Once-A-Month Cooking

In my pre-working days, when money was really tight on a one-income budget, I often did my version of once-a-month cooking.  After trying the actual 30-day plan a couple of times, I adapted it to my own version, which was a lot more doable for me. 


Basically, I try to make one freezer meal every week.  One night's dinner is made in triplicate, leaving us one to eat and two to freeze.  I find this is much more manageable than trying to make 30 meals all at once.  I generally use an 8-inch by 8-inch square pan to freeze things in, and I line the pan with a freezer bag.  So my general method of making freezer cassaroles is to put the meal in a gallon freezer bag, lay it in the square pan, and after pressing as much air out of the bag as possible, seal it.  The nice thing about this method is that after freezing I can reuse the square pans for the next week's meals, and the frozen meals stack nicely in the freezer. 

To use, I remove the frozen meal from the freezer, cut off the freezer bag and plop the frozen meal into a square pyrex pan and cover with plastic wrap.  Then I put it into the refrigerator to thaw.  When I get home from work, I remove the plastic wrap and put into the microwave or oven, depending on what it is and how long it needs to heat.  In about an hour, dinner is ready and I didn't have to do anything except maybe make a salad.  If I remind my husband, he will even throw it into the oven in time to have it done when I get home or, during the legislative session, has dinner already made and just needing heating so I don't have to worry about him.  It is a great system.  When my daughter lived at home, we'd have one meal per dinner and someone would have the leftovers.  Now, each pan gives us 2-3 meals that we alternate with other meals.  It saves me so much time cooking during the week.

I have used both of the books shown here.  I think Once a Month Cooking is my favorite, but since my daughter borrowed it a while back, I used Frozen Assets for this week's dinners and I'm going to send a couple home with Elsie tomorrow to taste test.

Today I started out with five pounds of ground beef that was on sale.  I browned all of it, drained it, and then added two cups of chopped onion and two cups of chopped celery, some seasonings and garlic, and a chopped green pepper and cooked them all together.  That is the basic meat mixture.

I removed four cups of the cooked meat mixture and added two cans of tomato soup, brown sugar, and prepared mustard and simmered it all together for 10 minutes.  I cooled this and divided it into two freezer containers.  So Elsie and I will both be able to have Sloppy Joes this week or she can freeze it if she prefers.

I measured out four more cups of the mixture and added canned tomatoes, kidney beans, and seasoning and - it's chili!  It has to simmer for an hour and then I'll divide it into two containers.  Chili for another meal this week.

The last four cups of meat mixture will be made into three meals of a shepard's pie with vegetables added and mashed potatoes on the top.  These will go into the freezer for later use.  My five pounds of ground beef has been stretched into seven meals.  Some of these meals will actually feed us more than once, so this is a pretty economical way to cook and a real timesaver for me.

~Jane