Once a month cooking anyone?

[LisaNJ25]

Does anyone do Once a month cooking? Or even once a week lol.

I just bought a food saver and would like to spend a day cooking meals I can freeze. I could never do a months worth but I would love to have maybe 7-10 meals in the freezer.

I am expecting baby #4 in a few weeks and things will be hectic.

Does anyone have any recipe sites or advice?

Thanks!

Lisa

[kittychatalot]

I actually cook once a month using the plan on this webpage! http://bulkcooking.com/


Good luck cooking an congrats on the Baby!!!!

[clh2]

There was a huge thread on this a while back, so - hopefully here is the link! Congrats on the impending arrival!

once a month cooking thread

[LisaNJ25]

Originally Posted by kittychatalot

I actually cook once a month using the plan on this webpage! http://bulkcooking.com/


Good luck cooking an congrats on the Baby!!!!

Thank you for the site.. I am reading it now.

Can you tell me what type of pans you use to freeze the meals in? Do you just do freeezer bags for some? Do you use a foodsaver?

[LisaNJ25]

Originally Posted by clh2

There was a huge thread on this a while back, so - hopefully here is the link! Congrats on the impending arrival!

once a month cooking thread

Thanks clh2!

[heathrow42]

I think there is a book called Frozen Assets? you might want to look for that on ebay.

You don't have to buy a book though. There are lots of sites out there with recipes and tips about organizing and prepping for this.. try google.com and searching for 'OAMC' or 'Once a month cooking' or 'frozen assets'

Here are a few links:
Recipes:
http://www.recipezaar.com/r/285
Tips:
http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/freeze.html

I had a bunch of the recipe sites bookmarked on another pc.. I will try to find those for you. I found it too time consuming to plan and spend the whole weekend cooking.. I did find it easy enough to double or triple recipes as we were making them during the week, with the intent to freeze the extra. It's not that much more work to double a recipe for casseroles, meatballs or breads.

One of the best tips I found was to 'flash freeze' things on a cookie sheet for a few hours and then put them into bags so they don't stick together. This works for meatballs, vegetables, chicken breasts.. spread them out on a cookie sheet (line with foil to cut down on the mess) and put in the freezer. Then move to ziploc after a while. They won't stick, so if you only need a handful of something, you don't have to thaw a brick of it

Good Luck,
Heather

[JenLynn]

I used to do "once a month cooking" religiously!! Am just getting back to it now. Keep in mind, that many of your favorite recipes are able to be frozen.

Meats in marinade are a wonderful thing to freeze. With all of the bottle marinades, packets to mix, and recipes available you can just plop some chicken breasts or pork chops or steaks into a freezer bag and dump in a bottle of marinade, then freeze!!!

When I was doing a lot of freezer cooking, I would re-use many of my pans by lining them with foil and freezing the meal in the container (an 8x8 baking dish for example). Once it was frozen, i would pull the foil out of the dish and pop it into a freezer bag. Then I could re-use the dish over and over again and not have it "taken up" with something in the freezer. When i was ready to use one of these meals out of the freezer, i would place the foil back into the pan and either let it thaw in the pan, or cook.

[Rafikifan]

Great tips! keep them coming!