Once a Month Cooking Part 4: Freezer Meal Co-op

I've blogged before about meal preparation and once a month cooking before, but I have an update.

After Cason was born we enjoyed meals from family, meals from friends and meals I had stockpiled in our freezer. Once those started to run out however, I knew I didn't have the energy to stand and cook for an entire day to stockpile for the month. So, I started a freezer meal co-op.

Essentially it works like this. Six women get assigned two recipes each month. They make each of those meals times six (for twelve meals total) and stick them in their freezer. We then get together, swap meals, and go home with twelve different meals to put in our freezer.

We typically make 10 dinners and two breakfasts (five to six chicken recipes and four to five beef/pork/fish recipes). I make up the menu each month and assign each gal her recipe, trying to spread around the easy marinade meals and the harder/more complex menus.

It's worked wonderfully. It's much easier to make big batches of two recipes than to put together 16 different meals in one day, plus I get an afternoon of hanging out with friends once a month when we do our swap.

Each month I gather recipes from blogs, pinterest and Facebook many of them coming from Once a Month Mom, Six Sisters Stuff, Saved by the Freezer, Freezer Meals for Us and Everyday Paleo. I try to keep the menu simple, healthy and mostly whole foods, but we do let the occasional pasta dish sneak in there from time to time. If you're looking for good freezer meals, you can always check out my recipes at WeGottaEat. I usually go back and star our favorites after we've eaten them.

For our June swap we decided to have a potluck dinner together so everyone could meet everyone else's husband and children. Danny smoked a pork butt and we moved the couch out of the way to fit some tables. It was chaotic and fun. Somehow all of the children ended up at the big table and the adults at the card tables. It was a comical sight looking up to see five youngsters chatting away in a foreign baby language and eating finger food.

Once a Month Cooking Part 3: Once a Month Mom

Finally, I came across this amazing website called Once A Month Mom after my friend Chelsea (yes, the same one that inspired preschool, the activity bag swap and pretty much every other fun idea) blogged about her once a month cooking experience.

What is Once A Month Mom?

This website is amazing because they do EVERYTHING for you except cook. They plan the menu, plan the grocery list, and give you step-by-step instructions. You can even change the quantity (number of people eating each meal) and they automatically do ALL of the calculations for you!

And that's NOT ALL! They have menu plans for vegetarians, gluten-free diets, whole food diets, etc. So, there's something there for everyone.

I LOVE this because I don't have to spend hours and hours pulling my own recipes. I can make a more vast variety than if I just cooked the same meal four times, and I don't have to compromise our desire to eat fairly clean/whole foods. WIN! WIN! WIN!

Why I LOVE Once A Month Mom

The first time I did once a month cooking with Once a Month Mom, I did it by myself. After half a day of grocery shopping, an entire evening of chopping/prepping and probably almost 12 hours of cooking I SWORE I would NEVER do that again.

But then we started pulling meals out of the freezer and eating them. Some nights the most we had to clean up in the kitchen was a ziplock bag and our plates/cups/silverware. There was little to no breakfast prep. I didn't have to spend all of Monday cooking our breakfast/lunches for the week. Let me tell you it was nice! Less meal preparation, less time in the kitchen, less time cleaning up and doing dishes - that is my kind of eating.

Cooking Once A Month Mom with a Friend

The second time I cooked for the month I recruited my friend Allison to join me. I still spent half a Saturday grocery shopping, but we split the chopping/prepping and I had a friend to talk with in the kitchen. The husbands watched the kiddos (and some football) while we worked in the kitchen.  We knocked out all of the meals in 8-9 hours, and I didn't end the day in a foul mood.

I was a little scared that the long, long day would chase her off, but her family enjoyed the meals (sans those really garlicky enchiladas) and Allison came back for another batch cooking day the next month.

Tips for Making Your Cooking Day a Success:

Here are a few of our tips that we learned the hard way, or things we'd change for our next once-a-month cooking extravaganza:

• Do as much chopping of veggies/shredding of cheese/cubing of meat the night before. It makes your day go smoother.
• Start as early in the morning as possible. We've gotten a late start both months and find ourselves cooking at 9:00/10:00 pm when we're tired and still have to get up the next morning.
• Cook with a friend - it really does help pass the time. It also helps because you're more likely to have all of the spices you need already in your pantries. That cuts down on the cost when you don't have to purchase an entire bottle of Rosemary just for a recipe that calls for three tablespoons.
• If possible, have your kids/husband hang out at the house you're NOT cooking at - our kiddos often wanted to help or just wanted mama and it was distracting.
• Trust your instincts when making recipes that you think may not be to your taste or when buying ridiculously huge proportions. We've made Garlickly Enchiladas that were pretty much inedible and purchased WAY too many butternut squashes (even after cutting the amount in half) but we doubted ourselves because the "grocery list" called for those amounts. Next time we'll trust our gut and use/purchase less.

And, now for a few pictures of the process. I didn't take alot because I was busy COOKING!

