that much! I also find it helpful and timesaving to double some of the meals I'm making. Don't forget to figure in small stuff! Things such as spices can add up when done in OAMC. You don't want to run out and have to go to the store in the middle of your session! Write a final shopping list of ingredients you need to buy.

Step 4: Go shopping Some items may end up being cheaper at warehouse stores and some at the regular grocer. Shop wisely! It will take some time to do but remember, you're eliminating shopping for dinners for quite some time! It probably isn't wise to shop the very day you plan on cooking. Plan on shopping the day before. Cooking is a full day's job all by itself!

Step 5: When you get home Along with unloading the groceries, there are a couple things you can do to "start" the cooking process that will make things easier for you in the morning. First, you might want to separate any meats that can be pre-cooked. In my menu, I will take out the amount of hamburger that will need to be browned. Then, I will put one or two large fry pans on the stove and start browning! This is different from when you are only browning a pound or so of meat. It will take quite a long time to get it all browned. The other thing I recommend is starting your spaghetti sauce and putting it in the crock pot to cook overnight. (That is, if you're using homemade sauce.) This speeds up the process in the morning. Be sure to leave the kitchen all clean and get a good night's rest!

Step 6: In the morning First thing to do is get the breakfast dishes all taken care of. You want to start in a nice clean kitchen. I also recommend having a sinkful of hot, soapy water available for washing up as you go. Now we cook!

Begin by placing your casserole dishes on a table or long counter. Load casseroles as efficiently as possible. For example, I usually make 2 lasagna's so I load them together layer by layer. Also, there is some preparation needed for some of the dishes. For example, you want to get the chili going to use in the various casseroles. Meatballs and Meatloaf need to be shaped. These can usually begin together and then separated once the shared ingredients are in the mix. Both recipes usually call for bread crumbs, eggs, and onion or other spices. Then you can separate the two and add the necessary ingredients to each!

Step 7: Baking Some items are going to be pre-baked while others are going to be frozen unbaked. I always pre-bake meatballs but not meatloaf. How do you determine what is to be pre-baked? Usually the items that I want to keep a certain shape are best baked. Most dishes will have some ingredients already cooked to an extent such as dishes that call for browned hamburger. The idea is that you will take the dish out of the freezer, thaw, and bake. So think of TV dinners. You will prepare similar items. Some baked and some not!

Step 8: Freezing When freezing meals, they should be cooled down first. Once that is done, you should plan on packaging the meals with freezer bags or freezer paper. You can also use aluminum foil. Most casseroles will fit in freezer bags. The advantage to this is that you can freeze them flat and then stack them on end in the freezer. This is the most space saving way to freeze things. Some items will be frozen in shapes and others will not. This mainly depends on the amount of freezer space you have. For example, meatloaf can be frozen in the pan shape or can be frozen flat and shaped prior to cooking. Same goes for casseroles. they can be shaped in the dishes and frozen or just put in freezer bags and poured in the dishes before baking. Again this depends on the type of freezer space and also on the dish. Layered dishes must be either frozen in the dish or the ingredients frozen separately. If you freeze a dish in separate bags, you should not only label each bag but you can tape them or clip them together. The medium sized clips used in keeping potato chip bags closed work pretty good for this. Label everything! You will not be able to remember what's in those bags! I use a permanent marker to write on the bags or aluminum foil.

Step 9: Menu's Now that you have your meals all frozen, you need a master menu. This allows you to know what has been used and what is remaining. I put my master menu on the fridge and cross off meals as we use them. Be sure to note any special instructions such as cooking temps and times.

~ There's no reason to precook most noodles. In fact, if you freeze cooked noodles, they may become mushy. Just add uncooked noodles to the recipe and freeze, thaw, and cook as you normally would!

~ Plan on keeping out one meal to serve on cooking day or plan on eating out that day! You will be tired! If you plan on keeping a dish out to serve that night, consider making it a dish that you can cook in the crockpot.

~ Not enough casserole dishes? No problem! You can line the dishes with aluminum foil before putting the ingredients in and then freeze as usual. Pop out of the dish once frozen and place in a freezer bag. Now, the casserole is the perfect shape to fit in the dish when you want to cook it!

~ If you have small children, you might want to plan on having someone take them for the day or perhaps hiring a "mother's helper" for the day.

~ Remember you are cooking in big batches. Do as much together as possible. For example, chop all the onions for all the dishes at once!

~ Be aware that some foods don't freeze too well. Add any sour cream at cooking time and watch out for mayonnaise type products. Egg whites tend to get rubbery and cream products may separate. Some foods, such as cream cheese, change texture but taste the same. Most casserole dishes freeze just fine though.

~ You can freeze meats with a marinade for a nice grilling item. Just place the meat in a freezer bag, add the marinade and freeze. Pop it in the fridge in the morning and as it thaws, the marinade works on the meat!

~ After browning ground beef, I always rinse it in hot water. This cuts the fat down and allows you to buy the cheaper but fattier hamburger meat.

The freezer on top of the fridge can work just fine for freezing meals. The trick is to freeze things flat in freezer bags and then stack them as you would books in a bookcase. You'll be surprised how much you can fit in using this method. You also may want to do a shorter session such as for 2 weeks instead of a whole month. Just remember, the foods raw take up a lot of space too! Prepared foods can sometimes take up less especially since you're eliminating things like bones (from chickens for example!)

This is not a problem! There are many ways to get extra meals in the freezer. When you cook a regular meal plan on doubling or tripling the recipe. You can use the extras as the beginning of your freezer session! It really isn't too hard to double or triple a casserole and doesn't take much more time. You should also remember that you don't need to make the whole meal to save time in the kitchen. Fry up a bunch of hamburger with onions for example and you have the base of many meals such as "hamburger helper" or spaghetti and meat sauce. You'd be surprised how much time and effort is saved by having the burger already fried up! Also, you can freeze your meats with marinades on them for grilling. Pop them in the fridge in the morning and by dinner you have a great tasting meat for the grill!

Mega Kitchen	An Organized Home Freezer Cooking	Robbyn's Friendly Freezer
The Freezer Cooking Manual	OAMC from Real Food for Real People	Kris' Kitchen OAMC
Frozen Assets	Beth's OAMC Page	Growlies for Groups