One of my New Year's resolutions for 2010 is to try "Once A Month" cooking, or "freezer" cooking. As I have never undertaken such a big project before, my January goal was to cook a few of the recipes from the "
Frugal Mom's Guide to Once A Month Cooking" -- an e-book that can be purchased online. Here are the 10 recipes that I made today:
- Chicken Au Gratin
- Baked Herb Chicken
- Hash Brown Casserole
- Thursday's Chicken
- Cactus Meatballs
- Chicken Nuggets
- Crock Pot Beef
- Chicken Quesadillas
- Chicken Tetrazinni
- Beef Manicotti
I started cooking right at noon and finished cooking at 5pm. 4 straight hours of cooking! It took me another 30 minutes to finish with clean-up and labeling all of the meals -- all-in-all... not bad. Sure, I made a few mistakes and next time I do this, it will be a little bit easier. A few little tips to keep in mind:
- Do everything that involves raw chicken FIRST and then wash my hands and all of the dishes that were in contact with the chicken.
- Since I don't have a cookbook holder, I used magnets to post the recipes on my oven hood. That worked great!
- Do a better job of noting the ingredients. For some reason, I seriously underestimated the amount of chicken I needed and so I had to scratch out two recipes because I hadn't thawed enough chicken. Oops.
- Do a better job of noting which ingredients I have plenty of on hand and which ingredients I will have to buy. I thought I had cream of mushroom soup and rotel on hand but didn't -- causing me to have to make on-the-fly substitutions. I have also ended up with doubles of ingredients that I wasn't sure I had on hand. Go figure.
- Wash dishes and clean up as I go -- that made a HUGE difference.
- Have someone else on "baby duty" so you can focus on cooking without distraction. Chris watched Ledger today and that made my afternoon of cooking so much easier.
Next month, I'm hoping to find a cooking buddy (my mom or sister) that will either split recipes with me, or at least be cooking along at the same time. :) I'm also going to add in some other freezer cooking recipes that I've picked up from some mom-bloggers. Here is a picture of me at about 3 hours into my cooking exploits. You can see that I'm looking a little haggard and my recipe sheets are posted on the oven hood.
I just wanted to say that my wife did an amazing job yesterday! She cooked all of those meals for our family in a matter of hours....way to go. We are attempting to eat better, and I know that this will be a great first step in that process!! Thank you so much wifi!
ReplyDeleteWay to go! I'm interested to see how this works for your family...good luck and good eats, it sounds yummy!
ReplyDeleteOkay...I LOVE THIS BLOG! First, I am sooo proud of you. I am jealous because I want to do this too! You are saving so much TIME and MONEY by doing this. Second, I love that their is a picture of you!!! A+, you look fabulous! Third, I know I live far away in another land, but if you ever want to swap mommy recipes.. I am in. I have great recipes, but they are the same old recipes all the time. I need to mix it up. Last, but not least.. I LOVE MY COOKBOOK STAND. Thank you. I have stainless steal appliances so magnets would not work :( Great Job!!!
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