Meet Once a Month Meals member Lea. She freezer cooks to avoid allergens and food preservatives, but it is also a huge time saver for her large family.
How long have you been once a month cooking? How did you discover OAMM?
I’ve been doing once a month cooking for almost a year, but up until I signed up for membership on your site I was doing all the “work” myself. Finding recipes, making lists, planning prep, etc.
What circumstance pushed you to give once a month cooking a try? How has choosing to OAMC benefitted you and your family?
Trying to balance the nutritional needs of our large family, with the time we have available really pushed me to find better alternatives to coming home and trying to cook every night – that’s exhausting! We’ve all tossed some hot dogs together and grabbed a bag of chips and called it dinner now and again, but by always having a stocked freezer, those nights are now a “treat” for the kids rather than our go-to meal.
What is your favorite OAMM recipe?
So far, the family favorite has been Toni’s Beef and Peppers, super easy on cook day, fast to the table at night and EVERYONE loves it!
For our members, here is the link to the freezer version: Toni’s Beef and Peppers.
What is the number one tip that you would give to a first timer?
Test your recipes first! There is nothing worse than a freezer full of food your family will not eat! When you are just getting started, stick with recipes you know they love and start adding in one or two new ones at a time.
Do you involve other people when you OAMC?
It’s a family affair, my husband and kids all help in some way, carting groceries, washing dishes, packaging food, prep work, you name it.
How is OAMC hard? How does it make your life easy?
A Little bit of background, we have various food allergies: one little guy is allergic to red #40 and most other artificial colors and artificial flavors, I’m allergic to eggs and shrimp, my husband hates chicken, my one daughter is practically vegetarian. My menus get difficult.
So we rarely eat out, we eat mainly whole foods, and everything I cook is from scratch. In between my monthly big cook, I bake bread, make yogurt and sometimes stand in front of my freezer crying because the inventory is frozen to the bottom of a pan of lasagna – again.
It seemed like I was spending all month planning and planning and planning. I’m so happy I found your site! It really made a huge difference. Once I had the prep all laid out and shopping so organized, I was able to put 30 dinners, 30 breakfasts, 20 lunches, 26 sides and 28 snacks in my freezer after my 1 day of prep and 2 days of cooking! Long, long days of cooking but very successful!
Food and mealtimes really became a big deal for our family when we found our two-year-old (he’s four now) had some major problems with red #40, yellow #5, BTHQ, artificial sweeteners and pretty much anything artificial/chemical/preservative. We decided as a family we were going to make all the food changes for everyone.
I can’t describe the changes we’ve seen for all of us since committing to eating healthy food free from all the additives. It was a huge challenge at first, with lots of label reading and discovering many family favorites were no longer allowed. So we cooked more and more.
We felt better about the food we were feeding our family but we had to make the budget work, that’s when I started freezer cooking. A loaf of bread from scratch doesn’t come near the cost of the organic, all natural loaves in the grocery store. Stocking up at the farmer’s market, buying when sales are the best, all of these strategies only work if the food doesn’t go to waste. But big frozen hunks of meat and plain veggies wasn’t working. I needed the meals to be ready to eat (or pretty close) from the freezer.
Getting it to all come together, making time for the cook days, shopping and prep that goes into the cook days, getting the budget to work (because we never seem to have the money when we have the time!), lots and lots of trial and error with the recipes – all of it is worth it when each night our entire family can sit together, eating a meal that’s healthy and safe. I admit, having a variety makes it a lot easier to accommodate everyone’s particular crazy. (Who doesn’t like chicken…geez!)