Once A Month Cooking...or my version of it.

I've been reading blogs for a while now and I've come across "Once a month cooking" a few times. I HATE cooking and I thought this could be just what I needed. So after reading some more I found this blog. I decided that this is going to be one of my new goals for 2010. I need to get dinner cooked at least 5 nights a week instead of waiting until the last minute. I find that when I wait I get frustrated because I'm unprepared...don't have a clue, no meat defrosted, no plan. You've been there. It sucks. One hour til dinner and I'm stalling because I didn't make a plan! I'm done with that!

I'm not sure I'm doing it right, it looks like the OAMC (once a month cooking) mom's seem to pick recipes that build on each other. Like ravioli one night, baked spaghetti another, tacos one night, then burritos another. You get the idea. My plan...not so well thought out. I went through my recipe binder and picked out 30 recipes that I thought looked tasty and not too difficult. They don't necessarily build on each other, but it will work. I wrote out all the recipe ingredients and made myself a shopping list, then off to the store I went!

The general idea is to do all your cooking and prep work in a few hours on one day. For me that won't be the case. When I got home from the store, hubby and I started on the prep work. He sliced and diced all the veggies and I shredded up all the blocks of cheese. Granted, purchasing shredded cheese would have been easier, but not as affordable. Today, Lou cooked all the meat. We bought chicken leg quarters instead of boneless skinless chicken breasts because it's the more cost effective option. He boiled them, took the skin off and cut them all up into bite sized pieces. Then he cooked up all the ground turkey. (we use ground turkey instead of ground beef because we're trying to limit our beef consumption.) Here's what I have now:

I labeled all my freezer bags with the title of the dish, so I can easily find it. My meals are not all prepared ahead of time like they do with OAMC, but the with the prep work being completed I think this will save me much time and peace of mind.

Tonight we had Chicken Bruschetta Bake. It was super easy too!

So tasty! I think it may quickly become a family favorite. So join me in my journey to get dinner prepared for the family each and every night! I will no longer face the frenzy of dinnertime.