OAMC

The new school year starts Monday. That means our lives will get busy again. Busy is good, but busy makes it hard  to get dinners ready. You see, Devin and I don't get home until about 7ish each night. We're tired and hungry. Claire needs to go to bed by 7:30. That only leaves about 30 minutes to fix dinner, eat it, and get Claire in bed. Basically, that's impossible. I wanted to try something new to alleviate the stress of dinner every night, so I decided to try once-a-month-cooking (OAMC) or freezer cooking.

The idea is that you plan what you want to eat for a month, make a shopping list, check the ads, find good deals, buy your groceries, save a lot of money, and spend one day a month cooking a bunch of different meals, freeze them, and have them ready to eat so you don't have to worry about dinner.

I did that. Kinda. I planned what we would eat for the next month, made a list, looked at the ads, found some deals that weren't so good, scooted over to Costco and bought a lot of meat, came home and cooked. I split the cooking up between 2 days. Why you ask?
1. Claire
2. Limited counter space
3. Limited supply of dishes
4. Limited dishwashers (Devin's been interviewing and doing school stuff so that leaves me. I despise dishes.)
5. It's been nice outside and I wanted to enjoy it before the heat and humidity come back
6. I was tired Friday after I made two weeks worth of food in three hours

I did the beef and pork recipes yesterday and the chicken recipes today. I used two crock pots. Now I know why you get so many when you get married. Too bad I re-gifted some...

I think it turned out pretty well. I'm proud of myself. I have a freezer full of meals frozen and ready to eat. We'll see how they taste in a couple weeks.

It certainly cut back on the grocery bill. Next month I'm going to scour the ads for good deals and plan my meals accordingly. I think this could be a very good system.

p.s. I found these blogs with recipes for condensed cream soup. Next month I'm making my own. It will be much cheaper (why is generic brand soup $1.00 on sale here?) and SIGNIFICANTLY less sodium which means healthy. Oh yeah, and no BPA in the cans. I'm excited.