Once A Month Cooking Tips For Stay At Home Moms
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If most of you Mom and Dads out there are like me, there never seems to be enough time or energy at the end of most days to prepare a good wholesome home cooked meal. Wouldn’t it be nice if cooking these good ole fashioned meals didn’t take forever to prepare? I read a blog the other day where the lady cooked once a month (for the most part) and froze all the food and then reassembled the frozen food at a later date to create her family’s meals. I found this quite interesting as I sometimes would make a week’s worth of meals on Sunday and freeze them so we could have them throughout the week. Now, if you don’t know how to cook, well, Houston, we have a problem! You can skip this article 
The thought of cooking a month’s worth of meals in one or two days kinda scared me! Heck, I have trouble thinking up something different from day to day it seems! Cooking your food for a month in advance can also keep you within budget. This comes in handy when you need to buy gas just to make it to the store!
How many of you have resorted to picking up fast food meals simply because you were too tired to prepare a meal or you didn’t have time to run to town to pick up an ingrediant or two for your favorite recipe?
Tips For Cooking Meals Once A Month
Here are some important tips to keep in mind if you’re considering once a month cooking as a way of life for your family.
- Planning your meals is the most important thing you need to do. You will need to set aside a day (or two) for the cooking when nothing else is on the calendar. It is simply too difficult to see to all the details if you are planning your cooking event around car pools, soccer games, or dance practices. You need a full day that will be relatively uninterrupted. It’s very difficult to remain focused with a house full of screaming kids or the phone ringing off the wall. Once the kiddo’s get older, look for ways to enlist their help with any cutting, chopping, slicing, dicing, or peeling that may need to be done.
- You should also create a thorough menu followed by a list of each and every ingredient you will need. Don’t try and go shopping on the same day you plan on cooking. Make out your grocery list in advance and check it twice. Take you time at the grocery store so that you’re not likely to rush through the shopping trip and forget something. Bring your menu and your list and get everything you need in one trip whenever possible. You can also save money by planning your meals for the month according to the sales circulars and coupons you have for the week in order to stretch your budget a little further.
- Next, make sure that you have all the supplies, dishes, and containers you need to prepare and store the meals you’ve prepared properly. You should also make sure that the recipes you are using for your once a month cooking marathon are recipes that freeze well. It is even better if you have recipes that double well so that you can get twice the results from the same effort.
- Keep your Kitchen and food preparation area clean. Folding card tables are great for storing things out of the way and freeing up valuable counter space for preparing and assembling the foods that will be prepared. Clean cooking and assembling spaces also help eliminate the potential of food contamination.
- Put all your Kitchen appliances to work. They’re there to make your life easier, use them. Don’t limit all cooking to the oven. Find dishes that freeze well and can be prepared in the crock pot or on the range top.
You should also make sure you are mentally prepared for your marathon cooking session. If preparing a months worth of meals in a day or two seems a mammoth task, try preparing two weeks worth of food first. You’ll soon learn that it gets easier and easier every time you do it.
Once a month cooking will give you a great feeling on those nights when the thought of cooking seems unbearable and the wallet has been stretched to its limit.
