Kitchen Experiment: Part 1

(Two cooking-related posts in a row?!)

Levi and I (and the kids, by default) are trying a kitchen experiment.

Levi and I are not very imaginative when it comes to menu planning - our weekly table tends to be spaghetti, pizza, mac n cheese, parmesan chicken, spaghetti... - and invariably when I've been motivated to change things up, I fail to have the proper ingredients on hand and either have to run to the store in the middle of cooking, or, more likely, slam cupboards in frustration and run to McDonalds.

So, after doing some reading online, we (I) decided to give "once a month cooking" (OAMC) a try. The basic concept being, you prep a bunch of dinners all at once and stick them in the freezer, so that all you have to do is reheat on the stove, or pop it in the oven/slowcooker/on the grill.

After reviewing MANY OAMC books on Amazon, I purchased Once A Month Cooking: Family Favorites (Kindle edition, $10!).


This book is great for OAMC newbies because it does all the thinking for you - you just pick a 2- or 4-week "menu cycle" and it gives you a complete shopping list, recipes and assembly line-style preparation instructions. A lot of the other books are more focused on helping you save money shopping by building your own menu around your grocery store's sales, but I didn't feel like doing that much work. I wanted this to be SIMPLE.

(One of the other reasons I picked this particular book is because ALL of the Menu Cycles were available for free download on their website, www.once-a-monthcooking.com. I knew that I was going to be cooking stuff that my family would actually eat - or at least try!)

Serendipitously, around the first of this month our cupboards were looking pretty bare and we were due for a major shopping trip anyway, so I decided on a menu cycle, cross-checked the pantry and shopping lists against what we actually had on hand, added the miscellaneous household stuff that we always needed (cereal, milk, diapers, etc.), and headed out shopping.

The total bill for "Two Week Cycle D" came to just over $130 - at a projected 72 "servings" (the recipes ranged from 4 to 20(!) servings per dish), the per-serving cost was under $2. I've never paid THAT much attention to how much it costs to cook for my family, but that sounds pretty good to me.

Next up (with pictures, finally!) - Part 2: OAMC Meal Prep Day.