I've talked here in the past about stocking the freezer with premade meals. The school year is approaching, and even though I don't teach this semester, I know that there will be much less time for cooking. Why? Because dance and choir start up again; a person has to make time for hobbies, you know.
The website that got me started on this project is
Once a Month Moms. I use recipes from the vegetarian menu, but not all of them - grilled cheese rolls with American cheese are not exactly my thing. So I make a mix of recipes I find there, and my own, adapted for freezing. The great thing about the website recipes is that they come on a spreadsheet for easy scaling, so I have to do more math for my own recipes.
Once a Month Mom suggests that you can make your month of meals in one long cooking day. This presumes that you shop the day before (which I did). Below, the results.
The proteins: "bacon", "meatballs", and paneer.
My old standbys: roasted vegetable tomato sauce, pumpkin bread, black pepper- cheddar biscuits.
The Indian meal: naan, mango chutney, and butter chickpeas.
Everything else: stir-fried rice packets, spinach-mushroom empanadas, and a dog who was as tired as I was.
The verdict: it took me just a bit longer than one 12-hour day, and it was exhausting. I was on my feet all day long, and collapsed at the end of it. I certainly won't try a whole month's cooking in one day again, and I don't know how these Once-a-Month moms do it. Maybe moms are tougher than me?
5 comments:
This is actually how I cook for myself. However, I'm only cooking dinner for 1 person, so I probably get 2 to 3 months out of the effort. I think it is a great way to eat homemade food without having to come home and cook every night.
I will also be interested in how well everything holds up in the freezer.
Your niece and I just spent 20 minutes looking at past blog posts. She enjoyed seeing your animals and your clothing and scarves.
de-I, it's a good question. So far we've eaten marinara and meatballs (held up well) and curry (held up great; might have been better than fresh). With the curry, I think it mattered a great deal that it was sauce plus legumes (because many vegetables, and potatoes, freeze terribly) and because the cream was frozen separately and added at the end.
I'm curious about the stir-fry, though, because I've never tried that before. (Although I've frozen rice successfully.) I will report back.
My friend has started doing this, and she is a mom of three. She loves it. I don't know that I could cook all day but I am constantly trying to stock away bits of extras to make the evening meal rush work.
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