Here's my half of the groceries - when Allison showed up my entire kitchen table was covered with supplies!

The clean kitchen before we got started . . .

A fridge full of chopped veggies, shredded cheese, eggs and milk . . .

We do dishes over and over and over again as we work. 

Danny kept us stocked in Dr. Pepper and M&Ms and at the end of the day the husbands ran and got us fast food so we could sit and eat (this is essential - the last thing you want to do after a day in the kitchen is fix yourself dinner). And yes, that's my prego belly hanging over that stove.

Cannon looks on at the madness.

And there you have it. Our once-a-month cooking not-so-secret secrets. 

Standing and cooking all day in November about did my pregnant body in - so I think we're going to skip December, except for a few meals from "Fix, Freeze, Feast" and "Don't Worry Dinners in the Freezer" and resume our cooking regime after I've had a few months to adjust to having two kiddos!

Let me know if you give once-a-month cooking a try, or if you have any other tips/suggestions!

Once a Month Cooking Part 2: Helpful Cookbooks

I've tried cooking and freezing meals from my own recipe collection, but it's exhausting doing the math to triple/quadruple the recipe or creating the grocery list for multiple, tripled recipes. There are two books I've found helpful if you want to give batch cooking a try without having to do everything yourself.

I first read about "Fix, Freeze, Feast" on my friend Rachel's blog. She's a very healthy cook, so I thought I needed to check this book out! I've LOVED it!

The recipes in this cookbook are based off of the quantities of meat you can buy at Sams/Costco. For example: chicken breast normally comes in 6 lbs trays at Sams/Costco, so most of the recipes in this book call for 6 lbs of chicken breast.

The book then guides you through creating 3-4 of the SAME meal from that one tray of chicken. For example, one month I made 6 bags of spinach Lasagna Rollups and 4 bags of Pecan-Crusted Chicken.

It's great because it minimizes your time in the kitchen. It doesn't take much longer to make four of the same recipe, as it does to just make the original one dish.

I learned about "Don't Panic Dinner's in the Freezer" from my friend Brittny. It sounded like a cool cookbook, so I checked it out from the library. I haven't made any of these recipes yet, and they don't sound quite as low-calorie as "Fix, Freeze, Feast," but I plan on trying out one or two in preparation for stocking the freezer next month before Baby #2 arrives.

This cookbook gives you several options when preparing your freezer meals. It gives you the different quantities you'd need if you wanted to cook enough for three meals, six meals or 12 meals for the freezer. I love this because if I wanted to batch cook with a friend, all of the math is already done for me. Or, if I am just cooking to freeze meals for my family, they have the quantities listed for that too!

So, if you're looking to ease your way into batch cooking, or once a month cooking by just freezing a few meals, maybe not an entire month's worth, I'd encourage you to start with one of these cookbooks!

Once a Month Cooking Part 1 - Dinner at Your Door

I've blogged about Let's Dish (a store you go to to assemble a month's worth of meals), packing meals for the entire week every Sunday and making Cannon's meals for the week all at once, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I LOVE efficiency in the kitchen. I would rather spend time doing a plethora of other things besides cooking. I'll just be honest and say that cooking is not my favorite thing to do. I do it because I like to eat. With that in mind, I've tried a variety of bulk-cooking or once a month cooking techniques to find what works best for our family.

I've received a multitude of questions of how this once-a-month cooking works, so here's a little blog series to tell you how I do it and how we like it.

When we lived in Dallas I discovered this book called "Dinner at Your Door" that inspired me to organize a little thing called a dinner co-op with my friends Heather and Laura.

We all lived within minutes of each other, which was crucial for the success of our little group. Each of us was assigned a night to cook and deliver dinner. So, every Tuesday night I cooked dinner for all three families and delivered the dinners to Heather and Laura. On their nights they cooked for all three families and delivered dinner to our door. Usually we had enough for leftovers. So, I cooked once a week, but we ate great the entire week! SUCCESS! And we made friends and built relationships in the process.

A few tips that made our group successful:

• We planned our meals out six weeks in advance, which insured that we didn't all cook pasta the same week. 
• We also all purchased the same sized Pyrex dishes so that we were certain to be giving each other the same amount of food each night. 
• We outlawed a few foods that we knew we didn't like (anchovies anyone?), but also tried to keep an open mind and try things that we might not have cooked ourselves (hello my new love: fennel risotto).
• We established a "30-minute delivery time window" so that we could know when dinner was arriving every night. 
• The biggest thing was that we all lived within five minutes of each, so I could deliver the other two meals and be home again in 20-30 minutes (depending of course on how long I stood on the doorstep and talked!).

I was actually sad to move to Allen and give up my dinner co-op because I enjoyed it so much. We had fun planning our co-op, getting to know each others family and children, and trying new food.

If you're interested in starting a food co-op I would HIGHLY recommend you read the book - it had more than enough details to help you get/stay organized. I followed it to a "T."