Image Map

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Once a month cooking

I am proud to say that I currently have about 30 meals in my freezer! 30! Holy cow! I am really proud of myself right now.

Before Owen was born, part of my nesting phase of pregnancy was spent making tons of meals for our family so that I would not have to worry about cooking once he arrived. Click here to see a post from February 2009 about it!

Since then, I have gone from making up the meal kits to actually making meals and freezing them. I still make some kits for the chicken in marinade, but I also have made tons of other things.

On Monday I spent the whole day in the kitchen cooking away so that we could stock our freezer. John’s mom was here so I was able to devote all of my time to the cause.

I read tons of blogs on once a month cooking and i always save the recipes in Microsoft OneNote. If you have the program but have never used it I definitely recommend checking it out! Below you can see how I have some of my recipes arranged. It allows me to save recipes in sections (such as chicken or beef), and then make a new page for each recipe. You can even do subpages. It is such a cool program and I am so glad to finally have a way to save my recipes that truly makes sense! Also, I love color coding things and this allows me to be creative in how i do it!

image

One of my favorite sites for checking out Once a Month Cooking is www.onceamonthmom.com. She posts recipes, monthly menus, and tons of resources.

On Monday I cooked:

Breakfast 

Homemade Poptarts- ok these actually became a soggy mess. I think I used too much jelly perhaps? Or maybe it was because I got the offbrand stuff? I dont know. Jelly ended up on the bottom of my oven and they were not edible. This is only the 2nd thing I have ever made that just did not turn out. the first was a random crock pot meal that was just bad!

Fruity Breakfast Burritos- Owen has already tried these and he LOVES THEM!

Cinnamon Rolls – i flash froze them and then put them into a freezer bag. I ended up with about 18 rolls that I will be able to take out 1-4 (or however many we decide we want) at a time the night before want them. I will leave them out on the counter to defrost and rise and they should be good to go in the morning!

 

Lunch

Chicken Nuggets- I actually also added powdered ranch dressing mix into the breadcrumbs. YUMMY!

Chicken Pesto Wraps

 

Dinners

Bleu Cheese Burgers

Bleu Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Deconstructed Broccoli and Cheese Stuffed Chicken

Slow Cooker Chicken with Mushrooms and Marsala Sauce (the recipe called for Sherry but I only had Marsala)

Spicy Honey Chicken

 

Some recipes I want to make for the future:

http://downrightdelish.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/freezer-chicken-pot-pies/

http://stolenmomentscooking.com/what-to-do-with-12-pounds-of-ground-beef/- the taco bake

 

I normally always make chicken and cheese enchiladas, stuffed manicotti, baked ziti, shredded chicken for tacos, flautas, taquitos, and a ton of ground beef. However this month i wanted to focus on making lots of meals that we had not tried before!

If you are in to Once a Month Cooking, lets share recipes, blog posts, and interesting things to try! I know I am working hard to get out of the food rut that we were in for so long!

5 comments:

Christina and Varun said...

Amy, I love it! Thanks for sharing your meal plan. I will be sure to blog about my meals once I get started. I just found Microsoft OneNote on my computer and SO excited! I am off to plan my monthly meals!

Our Love Our Life said...

This is such a great idea. I did the nesting thing before Carmine too and froze food. I think you inspired me to do it again. We will see and I will keep you posted. Thanks for the tips about the M.OneWord!

Nicole said...

Amy, this is such a great idea! Thanks so much for sharing...I definitely will be doing this when I return to NC. AND, maybe we can come up with a way to get all of us together and everybody bring ingredients, and we can make meals together! Let's get that organizer Sarah on it!!!!

Maria said...

Wow! What hard work! I am proud of you! The recipes look delicious! Can't wait to make some! thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

I made Laura the fruit burritos...she is saying mmm while she eats them. I think it is freaking her out to be eattiing something so cold, but she likes them. I didn't have any fresh fruit so I used yogurt and baby food fruit and froze it and it worked.