Adventures in Once A Month Cookery

While looking into easy make-ahead meals for my grandpa, the concept of "Once A Month Cooking" was suggested to me. Anyone who's ever had to cook for just one on a regular basis knows what a pain it is - produce goes bad before you can get to it, you get tired of something you mass produced, and it becomes a chore to always be running to the grocery store. I hear Europe calling me a sissy for that last comment, but you guys get mandated naptime, so it's clear that you have the energy to cook every day. Anyway, this Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) thing seemed worthy of further investigation for my use.

In my research, I found that the concept was simple. Prepare a month's worth of meals in one day and freeze. What this boils down to is one major shopping trip a month, a few hours of cooking, and only one round of destroying the kitchen (key for messy cooks like me). This appealed to me particularly because I love to cook, but I just have no time to do anything beyond making a bowl of pasta between Taekwondo, school, working at the Temple, softball, and all the other nonsense I regularly participate in. Before I jumped on this bandwagon, I would be so exhausted from my daily tasks that I would come home and cook what was easy. And, easy isn't always healthy, though it's not like I was eating microwave dinners (for the record, I NEVER buy processed/prepared foods). However, I could probably eat a bowl of Cheerios with bananas every day for the rest of my life if I had to.

The other thing I mentioned before - spoilage. I don't even want to contemplate how much money I've thrown in the trash because I couldn't get to a bag of apples fast enough, or bananas before they were prime for banana bread. Or how many times I forgot I was almost out of something and found it a month or two later in the back of the fridge (eek). It got really frustrating, and unpredictable. Of course, if you want fresh raw produce through the month you're still going to have to go to the store, but it's a quick trip for a few things, not the ordeal that it used to be. My city even has a nice farmer's market in the weekend that's only a few blocks away. I'm still working on the waking up in time for it part, but some day I'll make it over.

The concept of OAMC is not new - "freeze ahead" meal companies were all the rage a few years ago. They source all the ingredients, write the recipes, and prepare all the raw pieces. You show up, assemble, and pay (an inflated price for the privilege). Heck, I can cut up carrots, I can suffer through the lines at Costco, this is doable!

So, onto the meat of the process (HA!).

Before you do anything, clean your kitchen REALLY WELL. Like, a day or two before you cook give it a good scrub and sanitizing. You're going to destroy it again, so there will be only one layer of goo to clean off. I hate my counters so much, by the way.

The sites I read strongly recommended breaking the process into two days. Day 1 is shopping and prep, day 2 is cooking. Since I'm only preparing four servings of each meal I do shopping one day and prep and cooking the next. Once I've hauled all the bounty up the stairs I'm usually not too wild about wielding a knife in the kitchen anyway.

Two of these, freshly lined, are a necessity. Add a third if you recycle (I don't - we have plenty of dumpster divers here that will take care of it).

A dog is helpful. She will be griped about later on in this post, but with the volume of veggie waste and spillage produced during OAMC, dogs are rather useful vacuums. Mine happens to love carrot shavings and broccoli florets, so I generally just fling those on the floor or into her bowl. A word of caution though, onions are toxic to dogs. Pick those up immediately.

You'll also need lots of these and/or freezable storage containers. My rule tends to be if the recipe requires further cooking, it gets stored in a baggie. Items that are frozen in a finished state go into plastic containers. Freeze your baggies flat so you can stack them up later too.

A list is critical since you have to buy so much. I also plan to start keeping a journal of sorts on pricing to help me learn when things are a good deal. 2011's project is learning how to use coupons, by the way.

It's also recommended that you dispatch the spouse and children for the day. Apparently the gung-ho OAMCs have their processes timed down to the minute, and there is no accounting for snotty noses or husbands that need you to hold something while they fix it. I'm ok on this front, though at times I wish I could send the dog away for the day so she's stay the heck out of my way. You'd think after 13 years she'd have a more solid understanding of the command "MOVE!" and would not freeze in panic, then bolt right at you because she doesn't know which way to go. Stupid dog. Also, OAMC is great for involving kids in cooking, or even making a girls' day where everyone helps and goes home with their own stash.

