Meet Beverly

OAMM member Beverly cut out processed food and streamlined her cooking process by using the freezer, so that cooking didn’t take up every weekend.

How long have you been once a month cooking? How did you discover OAMM?

I’ve been doing this for a relatively short time – just since August 2014. I saw a post from the 100 Days of Real Food blog/Facebook page, and it sounded like just what I needed.

What circumstance pushed you to give once a month cooking a try? How has choosing to OAMC benefited you and your family?

I needed to switch my diet over to unprocessed food when I discovered that I had an allergy to a common food additive. Cooking so much of my own food from scratch proved to be time-consuming. I really needed help with meal planning. I work full-time, and sometimes I put in long hours, and I don’t get home until 8:00 pm. I’m too tired and too hungry to cook a whole-food meal at that time. I also need some good whole-food lunches to bring into work with me since I can no longer eat in the cafeteria. I really needed to spend a lot of time planning what to cook and when to cook it. Most of my weekends were spent searching for recipes that didn’t call for anything prepackaged and deciding what to cook. By the time I got to the store to buy food, it was typically 3pm on Saturday, and I had just enough time to get the food home and put away before cooking supper. That gave me only 1 day a week of free time to do anything else and much of that was spent prepping lunches for the week. I felt trapped.

The picture in the banner above shows Beverly’s grandchildren. She’s now able to have them come stay for the weekend without having to worry about when to cook!

By doing OAMC, I have been able to spend much less time planning and deciding what to cook. Now I just look at the Whole Foods Menu. I don’t have the stamina for a full menu, so I take advantage of my Pro Membership and trim it down to 7 or 8, swapping out meals that don’t sound appealing to my husband or myself and making sure I have the right mix of breakfast, lunches and dinners. It took a few attempts to learn what the right mix of recipes was for me. My first attempt I didn’t pay much attention to how much skill or time any one recipe would take and it was all new to me, so even with only 7 recipes, I felt overwhelmed and fatigued. But the oddest thing happened.  A few days later, I found myself eager to do it again. And I really liked having the food planning and cooking for most of the month already done.

By January, I had figured out the right mix and type of recipes that work for me, and I was able to complete a big cooking day without feeling overwhelmed or fatigued. Then in February, my sister had a medical emergency. She lives alone and was unable to shop for food or prepare a meal herself for a couple of weeks after she returned home from the hospital. Fortunately, I had a freezer full of food and much of it was separated out into individual portions. I was able to bring some good home-cooked meals to her until she recovered. That was a big help and a big relief for both of us.

What is your favorite OAMM resource?

I think the recipe swap feature is most important to me because it allows me the flexibility in getting the right mix of recipes. My husband is picky and won’t eat fish or certain vegetables, and I need to find the right mix of recipe types so having that flexibility is essential.

Give us a brief introduction to your kitchen.

My house is a split-ranch style home. The kitchen is on the small-to-medium side with very little counter space. There isn’t enough room for a permanent island, so I decided to get a kitchen island on wheels with a drop leaf on it so it would give me more counter space on big cooking days, but it could take up less space with the leaf dropped down against a wall the rest of the time. I haven’t spent much time setting up for a big cooking day, but I would like to. Doing the whole foods menu means a lot more prep time with the food, and by the time I’m done with the planning, shopping and prepping the food, I don’t have much energy left for things I’d like to do like setting out the non-perishable foods and spices or staging the pots and pans and other equipment I will be using on the dining room table. I haven’t given up, though. I plan to get more efficient with the prep work as time goes on.

For me, a separate freezer is a must because I need to make a lot of things from scratch instead of using pre-packaged items due to my allergy. I have jars of chicken broth in there, different types of home-made sauces, etc. that I use for ingredients. That takes up a lot of room.

My favorite appliance is my slow cooker. I always choose at least one slow-cooker recipe, and I start that at the beginning of a big cooking day so I don’t have to worry about what to do for supper that night.

What is the number one tip that you would give to a first timer?

Since my experience is with the whole foods menu, I will answer from that perspective. First – start small. Try a mini-menu first. If you feel ambitious and have a pro membership, try a full menu but trim down the number of recipes to half. To get back to a full number of meals, try doubling the number of servings if your family is small enough to do this without having to use extra pans or separate batches. My son is grown and out of the house, so I’m only cooking for my husband and myself. I love having leftovers to bring into work for lunch, so doubling the servings works great for us. Then examine the recipes closely. If you’re doing whole foods, avoid having too many add-ons for your first big cooking day – especially anything involving dough – until you gain more experience.

Our system already doubles each recipe, but you can make the most of a shorter menu by increasing your serving sizes as Beverly suggested to give you extra meals from your leftovers. That is as long as you don’t mind eating the same thing a few times a month. 

Tell us about a time when you experienced an OAMC or cooking fail.

I was near the end of a big cooking day, and I had a ziploc baggie with chopped onions in it. I was thinking I had only one recipe left that needed chopped onions. I was tired and as a shortcut, I dumped the whole baggie in without measuring. Then I got to the next recipe and realized my mistake. The new prep list feature that lists what recipes need a particular item will go a long way in preventing me from making that type of mistake again.

Do you involve other people when you OAMC? 

Just my husband. He contributes by mostly staying out of my way, but when I take a break for lunch, he goes in and cleans whatever mess I made up to that point. If I need to have some mixing bowls or measuring cups or pans cleaned, he takes care of that for me. And then at the end of the day, he cleans the rest of the mess I made. It’s great having someone else do the cleaning. That is my least favorite part of cooking.

How is OAMC hard? How does it make your life easy?

The hard part is finding the time to do it. Since I need to do the whole foods menu, the entire process takes up an entire weekend, and I sometimes have other family events planned for some of my weekend time. I have to plan around those other events.

When I am able to get in a big cooking weekend, the rest of the month is much less stressful, and I have time to enjoy other things on the weekends since I’m not spending all that time planning/prepping every single weekend. I have meals in the freezer, ready to go. The only planning necessary is remembering to take something out of the freezer to thaw.

Beverly’s Mini Menu Suggestions

Log into your OAMM account to view the freezer versions in Menu Builder. 

• Sweet Potato Sausage Breakfast Casserole (freezer)
• Low Histamine Springtime Salmon Asparagus and Quinoa Salad (freezer)
• Spinach Mac and Cheese Cups (freezer)
• Creamy Cauliflower and Ham Casserole (freezer)
• Slow Cooker Thai Beef (freezer)
• Kale Hash (freezer)