experiences in once a month cooking
In the past few months, I've been really tracking our expenses, and I've noticed that because we eat out quite a bit, we're spending a LOT of money on food. Some of the dinners out are for mystery shops, while others are simply because I'm tired after work and don't want to deal with cooking. Mac usually wants to eat when he gets home, while I'd prefer to take some time to relax before cooking. I usually get home an hour before Mac, so even if I relax for 15 minutes after taking the dogs outside, I'm still only half an hour into cooking when Mac gets home. This means that if I do cook, we often don't eat until 7 or 8 PM.
We were in the car one weekend, and they were discussing once a month cooking on the radio. I did some research, and discovered that basically, once a month cooking isn't really where you cook everything once a month and then simply reheat it. Rather, it's where you do all of the prep work, divide things into gallon Ziploc bags, and freeze them until you want to cook the meal. You cut all of the veggies, cook all of the meats, etc. in one day, and assemble the meals, so everything is there. No last minute trips to the grocery store, no panic attacks, trying to figure out what is for dinner that night, and no "I don't feel like doing all of the work to cook. Let's go out to eat."
The downside to this is the amount of food you need to buy at one time, and the amount of time you spend preparing meals for a month in 1 day. It is suggested that you go grocery shopping the night before you plan on cooking. Your grocery bill will be much higher for 1 trip, but you'll have minimal food spending the rest of the month, as you'll only need to buy perishables like bread and milk.
With the help of a few friends on FlyerTalk (who knew travel experts are also experts at this sort of thing?), I started dabbling in this. In the past few months, I've prepared Hungarian Goulash and Chicken Teriyaki for future meals. They'll each just be tossed in the crock pot before going to work, and when I get home, I'll still have a bit of time to relax before I have to cook the egg noodles or rice with which they'll be served.
We were in the car one weekend, and they were discussing once a month cooking on the radio. I did some research, and discovered that basically, once a month cooking isn't really where you cook everything once a month and then simply reheat it. Rather, it's where you do all of the prep work, divide things into gallon Ziploc bags, and freeze them until you want to cook the meal. You cut all of the veggies, cook all of the meats, etc. in one day, and assemble the meals, so everything is there. No last minute trips to the grocery store, no panic attacks, trying to figure out what is for dinner that night, and no "I don't feel like doing all of the work to cook. Let's go out to eat."
The downside to this is the amount of food you need to buy at one time, and the amount of time you spend preparing meals for a month in 1 day. It is suggested that you go grocery shopping the night before you plan on cooking. Your grocery bill will be much higher for 1 trip, but you'll have minimal food spending the rest of the month, as you'll only need to buy perishables like bread and milk.
With the help of a few friends on FlyerTalk (who knew travel experts are also experts at this sort of thing?), I started dabbling in this. In the past few months, I've prepared Hungarian Goulash and Chicken Teriyaki for future meals. They'll each just be tossed in the crock pot before going to work, and when I get home, I'll still have a bit of time to relax before I have to cook the egg noodles or rice with which they'll be served.
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