This thing was HUGE! Made me cry too.

The first task is to develop your recipes. Adapt your favorites, use OAMC recipes off the internet, etc. You'll quickly learn what things freeze well and what don't. Being the designer I am, for my first batch of cooking I broke my recipes down into raw and cooked prep. I had a lot of common ingredients that needed precooking so I could just cook up all the meat at once and cross that item off several recipes.

This, after cooking, was later broken into about four different recipes. That pan, by the way, is the best baking pan on the face of the Earth (Magic Line brand). My mom has some that are older than me and they are still sturdy as heck and make a mean batch of brownies.

This concept, of course, also works for the veggies, and eventually you have nice little piles of ingredients waiting for final assembly.

Though my own experience, OAMC works great when you find common ingredients between all of your dishes. My common ingredients tend to be chicken, ground beef, tomato sauce/paste, carrots, red peppers, and onions. This lets you buy in bulk and save bunches of money - red peppers are half the price at Costco as they are at the grocery store, for example. Buying bulk also lets you build up a stash of staples, like canned tomato products, yeast, butter, etc. If you see a staple on sale, grab it.

Also, get the cooking out of the kitchen whenever you can. Crock Pots are fabulous for OAMC, especially with items that normally need to be simmered for hours. I keep mine off the kitchen's circuit by setting these up in the living room and on the vanity outside of my bathroom (and for all of you going "ewwwwwww!" I move it if I have to go to the bathroom). This also removes another source of heat in the kitchen, which is problematic on hot days like today.

So, what did I actually make? For my first round of cooking, I made:

Chicken teriyaki with veggies. This was darn good.

Chicken pot pies (these are great when you want something substantial fast). The dough freezes just fine.

Garbage burrito fixings. I made tortillas to go with this too. Sadly, I am sick of this now and have about two more bags of it in the freezer.

Pasta sauce. I am undeniably Italian (this is my grandma's recipe too).

Beef chili. I got so sick of this too and I'm not sure why. I'm going to hold onto the leftovers through the winter to see if it was just a seasonal funk.

And about a million of these (potstickers). These are great because they're freezer food but are ready to eat in minutes. I steam them in my rice cooker.

And for the second round of cooking, I made:

BBQ chicken pizza fixings. I make my own pizza dough so it's fast and easy.

It was dinner, by the way. Like my new GIGANTOR cutting board? :D

Chicken pasta primavera fixings with...

...homemade spinach pasta. This was a fun project - I've never made pasta before! Time will tell if I should stick to pasta from a box.

Beef stew.

I also made another batch of pasta sauce and pot pies (turkey this time).

So, what's the damage report? Budget-wise, I'm coming in dead even with my old "weekly" method, but that doesn't account for dead loss and the extras of "I'm hungry and nothing looks good" type shopping trips. Plus, round one of cooking produced about a month and a half of food. Round two plus the round one leftovers barely fit in my freezer. I'll be set for quite some time. And, the process seems a bit cyclical - I have enough meat stored up for round 3, so that month will come in under budget. Of course, with feeding a larger family this won't be a given, but it's a nice perk for the single ladies. Round one did come with some startup costs as I needed a few ingredients and staples I didn't have enough of, but these situations begin to spread themselves out once you get going.

Comparatively speaking, it is a major time saver. I couldn't make these meals during the week; I just don't have time. But, both rounds clocked in at about 5-6 hours with lots of breaks. I find giving up a precious Saturday worth it to eat better during the week. Additionally, I'm finding I love the convenience more than I had anticipated. On days of have school or the Temple, I need to eat fast or have something easy and reheatable to take with me. Through some menu planning, I've been able to accommodate this quite nicely by making leftovers available for myself.

The biggest downfall thus far has been remembering to defrost something.

While I'm still developing my recipes I do have to say I'm really enjoying this mindset of cooking. It's straightforward, predictable, and actually kind of fun. It becomes a game to see how you can stretch a single ingredient through as many dishes as possible. And of course, I'd be happy to share my recipes if anyone would like them.