Once-A-Month-Cooking Sites
By: Stephania Munson-Bishop
Make a date with a friend or neighbor, and cook for a day to feed 2 families for a month!
With her popular book "Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month," Deborah Taylor-Hough is credited by many as the chief proponent of the all-day cooking marathon. She also publishes the Simple Times Ezine. To subscribe: mailto:subscribe-simple-times@ds.xc.org Visit her web site at http://hometown.aol.com/oamcloop/index.html
So what's all the fuss about Once-A-Month-Cooking (OAMC)? Saving money and liberating convenience top the list. Many other web sites have popped up in recent years, with other cooks trying their hand at OAMC. Imagine, in its purist form, cooking only 12 days to feed a family for an entire year, not only with main dinner meals but plenty of lunch-time leftovers.
Does it work? You bet! To be extra cost- and time-efficient, it helps to coordinate recipes by ingredients in the planning stages. For example, making a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, plus some Tex-Mex recipes, means you can maximize the task of dicing and sautéing onion and green pepper -- do what you'll need at one time for all the recipes that call for peppers and onions. The same principle applies to meat choices: several recipes utilizing chicken, different meals made with roast beef, three or four recipes for ham, plenty of ground beef casseroles, etc.
Even partial all-at-once kitchen sessions can yield big savings. If you're not up for going 'whole hog' for OAMC, try frying, draining, cooling 5 to 10 lbs of ground beef with chopped peppers and onions, then pack in 8 to 12 Zip-loc freezer bags. Thaw a bag in the refrigerator overnight, then proceed with a pasta, rice, or potato recipe, or add ketchup and vinegar for Sloppy Joes on buns. You won't believe what a time-saver this can be, especially if you're rushing home from your day job and need to feed your family in a jiffy.
Still another idea: boil 2 or 3 chickens with chicken bouillon in water, cool, remove meat, discard skin and bones. Pack equal portions of deboned chicken meat in bags for freezer, and/or make a sauce from the bouillon and pack chicken with sauce, some frozen peas, and dried onion flakes in freezer containers. Use for chicken a la king over biscuits or rice, or deboned chicken packs for chicken enchiladas, chicken and rice casserole (with a can of cream of mushroom or celery soup diluted with half a can of milk), or chicken in broth with frozen veggies and dumplings made of cut-up refrigerator biscuits or Bisquik.
The more you try short marathon cooking sessions and experience how quickly it can help you to put a tasty dinner on the table, the more beguiling an idea OAMC can seem. Three good OAMC sites: http://members.aol.com/clseelhoff/v5n07b.htm http://frugal-moms.com/dir/Cooking/Once_A_Month_Cooking/ http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/oamc.html
Two people working in the kitchen for one day can feed two families for a month. Try teamwork! Ask a friend or neighbor to split up the chores. Share shopping costs and halve the 'culinary profits'!
About the Author
Stephania is a human service professional with nearly 40 years in the field. She publishes a content-rich ezine, "Tidbits from the Pantry," about self-help, growth, and relationships to over 11,000 subscribers, and offers a life coaching service. To subscribe to her ezine, mailto:info@humansrv.net?subject=SUB Visit her site at http://www.humansrv.net
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