Meet OAMM Member, Toni. She is a busy homeschooling mom who has found freezer cooking saves her many hours shopping and cooking and keeps family from eating out. 
How long have you been once a month cooking?
I have been doing once a month cooking off and on for a couple of years.
How did you discover OAMM?
I discovered OAMM while searching for recipes on Pinterest.
What circumstance pushed you to give once a month cooking a try?
The reason that I decided to give once a month cooking a try is that at the end of the day I’m too tired to spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking dinner, so our family spends a lot of time eating out. Once a month cooking allows my family to eat at home, with the benefits of eating out. My family can eat dinner on time without me standing in the kitchen for hours making it.
How has choosing to OAMC benefited you and your family?
OAMC benefits my family and me in many ways. One way is, I spend less hours in the kitchen per month. By spending less time in the kitchen I have more time to spend with my family. Another way OAMC benefits me is having a variety of meals to choose from. I also waste less food with OAMC. I don’t like to grocery shop, and so I was trying to buy enough food for one or two weeks at a time. A lot of my fresh foods would go bad before I got around to making a meal with them.
The main way that once a month cooking has helped my family is with our budget and health. We were spending a lot of money eating out each week, and let’s face it, eating out isn’t the healthiest way to eat. With meals in the freezer, already put together, making dinner can be as simple as walking to the freezer, choosing a meal, and then heating it up! It is just as quick and easy as driving to a restaurant, ordering, and waiting for them to cook it for me, but a lot cheaper and healthier.
What is your favorite OAMM recipe?
I’m still working through the different recipes on the site, but so far my family has enjoyed every meal that we’ve tried. I have not selected a favorite one yet.
Give us a brief introduction to your kitchen.
The best way to describe my kitchen is, small. My house has an open floor plan, but the area designated to the kitchen is small. I have an island that I love, but my counter space is limited.
Before the tips that OAMM sent to me in my email, my set up on cooking day was a disaster. I was piling up food on top of every flat surface that I could find. I lost food to the floor more than once. However, after reading the tip emails, my next cooking day should be a lot easier. One of the tips is to invest in a fold up table of some sort to maximize “counter space,” I already own a little “game day” fold up table, I pull it out occasionally when homeschooling my three girls, yet it never crossed my mind to bring it out on cooking day to maximize my “counter space”.
I have a Kitchen Aide Mixer that is one of my pride and joys, and I enjoy “gadgets” that make my kitchen experience easier. One of my dreams is to own a stone oven, but until then, I have a convection oven. I very seldom use the convection feature because I don’t know how to convert the cooking times.
I like to cook with fresh, organic, non GMO foods, and I enjoy cooking, but I’m a morning person so when dinner rolls around I’m ready to crawl into bed instead of stand in the kitchen for hours preparing meals.
What is the number one tip that you would give to a first timer?
The number one tip that I would give to a first timer is to start out small. I suggest doing 2 weeks of freezer meals (a Mini Menu) for your first time and letting OAMM do the prep work for you. I have been doing freezer meals off and on for a few years, but each time the prep work was very time consuming. I would spend hours searching for recipes, then creating a huge grocery list to go with all of them. In the end, I spent more time doing freezer meals than I would have with every day cooking.
I signed up for the OAMM “trial” menu (sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of this page to receive yours!) and printed it up. I was instantly sold. So, before I even cooked my trial recipes, I went back in and signed up for the full benefits of OAMM. I did my first cooking day yesterday, and I did 8 meals in about 3 hours. I was thrilled at how smoothly everything went and that all I had to do was print up the instructions and grocery list, decide what day I was going to shop, and what day I would cook. The schedule made my cooking time flow smoothly from one meal to the next.
We have eaten two of the meals so far and my whole family has loved both of them.
Tell us about a time when you experienced an OAMC or cooking fail.
I have had more than my share of failed cooking times, but there is one experience I have repeated several times. I created my meal list, shopped for it, but by the end of the week, the food had gone bad for the last meal or two on my list. I would be standing in my kitchen with everything ready to make the meal, sometimes I had already started making the meal, only to realize that I didn’t have all that I needed to make the meal I had planned. So I’d pack up the family and head to a restaurant. I already spent money on food to make the meal, and then I turned around and paid to go out to eat instead. Double waste of money!
Toni got these mushrooms from a local farm. She is looking forward to receiving a kit to grow her own!
Do you involve other people when you OAMC?
When I once a month cook I like to involve my kids. I can give them each a vegetable to chop up for me. It gives us extra family time and helps my prep day go a lot faster. Next time I’m going to have my oldest daughter be more involved. I want my girls to know how to OAMC. It will make their lives so much easier.
How is OAMC hard?
Before I found OAMM, the hardest part of freezer cooking was trying to write up a grocery list and figure out how much of each item I needed to buy. It was also difficult to figure out how to prep ingredients and which recipe to make first. Now OAMM does that for me, so the only hard part is prep day and cooking day. My back, legs, and feet hurt by the end of each day. I keep a stool in the kitchen, and I sit down as often as I can. I can sit and chop. My island faces my living room so I keep the movies going all day. Both of those things make it easier.
How does it make your life easy?
OAMC makes my life easier because, once cooking day is over, I have a whole month of easy to make, homemade, meals. It’s like buying pre-made freezer meals from the store, but A LOT cheaper and a whole lot healthier!
