What would possess someone to cook a month's worth of meals in one day? I became possessed by the idea of freeing up that dreaded dinner hour. I became possessed with the idea of not having to rack my brain for dinner ideas and scurry around the kitchen trying to make a dinner that should take an hour fit into the 45 minutes that I actually could spare to get it on the table.
I found the answer months ago when a friend introduced me to OAMM and I remember putting out a feeler on Face book about it. I think some people where intrigued, but no one took the bait. That is until one day last month when I got an unexpected message from Janene asking if I had been serious about my interest in giving it a try.
I had to think about it for oh....two seconds before I wrote back to say that I wanted to do it. I kind of thought it would be hard work. But I also thought the rewards could be worth the effort and then some. My biggest concern was figuring out how to keep four kids occupied!
Cooking once a month is a good thing for the following reasons:
You don't have to think about what's for dinner.
You don't have to mess around with mixing and pulling out ingredients and rummaging through cookbooks all early afternoon. Every. Single. Day. Of. The. Week.
You can feel confident that when handing the keys to the kitchen over to someone else, they can do better than pulling a prepackaged pizza from the freezer.
When you've had a busy day it is as easy as preheating the oven and popping in a pan.
If you prepare in the month prior to cooking, you can save money by shopping sales and using coupons! We cooked our whole menu for less than $150 a piece and from that we each got 16 dinners, 8 lunches, 6 breakfasts (the breakfasts I have been using as grab and go, so it actually seems like more than 6!) That means feeding my family of 6 costs a little less than $5/meal.
'Twas the night before our Big Cooking Day!
These are as delicious as they look!
I was so nervous about these bags leaking! It was tough dividing our White Chicken Chili, Beef Stew, and Chili into those bags!
I cannot wait to dig into the black beans and rice. They smelled REALLY Good while cooking.
I think I'm in love with my Food Processor. It was SO under utilized before our big cooking day and WOW. I am in awe at that thing! Those perfect cheese shreds from the black beans and rice dish? Under 2 seconds using this baby.
This was during the last third of our cooking day and LOOK! We are still smiling!
And the kids stayed out of our hair for the most part!
Some of our meals packaged and ready for the freezer!
I can't wait until next month!
Thanks, Janene!
