Once-A-Month Cooking
By Christine Abela
christine@geckogully.com
Every
evening, all around the world, the same dilemma faces many homemakers. What can be prepared for tonight’s dinner
with a minimum of fuss that will be filling and nutritious?
With
a little forward planning, you can have a month of meals waiting in the
freezer, ready to be thawed and heated.
All you need to do is add simple side dishes or a salad.
This
approach is known as Once-A-Month Cooking (or OAMC for short). The basic principle is that you take your
family’s own favourite meals, adapt them for freezing, and then spend a couple
of days a month doing all your cooking.
OAMC
saves in many ways. It takes very
little more time or energy to make, say, four meals of lasagne at one time than
it takes to make one. But it would take
a lot more to make one meal of lasagne on each of four different days.
You
can take advantage both of specials at the market and of gluts in the
garden. You can improve the health of
your family by not relying on pre-made ingredients or on fast food.
I
don’t recommend you try new recipes for Once-A-Month Cooking. It would be terrible for your family to have
to eat four meals of a dish they don’t like, and nothing will put them off the
idea of OAMC faster. Adapt your
family’s favourites and you can’t go wrong.
If you want to try something new, make it on a small scale first and
make sure it is a hit.
The
actual OAMC process is spread over three days, once a month. Let’s look at it in a little more detail.
Day
One - Preparation and planning
The
first day of my OAMC, I go to the shops.
I check what is on special, and what is in season. I take note of what does not look
good, too. I come home and check what
is in the garden that is in peak condition to be used. This is my research phase.
Next,
I clean out and defrost the freezer. I
keep a written inventory of what I have in the freezer, and this clean-out
helps me to check the inventory is up-to-date.
While
the freezer is defrosting, I check my family’s calendar for the next month and
count how many dinners I would like to freeze.
Then, with the knowledge I gained from my research earlier, I make up a
list of what I will cook, and how many meals of each.
The
next step is to make up a shopping list, broken up according to where I will be
buying each food item. The last stage
is to make myself lists showing what I will need to do to prepare and cook the
food.
Day
Two – Shopping and Chopping Day
The
next day is broken up into two distinct phases. I like to get to the shopping centre early in the day while it is
still not too busy. I buy all the food
I will need, making sure to keep perishable items like meat cool by putting
them in a cooler bag as soon as they are purchased.
After
coming home and unpacking, I can start the second phase of this day. This is when I peel and chop all my
vegetables except onion and garlic (they smell if cut too early), and trim and
dice the meat. This is all stored in
the refrigerator overnight.
The
last job for Day Two is to freeze any meals that will not require further
cooking. For example, I like to make
Fish Parcels. This is where I place a
boneless fillet of fish on a square of aluminium foil and top it with a little
butter, lemon juice, herbs, garlic, chilli (or whatever
flavorings I
like at the time). The fish is wrapped
in the foil and frozen. To cook it, I
simply place the fish parcels straight from the freezer into a pre-heated oven. I add frozen garlic bread to the oven to
heat at the same time, and prepare a simple salad.
Other ideas for meals that can be frozen
without being cooked first include marinated chicken wings, lamb chops in
marinade, hamburger patties, and so on.
Day
Three – Cooking Day
The
third day of the OAMC is the big one.
But it is made much easier by having so much of the preparation work
done the day before.
I
start the day by cutting up all my onions and garlic and browning them. Then I brown all my meats. I can do several different kinds of meat
simultaneously to save time, but I do them in small batches to avoid
over-crowding the pans.
The
next step depends on what you are making.
Many dishes are fully cooked before being frozen, so they must be
assembled and cooked. Others are only
partially cooked, and are perhaps properly cooked in a crockpot (slow cooker)
after thawing.
But
whatever you are cooking, it all goes into labelled containers in the
refrigerator to thoroughly cool before being frozen. I use rigid plastic containers, because I have been doing this
for years and have bought a few at a time.
A cheaper alternative is to use food-quality plastic bags to line a foil
or plastic box. The bag is popped out
of the box after it is frozen, so the box can be used again.
Using
the meals
Once
you have your freezer full of dinners, you will find there very little effort
required to cook up some pasta to go with the frozen Bolognese Sauce, or some
rice to have with the Beef Curry. Since
I put tomorrow night’s dinner in the refrigerator to thaw each evening, there
is little left to do but re-heat the main course. A salad fresh from the garden is a great accompaniment to any
meal and quick to prepare.
Some
people might be concerned about the possible loss of so much food in the event
of a power failure. The trick is to
keep your freezer as full as possible.
It doesn’t have to be full of food – I put soda bottles half-full of
water in the empty spaces. The idea is
that the more frozen volume there is in the freezer, as opposed to air pockets,
the longer it will take for the contents to thaw if the power goes off. This approach also makes the freezer work
more efficiently, since it will turn on and off less often.
In
summary, by concentrating your time and effort (and mess!) into a big cooking
session once a month, you can have a freezer full of your family’s favourite
meals. This will give you more time,
save you money, and give you peace of mind that your family can eat a proper
meal every evening.
Christine
has written a course on OAMC. This is
available at her web site http://www.geckogully.com/oamc
or write for more details to Gecko Gully, PO Box 1201, Werribee Plaza, Victoria
3030, Australia.
