Once-A-Month Cooking Update
Whew! That was a lot of work this past weekend but I am happy to report that my friend Vivi and I now both have a freezer full of dinners for the next month! We tackled a total of 27 individual recipes. Like last time we used the Once-A-Month Cooking Family Favorites cookbook. We took out 3 of the recipes because we weren’t interested in them (2 fish and one hamburger) and we each have 23 dinners in our freezer (some of the meals we split in half and others we didn’t and just divided who got what). Since she is only feeding herself and her husband and I am only feed me and my 2 little ones the meals we didn’t split up should last us for 2 dinners – thus giving us a full month of dinners!
So how long does it take to cook that many meals? About 8 hours. She and I both split the food that needed to be prepped (the cutting up of veggies and meat) and did that work on Friday night so that we would only have to actually put the meals together on Saturday (took us both maybe an hour or so). Then we started around 10am on Saturday and finished around 6pm (with a quick trip to the grocery store and lunch in the middle). Unfortunately we didn’t have a couple of the ingredients needed for the last 3 meals so we split those up and did them on Sunday afternoon at our own homes. It was a long but VERY rewarding day. She and I are both looking forward to spending a lot less time in the kitchen this month.
Doing this for the second time we both walked a way with some more things that we’ll do different next time (yes we plan to have a next time!) One we are planning to only make a 2 week menu next time. We both have a good number of “quick” dinners that our family loves and we’d like to continue to incorporate into our weekly meals so by doing a 2 week menu we can do that easily. The other advantage of doing so is that we’ll only have to spend half the time on our cooking day.
Another thing I’d like to do differently is prepare all the red meats first. The book we uses breaks everything down for you (from giving you a complete shopping list to listing what order to prep your foods in). I’d like to do the red meat meals first because they tend to be more involved recipes. And the chicken dishes tend to be a bit quicker (especially since you cook some of the chicken ahead of time). By time we got to some of the last meals we were getting burnt out and it was hard to focus on all the details of the more in depth red meat recipes.
Lastly, Vivi and I will be buying all of our food throughout the next month instead of just the week before. It was a lot of shopping to do all at once and I have to confess – I have a BAD coupon lady! Since most of what I needed WASN’T on sale I had to pay more then I’d like to have. But don’t get me wrong – we still saved money by doing this once a month cooking since we split it, I just know it could have been a lower amount had we been buying the items when they went on sale through out the month.
Our grand total spent on food (minus what was in our cupboards) was $339.82. That divided between Vivi and I was only $158 for a month’s worth of dinners! (This cost isn’t all I spend on groceries since it didn’t include sides and the rest of our meals but I keep those expenses to a very minimum using coupons and sales)
All in all we both really enjoyed the day and can’t wait to eat our dinner every night now!
(I got a comment from Beth asking about the space it takes to do freezer cooking. If you go through and “clean up” your freezer -probably using up what you can the month before and getting rid of the old stuff- you would have enough room for the food. The picture above shows ALL of the food I made – and nothing else. I just got this fridge so the freezer was empty and I moved our old one in the garage so it was empty to start with. But if I had to I could fit everything into this freezer. Most of the meals are frozen flat in zip lock bags and are in the bottom drawer there. Only the casseroles are in the foil baking dishes and the soups in plastic containers. I plan to eat those first so that I quickly gain more space. Vivi said her freezer is stuffed but it all fit in hers as well.)
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Wow! You go girl! I spend more like $200 per week on groceries so that is just amazing that you spent so little for a whole month. I may have to get motivated to try this once a month cooking some time. The only question I have is how were you able to fit a month’s worth of food in your freezer? Do you have an extra freezer or something? My only concern is that I am not sure if a month of food would fit in my freezer.