About 10 years ago, a friend of mine and her husband used to do once a month cooking one Saturday a month and fill their freezer with food so that they didn’t have to worry about dinners for the month. I thought it was an interesting idea, but I’m rather picky and didn’t like about half of the stuff in the cookbook that she was using. Recently, though, I decided I wanted to try weekly cooking so that I could have food in the fridge even when I have migraines so we’ll eat less frozen pizza!
Here’s how I do it:
1. Grocery shop on Monday or Tuesday
2. Cook on Tuesday or Wednesday
3. Make all menus before shopping (although I do adjust if I find a great deal at the grocery store that wasn’t in the newspaper).
4. Break down menus into cooking steps then order it based on use of kitchen resources.
5. Prepare entrees and put in fridge ready to be heated.
6. Some entrees I just prep and get ready to cook – for example, I cut up all the meats and veggies for stir-fry and cook the rice, but do the stir-fry on the day we eat it.
7. Prep all the veggies and put in Zip-Loc bags for the day when I’ll cook them.
Why I like it:
1. I only get the kitchen really messy one day of the week!
2. We are tempted to eat frozen pizza and other convenience foods less often.
3. Even when I have a migraine, the rest of the family can heat up the entree and cook up the veggies without too much trouble.
4. We’re eating more veggies this way.
5. Saves money because I don’t get to the beginning of the next week and realize that we never ate something because I forgot about it and now it’s gone bad and has to be thrown out.
I know that I won’t be able to keep up with this every week because of the migraines, so I am trying to make one extra entree every week to put in the freezer for the “bad” weeks. This week, it was some beef and rice cooked in the pressure cooker. Other times, it might be an extra pan of lasagna or chicken divan.
So far, this weekly cooking has been working our really well for our family! Check out We Are That Family for more Works For Me Wednesday posts!
3 comments:
What a neat idea! Cooking for a whole month is a little overwhelming. I like breaking it down into smaller chunks. :-)
I have the Once a Month Cookbook and I agree that it's definitely too much work for me to do. The cookbook is upfront and says that you must list and buy your food one day and then spend another entire day cooking.
I got another cookbook, Don't Panic Dinner's in the Freezer and I really like that one better. The idea behind this cookbook is that when you make a dish, make 3, 4, 5, or 6 recipes (however many you want)and freeze them. This way, you're already cooking the dish for dinner so you're just cooking more of it. If you start doing this once a week, within several weeks, you'll have lots of extra meals in the freezer. There are recipes in there of course, but you can use this idea with anything you make (just like you do with your extra batches of lasagna--but I would think it would be harder to make 3 or more batches of lasagna). I typically cook several batches of taco meat and freeze it in quart freezer bags. I always have tortillas, cheese, salsa, and lettuce in the fridge. Also, I have made spaghetti sauce with the meat; I normally make 4 batches at 1 time and then freeze them in quart freezer bags. All I have to do is cook the pasta! I've also done this with meatloaf, chili, soups, etc. I haven't been religious about it but it does work! There was a time I had enough prepped food in the freezer that I didn't have to cook for almost 2 weeks! If you do keep it up though (freezing several batches of a recipe per week), it would definitely make a difference. I have a friend who told me about this and she cooks this way on a regular basis.
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