30 Day Cooking – What If It Isn’t For You?

Written by Hillbilly Housewife

I fell sure you have heard of 30 day cooking, or Once A Month (OAM) Cooking? The basic idea is that plan, shop for and cook all your dinners for the month at once. You then freeze the majority of the meals and thaw, heat and serve them throughout the rest of the month.

I tried this once, and I absolutely hated it. It was exhausting. It took me an entire day to plan the meals and find recipes that would lend themselves to this method of cooking. Shopping and then putting everything up took another day and the tired day was 14 hours of nonstop cooking and cleaning … Needless to say I won’t be doing that again.

But, with that said, I absolutely love freezer cooking. If you are new to the concept, Nicole wrote an excellent article called “Freezer Cooking – What is That All About“. Like me, Nicole isn’t too big on 30 day cooking, but we both love the idea of cooking in batches and freezing meals to enjoy later.

In my ebook “Freezer Cooking Made Simple”, I go over the various methods of freezer cooking. I’ll give you a brief overview here:

Once A Month or 30 Day Cooking

As mentioned above, you cook and freeze an entire month’s worth of meals in about two days. Most of the time you will be cooking the main dinner entree. You defrost and heat it at night and cook a few side dishes to go along with your main meal. For example, you may have a meatloaf ready to go. In that case you may heat some green beans and make a batch of instant mashed potatoes to go with it.

Once A Week Cooking

This works exactly like the 30 day cooking ,but you limit yourself to making the meals for one week instead.

Of course you can also do any other time frame (i.e. once every two weeks). If you’re new to freezer cooking and want to try the “Once A” method, I recommend you start with something short like a week to get a feel for things.

Batch Cooking

Batch cooking is my favorite way to freezer cook. It’s very simple. When you make a meatloaf, a casserole or a pot of stew, simply make a double, triple or even quadruple batch and then enjoy one portion for dinner and freezer the rest.

Cool Along Another Meal

This method works well when you know you’re going to spend a fair amount of time stiring pots anyway. For example, if you’re cooking beef stew, you may cook a pot of chili along side it and then allow it to cool and freeze it after you enjoyed your stew for dinner.

My point is, don’t give up on freezer cooking just because Once A Month or 30 Day Cooking didn’t work for you. There are various other ways to cook some meals and stash them in the freezer for later use. I’d like to invite you to order a copy of Freezer Cooking Made Simple and give it a try.

Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife

Tags: