Meet OAMM Member Joanna. She is a veteran freezer cook, but since learning how autism impacts her family it has become an even more important part of her routine.
How long have you been freezer cooking? How did you discover OAMM?
I’ve been freezer cooking for about 8 years since the site was called Once a Month Mom. I think I first saw OAMM in a home maker or organizing type of magazine.
What circumstance pushed you to give OAMC a try? How has choosing OAMC benefited you and your family?
When I started freezer cooking it was all about having an easy dinner while juggling infants and toddlers. I have 3 children now ages 11, 8, and 6. The real impact of OAMC has come over the last 4 years when we learned that my two sons have autism or what used to be known as Aspergers Syndrome. Then just this past March, at age 41, I learned that I have autism too. My boys need a lot of support at the end of the day when all their senses are over stimulated and this can really impact making dinner on time. Also as I learned more about how autism affects my adult, life OAMC took on a new importance. There are several challenges related to dinner time that my brain is not wired to make efficiently: making choices from a lot of options (i.e. what is for dinner), getting organized (i.e. how do I plan ahead to cook), and having an effective idea of time (i.e. how long will dinner take to prepare). With a few tweaks to my cooking day, OAMM addresses all of these things and more.
What is your favorite OAMM recipe resource?
It has to be the menu swap feature. I consider myself an adventurous eater, but my three children are not. They like what they like and don’t mind eating the same 6 or 8 things at all meal times all month long. The Swappable feature in Menu Builder makes it really easy to build a menu out of everything they love AND sneak in a few new recipes that are just for me to try.
Give us a brief introduction to your kitchen?
Over the years that I’ve been freezer cooking, I’ve lived with kitchens large and small. Currently we have a lot of sink space, so I can set all my OAMM ingredients in a corner out of everyone’s way and grab things as needed on my cooking day. In the past I had a tabbed binder for my cooking paperwork. These days we have a laptop in the kitchen, so I save the paper and refer to everything online only.
My favorite appliances are probably my Instant Pot and my Vitamix. The Instant Pot is a steamer, pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker all in one and it has settings for poultry, stew, beans, and grains. It definitely helps get some of the cooking prep done fast! Also when you struggle with attention and distraction the way I do, it is always nice to have a tool that will cook everything to perfection even if you wander off and forget about it! The Vitamix preps chopped items much much faster than I could by hand. OAMM has some delicious smoothie recipes. We definitely use the Vitamix every week for smoothies and sneaking vegetables into the kids!
What number one tip would you share with a first timer?
It is OK to start small! Pick 1-2 of recipes that look good to eat and make those rather than a full menu your first time out. Find out what your cooking day style is when you cook on a small scale. You will probably make mistakes and forget ingredients at the store and that’s OK! Trust me we have all done it.
Tell me about a time when you had an OAMC fail.
For our family of particular eaters that would probably come from making a full menu of foods my kids have never tried before. I have done this. Another part of Aspergers is not being able to pick up on social cues about what other people would like. So in my head although I LOVED everything, and it came on a self contained list and checked all my mental boxes on how to make dinner GREAT! I didn’t pick up on what my kids wanted and ended up making separate dinners for them even on days when I had amazing OAMM dinners all hot and ready to go. The lesson for me: let your freezer cooking style evolve and use the amazing OAMM tools to customize the menus and make special menus with all your favorites!
Do you involve other people when you OAMC?
Normally it is something I do on my own. However there have definitely been times where a friend or a neighbor has needed a hot dinner because of a new baby, or a death in the family, or illness, or moving in to a new place. That is one of my favorite ways to use OAMC. Food is incredibly healing I think. I love being able to take a pan of something tasty out of my freezer and share it with someone I love.
Way to Freeze it Forward, Joanna!
How is OAMC hard? How does it make your life easy?
The challenges I have had with OAMC in the past have had more to do with having autism (and not knowing it) than anything else. For example, cooking days can be long and sometimes when you are on the autism spectrum it is hard to stay focused or follow a lot of steps, or make a lot of choices without feeling tired or frustrated. Ingredients are wasted, big cooking days are abandoned mid way through, and you can end up feeling a bit disappointed in yourself.
The more I have learned about being an adult on the spectrum, the more I have been able to make OAMC work for me on both cooking and serving days. For example I don’t usually cook a full menu as shown on the website. I choose 4-6 things that make everyone happy, and that’s it! I have multiple cooking days instead of just one. I cook a couple of items a day start to finish so I am not tired or overwhelmed, and I feel successful seeing my freezer fill up little by little with pans of yummy food. I tend to pick recipes that are no cook or very easy assembly. I also count how many days my husband will be working and not home for dinner in a month and only cook that number of meals. Last month he worked 16 days. So I made sure we had frozen foods for 16 dinners. When he is home he loves to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner himself, and I am happy to let him! A small selection of dinners makes it much easier for the kids and me when we need to decide what we want to eat at night.
Last month was the first time I tried OAMC with all of these tweaks that I’ve learned over the last few months and it worked perfectly. There were zero complaints about dinner, and zero nights we ate too late or just had cereal because I couldn’t decide what to eat and get everything organized in time!
If you were going to make a custom mini menu of favorites, what would they be?
Log in to your Pro Membership to view the freezer versions of these recipes in Menu Builder and create your own custom menus!