Once a Month Cooking As Defined by Me

I have been dreaming about doing this for a few years now. Several years back, a friend and I would visit a store in Rochester (www.dishituprochester.com) where you can select recipes from their monthly menu, prepare the meals from their stocked/prepped stations with their dishes, load up all of these wonderfully yummy packaged meals into your laundry basket, wash your hands, leave the mess for them and go home and load them into your freezer. We'd have meals for a month - and NO stress! It was such a freeing thing to come home from work knowing that we didn't have to deal with the question of what to do about dinner because something was waiting to be popped in the oven or taken out of the crockpot, etc.
I started researching cookbooks on the topic, thinking I could just do this myself at home. The problem I ran into is that the books I found were filled with recipes I knew my family would never eat. Never did it dawn on me that  you didn't necessarily need special recipes just because you were freezing something. There might just be a few certain things you shouldn't freeze.. Fast forward to now.. I have less free time, and yet somehow more mind wandering time if that makes sense? Tami is in dire need of a project! I am going out of my mind not having a massive undertaking (not that raising these three tykes isn't massive, I can attest to that!!)... But I need something to research, plan, make lists, etc.. So I add on a few side jobs if you will, and this happens to be one of them. I started checking out a few different blogs of other moms that do once a month cooking (OAMC). It took quite a while to stumble upon good ones, but once I did, it was a gold mine of good information and so far, great recipes. Even better, because they are also moms of young kids, they also share recipes that are kid-friendly, which is very helpful.
So whats the plan? Well, if you are organized, like I intended to be, you set out all of your information first. Gather the recipes, create the master shopping list based off of that, and get the shopping trip out of the way prior to cooking day. Some people shop well in advance, depending on pay periods, etc. Some do it the night before, if you have a certain weekend set aside for cooking perhaps. For me, things got crazy. This was the weekend when I had said it had to happen and it was Sunday AFTER church and it still hadn't happened, so Steve was getting groceries at like 4pm. But whatever works ;) They also say to start small - like with 6 meals or so. We went a bit beyond that - but the beauty is that you can multiply things easily, especially by taking things that are meant for 13x9 pans and putting them in 8x8s if that is better suited for your family (like it is for mine right now)... which is not only more economical, but also means more variety. By the time you eat the same leftovers for the third night in a row, everyone is bored of it!
They say to plan the cooking day to be like an 8 hour marathon - to wear good shoes and have something planned for the kids. I forgot to wear shoes, and I regretted that later. Do make arrangements for the kids though - you'll get things done faster and they will have way more fun! We only spent about 5 hours cooking - and that included Steve making a few extra trips to the store because he forgot a few things on the list ;)
Okay - so here is what we made (enough rambling Tami, get to the good stuff!!):
1. Sour Cream Noodle Bake (recipe here: Pioneer Woman). This recipe is Fabulous! My additions: GARLIC! I LOVE garlic, so I add heaps of minced garlic to just about anything. I added extra chopped green onion too, but otherwise, it was her recipe. OH - and as with anything that goes into a 9x13, I put this into 2 8x8 pans. It heated nicely - as with anything from the freezer, allow extra cooking time. I put a sticky label on my containers and put how much time I thought things would take (the first time through is going to be all guess work - I left a blank spot on my actual recipes to write the truth!)... This one took about 40 minutes I think.. YUM. And pretty kid friendly ;)

