(© Graphics By Irene)I had a conversation with an online-have-met-twice-in-real-life friend last night and we talked about grocery budgets and how we were both hoping to reduce ours and our overall spending. I tracked every single dollar we spent last month for September's Financial Spring Clean and it went so well that I've dragged the system over into October. I spent a rather large amount of money on groceries in September and as I was saying to my friend, something has to change. That something may even possibly be the revisiting of an old-yet-strangely-torturous standby, Once a Month Cooking.
Firstly, OAMC and I have had a tumultuous relationship. She and I (that's OAMC and I - and yes, it's a she) are best friends during the planning process (if you haven't guessed yet, I love to make menus, LOL) but inevitably have a big fight and don't talk for months due to the actual implementation phase. Cause, you know, the benefits are great but the process hurts. I've long since come to realise that 'true OAMC', whereby one plans to within a teaspoonful of flour, cooks all day (and sometimes into a second) until turning grey and then collapses in a heap of twittering, frazzled nerves at the end, is not for me. But in my online reading and somewhat addictive Amazon-OAMC-book-buying sprees, I've come across a few resources that would help the average mama who may have tried the uber-OAMC before and swore blind she'd never do it again. Because, when all is said and done, OAMC/Freezer Cooking/Frozen Assets/Investment Cooking is a valuable homemaking tool, if used in the right non-nerve-frizzling way.
Lizzie's OAMC Resources
One of the simplest methods of filling the freezer I've come across online is Lynn Nelson's Busy Cooks Pyramid. I've had this link up in my Cooking/OAMC section for a long time, but it's worth bringing it back to the forefront now. Lynn uses several different menu planning tools to make up her 'pyramid', the main one (ie, the bottom tier) being this neat way of Cooking For The Freezer. Once a week she sets aside around an hour and cooks a triple batch of something. Her family eats one batch for dinner that night and freezes the other two. During the following week, she takes out two different meals from previous weekend cooking sessions. Right off the bat, that's three meals a week taken care of, all from your freezer stash, for just a small investment of time. You might want to try this approach for a few weekends without drawing on your investment for those two other nights during the week, or planning one big cooking session with lots of different recipes, just until you've built up a nice selection of meals. And each time you cook, rotate protein type (beef one week, chicken the next and so on). For some busy mums, this is just the right level of 'living out of the freezer' and they're content to stop right there (I tend to fall into this category). You're getting to put your feet up, more or less, for 3 nights out of 7 but there's still plenty of slots for those meals that don't typically freeze well or you'd prefer to have fresh. For others, check out the rest of Lynn's pyramid - she's got some great ideas.
Another link I've had up in the Cooking/OAMC section for some time now is Christi Gillentine's Seven Days To A Full Freezer. Though not a 'system' per se, this is one of the most detailed 'ease-into-full-blown-OAMC' descriptions I've read. But you certainly don't have to cook for a full 30 days with this (or any other) OAMC method. You could use the same 'slowly slowly' approach for a mini-session, or you could do up to the end of Day 3 or 4 and then kick back until the bug hits again, knowing you've already got the menus and shopping lists done.
Robbyn's Friendly Freezer was one of the first sites I came across that explained the different methods well and gave examples of full plans. Ever wondered what to do with the 35 lbs (almost 16 kgs!) of ground beef you found on sale? Robbyn has an answer!
Most freezer cooks will have heard of 30 Day Gourmet - their Freezer Cooking Manual was one of the books I ordered through Amazon. What appealed to me was the worksheets, which you access online with a password printed in the Manual (the worksheets are also available in the book itself, but you have to photocopy them and it's much easier to just download them from the site) In case you couldn't tell, I'm a worksheet fan :P. Now, I'd love to give you my password so you could have a look at the worksheets but I suspect that would be against the rules, LOL. The 30 Day Gourmet way of doing things is one of the main 'systems' floating around the internet at the moment and they work on the principle of already providing the ingredients multiplications so you can choose to make one, three, up to six of any given recipe just by adding the quantities listed in the right column (here's an example of how they set out their recipes). I went through a phase - LOL - of writing all my recipes out in this format just in case I wanted to make, say, a sextuple batch of chocolate chip cookies/lasagna/fill-in-the-blank. It's probably not worth going that far - honestly, having hundreds and hundreds of cookies on hand probably isn't that brilliant an idea anyway :P, but for the non-uber-OAMC-ers amongst us, the section on Freezer Info is a good information resource even if you don't go on to order their book or use their system.
Here's a list of recipes and general freezing food tips from The Recipe Link.
Beth's Once a Month Cooking Pages is a perennial favourite - read her descriptions of her cooking sessions - OUCH! This is a good example of an uber-OAMC session, building gradually to an ultra-uber-crazy-3mo-OAMC attempt. Though I cannot even fathom going this far, LOL, her tips and strategies could be broken down to your level. Plus it's always kind of cool to play fly-on-the-wall. Beth also has a good links section.
It's worth pausing here to point out that the best OAMC sessions, whether they be uber-OAMC, mini sessions, double/tripling a recipe (by the way, I tend to use 'OAMC' as a generic term for all the different variants - it's just easier and everyone knows what you're talking about) are the ones that a) build on existing family favourites (no weird meals no-one will eat just because they're on 'somebody else's' plan) and b) allow you to work at YOUR best level. It took me several attempts at uber-OAMC (and lots of wasted hours/money buying bulk ingredients) before I realised it just wasn't going to work for me in that format. Once I'd let go of that little nugget of perfectionism, I was fine and came to enjoy it, even if I did cycle through spurts of interest :)
General Budget-Conscious Cooking Links
CheapCooking.com - one of my favourites. Lots of great information.
Hillbilly Housewife - the Queen of this genre.
Steph's Country Kitchen Goodness - Steph also has a section on Budget Meals and loads of other good information.
Okay, so the bottom line is - have a peek at these sites, and others like them, and see whether its something you'd like to try out. You'll save money in the long run, that's for sure. But you definitely don't have to do uber-OAMC to be a true convert. That's the beauty of it - you pick and choose the bits that will work for you, and ignore the rest. You may do one mini session and then put the whole idea aside for three or four months, like I do, LOL. Or you might actually find you LIKE uber-OAMC-ing and if so, I congratulate you and I'd like to place an order. Just double all your food next month and I'll be round to pick it up :P
Happy Cookin'!
Cheers,
Lizzie
3 comments:
Hey Lizzie :)
I've tried OAMC on my own many times, and while I can make it work I don't really like it. Mostly because 1/2 way through I inevitably get a magazine in the mail with amazing recipes that I want to try the next week and it throws the whole thing off. I do a weekly plan, sometimes a 2 week at a time plan, and generally it works for me. :)
I'm such a sucker for variety that the OAMC thing starts to drive me crazy. (hee hee hee)
Oh, I'm totally like that too, LOL. Which is one of the many, many reasons uber-OAMC never worked very well for me. And, you know, the tedium of hand crumbing thirty chicken breasts kind of gets to me :P
The strange thing about me is that I LOVE to menu plan. I get a strange kind of kick out of having that information written down, sorted out, organized - so project that onto OAMC and I'm just about in hog-heaven! But in the execution? I'm MUCH more flexible. That's why whenever you see references to a menu, or a cooking plan here on Lizzie's Home, abso-LUTE-ly take it with a grain of salt. Things get rearranged on the fly all the time around here. Out of seven dinners a week, we might be on track for four or five of them, tops. And even if we eat what we list, it's almost NEVER on exactly the same days as the plan suggests. And of course, this doesn't matter one iota :P But I do like to have 'something' concrete in the works regarding the menu planning. For over two weeks in September our fridge was broken and I couldn't buy more than the absolute basics - I shopped every day and we stored itty bitty bottles of milk and about three florets of broccoli at a time in a camping fridge our inlaws loaned us (that two weeks thing, by the way, was how long it took the company-chosen-warranty-honouring fix it folks to have time for us. I KNOW). Those two weeks kind of cured me from wanting to shop. That and our astronomical grocery bill. I know some of the principles I mentioned in this post (again, I'm SO not an uber-OAMC-er) would save us money, but almost on equal keel is the ability for the method to save us time and our sanity :P
Cheers,
Lizzie
Scattered Mom -
Oh, and I think you've mentioned before that your menu is heavily based around very fresh, clean tastes? I know a lot of the American-style OAMC sites out there contain all sorts of heavier meals that we just don't eat. So I've never, even when fully into the whole idea, used someone else's plan. Make the list based on your own meals!
Cheers,
Lizzie
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