(Graphics courtesy of www.cutecolors.com)(This is a slightly differently-formatted Menu Plan Monday post - OAMC geared)
Gosh I hate to cook. No, seriously.
Lately our dinners have sort of disintegrated into a mish-mash of leftovers, boxed frozen items and things that really should be served at breakfast (No, not all at the same time!)
And even though I'm participating in Tales From The Scales' May Day Weight Loss Challenge, I haven't really been altering my (bad) food intake. I know I should. But one step at a time! I haven't been resting on my laurels either though - those that have been reading the blog will probably have picked up that my exercise has increased out of sight. I haven't yet added up this week's miles but I'll post about that tomorrow in my Challenge Week 2 Roundup (I finally had to break my 'how many walking days in a row' record today due to rain...sigh. I managed 13 days).
Anyway, back to the menu thing.
Down here the weather has well and truly turned for the season. We're talking short, cold, dreary days, more rain that the area has seen in several months (Australia's in the middle of a serious drought and most metro areas have some type of water restriction in place), and the urge to crawl up under a blankie and watch a Victorian-set movie (I recommend Sense & Sensibility - the Emma Thompson/Hugh Grant version :P). Whenever this type of weather happens I get the inclination to cook. Okay, so the urge is to EAT, but one usually has to precede the other in this house...its a rare day that DH will step up to the stove!
So I got to thinking one afternoon - always a dangerous thing - and decided that my disinclination to cook coupled with the whole "OMG its 5pm!" hoopla surrounding dinner prep, is probably a good reason to at least attempt a Once a Month Cooking (OAMC) session again.
Alright, so I've been there, done that before and it has never really stuck. But I'm looking at it a bit differently this time. This time I'm not going all OCD on it. It's merely to throw some things in the freezer so that I don't have to cook when I don't want to. Or that I can - gasp! - hand the reins over to hubs once in a while. Because, you know, his idea of cooking is reaching for the car keys.
The one concession I allowed myself was to order a couple of freezer cookbooks from Amazon (Frozen Assets and Frozen Assets Lite for those of you playing at home) . I'd actually had my eye on these books for some time but never got around to ordering them. I already have The Freezer Cooking Manual by 30 Day Gourmet and have used the principles quite a bit, if not for a full-on OAMC session then to snaffle recipes from. I had a little money put aside and decided to get the new books as a treat to myself. Amazon tells me they'll arrive somewhere between 1st and 9th June. But the meals I'm thinking of doing for this first session aren't from those books. I'm going to do 'family favourites' only, and then supplement throughout the next few weeks with 'tester' recipes from my freezer cookbooks. Then (if it sticks!) the next time I'm due for a session I'll have a stack of new recipes to multiply out.
I haven't yet checked out this week's grocery flyers (they're still sitting in my mailbox, probably saturated by now!) but when I get around to dragging them in I'll see if any of the meats I'd normally use are on sale. I may just do a mini-session this week and another mini-session next week when the sales switch over. But I'm going to have to do something.
Still in the back of my mind is March's disasterous grocery bill of $1300+. Even though I didn't track in April, I'm hoping May will turn out better. And if I can manage to lick this OAMC thing, I expect that figure to tumble in June. I've mentioned before I'd be happy if I could get my grocery bill down to a consistent $1k figure (remember, this is Aussie dollars!). OAMC would blow that figure out fo the water. I remember doing a rough costing one time I tried it, which put the whole total for the month (all meat, and everything else I could think I'd need) at around $600. I'm not kidding myself I'd be able to replicate that, but I figure one really BIG grocery trip of maybe $400, plus a 'float' of $100 per week for fresh produce, extra dairy (my kids drink heaps of milk) and the odd takeaway meal, gives me a total of $800. I can live with that. Perhaps the savings won't be astronomically different to what careful weekly shopping and daily cooking would be, but the savings in TIME would make it very worthwhile.
So far I've got the usual freezer-y type meals on the cards: spaghetti, lasagna, browned ground beef for tacos, hamburger patties, stirfries, Chicken Kiev, Chicken Parmigiana, soup, homemade pizza, Chicken Pie, quiche, marinated chicken for grilling, fajitas, maybe a couple of other things. Sounds like a lot but isn't really.
I'm hoping I can do this over two or three days later this week, perhaps Thursday and Friday, while the kids are in school. The last time I tried to attempt OAMC I still had a preschooler - not an easy job! The next few weeks look to be insanely busy and it would be a wonderful thing to not have to stress about dinner.
Cheers,
Lizzie
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