Once a Month Cooking (OAMC)

Why would anyone want to do this, to ruin a perfectly good day by spending the entirety in the kitchen? Well, because that’s the end of slaving in the kitchen for the whole month! Imagine coming home and having a great dinner either waiting for you or ready to pop in the oven for a few minutes while you have a glass of wine with the one you love…every day for a month!

Sound like a fairy tale or like something only Martha could pull off? Not at all. Think you’d have to buy tv dinners to have this sort of convenience? Definitely not at all. Once a month cooking (OAMC) allows you to put wonderful, tasty, nutritious meals on the table, even taking into account your family preferences and needs like organic, whole food, gluten-free, etc.

The biggest secret to doing OAMC successfully is to plan plan plan. The better organized you are, the more likely you’ll end up liking it. Don’t give up on the idea, though, if you don’t happen to be a really organized type. You can start smaller, with Once a Week Cooking (OAWC). It’s done the same way, but may be less daunting for you to start out with. For all intents and purposes, OAMC and OAWC are so similar, that from now on when I refer to OAMC, you can just assume that I mean OAWC as well :-)

Here are the basic steps:
1 Choosing the time
2 Planning and shopping
3 Cooking
4 Labeling and freezing
5 Adapting recipes

1 CHOOSING THE TIME
Chose two days and mark them on the calendar. Two days for OAMC…do NOT try to do your planning, shopping, and your cooking all on the same day. You will end up exhasted, frustrated, and hating the whole process.

2 PLANNING & SHOPPING
If you can just get past the planning part, the rest of it becomes much easier. Everyone ends up developing the system that works best for them. Some folks make up a monthly calendar with the exact meal written on it for each day. Some just know that there will be a chicken meal on Thursdays and pull an appropriate package out of the freezer the night before. Whatever works for you: that’s why I suggest starting small and working up to the full month plan.

For planning day, you mostly want to pull out the recipes that you’re going to use, decide how many times you’ll repeat each, and create a shopping list from them. Remember that there will probably be left-overs, times that you’ll eat out, special occasions, etc, so you won’t need a full meal for every single day. Also on your shopping list, you need to add basic pantry items that you might be low on, and freezing supplies which we’ll discuss later. Not all recipes are equal in terms of freezability! We’ll discuss this later too.

Think about how you want to organize your recipes for future use too. I like having mine in plastic protector sheets since I’m kind of a slob. You can also use colored dots or some other system to keep track of when you’ll use them.

When you go to do your actual shopping for the whole month, your list is going to be huge! Don’t let that throw you: you’ll often be able to get much better deals shopping in bulk. And since you’re not going to shop and cook on the same day, you’ll have time to visit more than one store if you need to for the best prices. Maybe some of the things you need would be best found at a BJ’s, Sam’s Club, or other discount shopper. Even if you’re just hitting your local grocery store, larger-sized containers tend to be better bargains. And don’t forget about local farmer’s markets and farm stands when the season permits. Also, don’t forget to buy(or rent) those bribes that you’re going to need later!

3 COOKING
Good shoes, good tunes, and comfy clothes will help a lot. Remember how “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”? Well, bribes work well for this task too. Planned breaks, chocolate, a great movie, whatever gets you through it!

Group your tasks so that the flow goes well. If this isn’t the smoothest, most natural thing for you, rest assured that it will get much better as you get experience with this method of cooking. Mostly, you really need to make sure that you know how each of your recipes work and how many of each you’re going to make. Get the meats cooking early, and get your chopping done all at once. Don’t chop upan onion for a recipe: chop all 10 onions for all the recipes.

As you work your way through the different dishes, don’t worry about making each one start to finish. At some points you may have 10 or 12 recipes each half-way finished. That’s fine! It’s more efficient in the long run to group your tasks and combine any steps possible. As each meal is finished, set it aside to cool before packaging it up!

4 LABELING AND FREEZING
There are several methods to choose from, so once you pick your favorite, make sure you add the supplies you’re going to need to your shopping list to pick up on shopping day.

Whatever method you choose, you’re going to need to do some labeling. Masking tape or Avery-style stick on labels both work great. Whatever type you use, even if it’s just writing directly on the foil with a Sharpie marker, you’ll need to include at least this info: Name of meal, cooking directions, date it was frozen. You might want to add the date that you plan to use it if this is applicable to your organization method.

Freezer bags or aluminum foil
This is my favorite method. You can easily stack the packages that you wrap up, labeling them before tossing them in the freezer. When they are transfered to your fridge to thaw, they don’t take that long since they’re spread out. Freezer bags are particularly good for meals that have a lot of liquid in them, and it’s easy to remove extra air as well. A higher-tech version of this is to use a vacuum sealer, which you may want to indulge in if you really get into OAMC.

Inexpensive reusable containers
Glad makes Tupperware-type containers now that are quite inexpensive. You can also save containers that would be good sizes for various meals and use those.

In-the-pan method
Line your baking dish with foil and fill it with the meal. Allow the meal to begin to freeze, and as soon as it holds its shape, remove it from the baking dish and label it for the freezer. When you’re ready to have that meal, you can pop it into the baking dish to thaw and cook (with or without the foil still on it!). This method is great because it doesn’t tie up your dishes for the month, but allows you to get the meal ready to go very quickly.

5 ADAPTING RECIPES
Not all recipes are equal when it comes to cooking either large quantities, or freezing for future use. There are a number of ingrdients that can separate, become watery, or thin when frozen. Most are ok if included in a recipe that can be remixed before serving, but watch out for recipes that contain a lot of sour cream, mayonnaise, cream cheese, yogurt, frosting, cream fillings, or gravies. Again, you’ll probably be alright as long as you can stir them up before heating andserving.

Some foods become just plain nasty when frozen, like cooked eggs and fried foods. Yuck! Your fries will be limp and your hard boiled eggs will feel like rubber. Some sauces and stews will thicken rather than thin. It’s easy enough to fix with the addition of some extra water or other liquid. Sometimes it’s difficult to predict just what will happen when a recipe is frozen. Pastas, rice, and beans will turn to mush if fully cooked before freezing. You can fix this by slightly undercooking when making the original recipe. Seasonings can be completely unpredictable: some will strengthen and some will weaken. Add herbs, spices, andseasonings during the final reheat if at all possible.

As you probably already know from buying frozen vegetable, even raw vegetables and fruit will lose their crispness, but they are perfectly fine for cooking afterwards.

I just learned recently that if you freeze heavy cream, it will never whip up afterwards! You can still use it for cooking, but just be warned about that little quirk. In fact, most things that “don’t freeze well” can be frozen, you’ll just have to figure out if you can live with the consequences. Baked potatoes don’t keeptheir texture, but they can still become mashed potatoes :-)

One thing you might want to do is to start with some of the recipes in the links below which are already kitchen-tested for OAMC. That will give you a good feel for how to adapt your own favorite family recipes to this form of cooking.

Recipes:
Ellen’s Kitchen
Once a Month Cookingworld
Real Food 4 Real People
Recipezaar
Busy Family Meals

Great links to more tips and other people’s methods:
Baking Delights
Real Food 4 Real People
Once a Month Cookingworld
Menues 4 Moms
Busy Cooks

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