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2. Mexican Verde Casserole (Once a Month Mom). And YUM again. This one kind of had me nervous. When you put it together it looks blah and green and blah. But wow its yummy! I cheated on this one - the recipe involves her making her own salsa verde - I bought some. She also cooked chicken breasts and then cubed them. The price was actually more expensive for raw chicken the day I was at the store, so I bought the frozen cooked/cubed stuff. Hey - it was going to be cubed and frozen anyway! Skip a step! You will be so pleasantly surprised with it though. Try it. And again - two 8x8 pans.
3. Grown up Mac-n-Cheese (SweetAnnas). This is Annalise's Spicy Baked Mac-n-Cheese which Josiah has now labeled Grown up Mac - he claims it isn't for kids, but other kids have tried it and liked it, so have yours give it a try ;) The only change I made to this recipe to make it a complete meal in a dish is to again add another bag of that wonderful frozen cubed grilled chicken breast to it before scooping all of this cheesy goodness into the 8x8 pans to cool before freezing. This recipe quickly became a favorite in our house. LOVE.
4. Four pounds of ground chuck became this: Meatballs and Meatloaves. I mixed it all up with the same recipe (adding a ton of garlic!). Then one pound became Greek Meatloaf - add greek seasoning, half a jar of salsa, and a small container of feta cheese. Save the other half of the salsa for when you are ready to bake. Easy! Another pound was left as regular meatloaf which will be an E-Mealz recipe getting a sauce when we bake it - its brown sugar, vinegar and mustard.. These were both made into small loaves - two per 8x8 pan - you pull them out of the freezer the night before you want to make them, then bake for about 40 minutes. The remaining 2 pounds were rolled into meatballs and baked. We cooled them and divided them into meal sized portions and bagged them. We will then use them for spaghetti, meatballs and gravy, etc. Easy!
5. WAY Easy!! Ranch Chicken Strips: Raw chicken tenders (don't use chicken breasts, they are not nearly as yummy!) dredged in buttermilk ranch and then firmly pressed in crushed sour cream and onion potato chips. (Do NOT use the baked kind! Sounds healthy, but we've tried it, and they don't work, not sure why)... Its super easy, and while it might not be fat free, they are not nearly as processed as those fake nuggets the kids might get from the freezer section, so they love 'em and I feel slightly better serving them ;) You can layer these in a freezer container with wax paper - then just pull out however many you need, bake at 400 degrees for about 6-7 minutes on each side. YUM.

Doesn't sit still, but loves lunch ;)

cheap vacuum seal!

6. Homemade Easy Mac: (Once A Month Mom) This one made me nervous because every attempt I had made at homemade mac had been disastrous (prior to Sweet Anna's above).. But I dug in because I hate how much Josiah begs for me to buy Easy Mac - even though I have only bought it for him ONCE and also because I hate the fact that every time I make macaroni and cheese, I put the powder in and hate thinking about whats in the powder. So lets just learn how already Tami! It was super easy, even though I didn't have the patience to wait for it to thicken, I did. And these are incredibly yummy, though I'm not big on plain mac-n-cheese. Tip - use a light colored muffin pan. For some reason, the one pan I had that was dark got too hot and the liners got way soggy. The solution in my head would be to use those ultra strong tinfoil liners, but then you couldn't microwave the cups after freezing them... maybe double line the pans if you've only got dark pans? Also, I put a couple drops of milk on the cups before I heat them up just to make sure they stay extra creamy. The kids scarfed these down though!

finishing dessert!

8. Poptarts: (Once A Month Mom) This scared me, but these were so easy I almost hate to include it here! You could make your own pie crust and your own filling and then you'd have a hard recipe I suppose ;) But buy refrigerated pie crust, cut it in squares, put in some preserves (use healthy stuff -ha!), seal, bake, cool, flash freeze and bag! I skipped the icing and they loved them anyway :)
9. French Toast Sticks: (Once A Month Mom) I almost went with her sneaky chef toddler version, but thought I should try the standard fare first ;) These are yummy. I used a huge loaf of texas toast so that they would be sturdy - which also meant i tripled her recipe off the bat, but thats okay, considering how quickly my kiddos will eat them!
10. Garlic Bread: (Life As Mom) There really isn't much to say about this. Instead of paying $3 per loaf to have a few on hand, I can pay $2 to make 3 loaves to have on hand in my freezer. Its a pretty good deal. And it tastes better because I can load it up with more garlic. mmmm Garlic.....