Sunday, November 7, 2010

Brilliant.

Ashely Ann is a mommy of 4 kids (3 boys and a girl), and on her recent blog post on Under the Sycamore she wrote about how she is not a fan of cooking... so her and her friends started ONE MONTH COOKING.

She writes:

"How do I get a lot done in a day…I don’t cook everyday. We eat dinner as a family every night, but very rarely am I in the kitchen preparing it that day. A few of my friends and I have started cooking once a month. It is wonderful! We each pick 4 recipes and prepare them to go in the freezer. Then we trade. So we each end up with about 16 different meals and a few sides that are all great in the freezer. In the evenings I just have to pull something out of the freezer, let it thaw overnight and throw it in the oven or crockpot the next day. It makes my afternoons and evenings so much smoother and the amount of money we save is crazy.

There are all kinds of Once a Month cooking websites, recipes, tools online. You can get menus and schedules and be very Type A about it. For my friends, we have similar sized families, and kids that are the same ages…so our recipe choices and sizes are the same. We just pick stuff that will freeze well, make it and pick a week to trade. It makes me happy.

I usually pick one day to do my shopping and cooking. This month I finished all 16 meals (4 recipes x 4) in about 2.5 hours….and after I trade with friends I will have 16 great meals and will have saved a ton of money."


It's actually pretty brilliant. I think I'm going to start praying for mommies to do this with.. :)


You can read more about it here.