Stop the “What’s for dinner?” Insanity!

25th October 298/365 by fifikins on Flickr

I don’t know about you, but the constant question of “What’s for dinner?” drives me batty!! That’s why I try my best to cook ahead. That’s what I’m calling it, anyway. Lots of people know it as freezer meals or once-a-month cooking, though. Working full-time, I don’t really feel that I have time to do the once-a-month bit. That and, a month down the road, I may not want what I planned for that night’s meal.

How’d I get here?

My first job in Birmingham involved a 45 minute commute, which made for early mornings and, if I waited until I got home to start dinner, very late nights. With a toddler, that just wasn’t cutting it. I started deciding in the morning what to fix for dinner that night and would have it at least partially ready before we left for work, then would finish it when we got home. That helped. As our daughter got older, I did eventually start planning menus and doing my shopping list based on that. I also discovered “quick” meals and got to the point that, if it couldn’t  be on the table within 30 minutes, I didn’t cook it during the week. Considering how much I enjoy playing in the kitchen, that got old. So I started digging around the internet and happened upon once-a-month cooking.

It can be fairly time consuming at first and involves a good deal of planning and organizing. While I’ve gotten better at that over the years, I still stumble from time to time. The key is to get back up. If you ever start menu planning – even if it’s just weekly meals – KEEP THEM. I have mine in a folder. I know others who have binders. Once you have a few weeks’ meals planned, you just pull from those and maybe toss in a new recipe now and then for variety. I’m considering using a little spreadsheet I found over at Vertex42 for my meal planning (Yes, I’m an Excel geek). Entering the info will be tedious, but once it’s in – man, it looks handy! It not only has drop downs to select meals, but will also create a shopping list!

How do you get there?

Do a little internet research. There are a ton of sites out there that teach about freezer meals and once-a-month cooking. I actually do one to two weeks at a time instead of a whole month. Working Monday-Friday, weekends are really my only shot at shopping and cooking.

• Pick a night to plan your menu. Sales ads typically come out on Wednesdays.
• Once you have your menu, make your grocery list from that.
• Go shopping, preferably with no kids.
• The day before cooking day, get your kitchen ready. Have the recipes out and ready, have containers ready, have dishes and utensils ready, do the prep work – cutting, chopping, grating, etc.
• The day of cooking, work on one meat-type at a time.
• If  you don’t have a lot of time during the week to reheat a fully cooked item, just prepare it to the point of cooking. Casseroles, for example: you can mix the ingredients together and put it in a gallon freezer bag. To serve, just thaw it, pour it into a casserole dish, top it with whatever topping you like and bake – done in about 30 minutes!

Other tips

• Keep freezer bags and freezer containers on hand, as well as a good marker for labeling.
• Clean dishes and utensils as you go – it’s handy to have a sink of hot, soapy water standing by.
• Get a good pair of kitchen scissors – they’re AWESOME for cutting meat into chunks quickly.
• I also recommend one of these for quickly chopping or dicing practically anything (admittedly, ham was messy to clean, but it worked!).
• Still not keen on cutting and chopping? Lots of foods come already cut up. If you don’t mind the expense, it can be worth it.
• Got something soupy? Put your freezer bag in a large coffee can so that the top of the bag folds over the can’s edge. Pour in the soup with next to no mess. Smaller bags? A tall plastic cup works well.
• Rotisserie chickens – cut them up and serve with bone-in or take the meat off the bones and you have meat for whatever dish you need it for.
• Another way to get started on this is to cook extras. If you’re making a meatloaf one night, go ahead and make two. Eat one, freeze the other. Do this enough times, and your freezer will be stocked before you know it!

I’ve now gotten to where I can do this using my own menus and recipes. If you’re not sure how to get started, though, or how to combine all the steps from your different recipes, it may be a good idea to start off using some menus from books or sites specifically aimed at once-a-month cooking. The two books I have are Once-a-Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson & Mary Beth Langerborg and Frozen Assets by Deborah Taylor-Hough. They include monthly menus, two-week menus, and even some holiday menus. The recipes are easy and, so far, we’ve yet to find one we don’t like. Granted, if a recipe calls for something we don’t care for, we don’t cook it. My daughter won’t eat eggs, so I ditch the egg dishes. My husband’s allergic to shell-fish, so… you get the point. And just so you know, I get no proceeds whatsover from any of the products I’ve recommended in this post. These are items I have and use and love. Found something I’ve linked to for a better price somewhere else? Go for it! Found something else you love? Go for it and please share it.

Bottom Line

If you’re trying to come up with a way to do homecooked meals more often, whether it’s for budget reasons or health reasons, give this a try. Don’t give up on it if it doesn’t quite work. Figure out where it went wrong and see if you can re-vamp it for your situation. Enjoy!

Tags: freezer meals, Meal Planning, once-a-month cooking

Choosing 6 for 2010

Why is there a picture of a cluttered countertop? (Trust me, it’s a countertop.)  I’m so glad you asked!

Over on my links page is a blog called Zen Habits. Leo Babauta, the guy who runs it, has created another blog called 6 Changes and says that this method is “the antidote to the failure of New Year’s Resolutions”. I’ve read through the method and have chosen my 6 that will be worked on through the course of this year. He says to make it as public as possible, so here goes!  The first one I’m going to work on is *drumroooollllll*  Clutter!  (the crowd goes wild!!). Or not. My friends and family will probably laugh. To be honest, part of me is also thinking, “Ha! Yeah… right.” and “Good luck with that…”  I have a dichotomy going on in my noggin, after all. Look at my countertops and other open spaces and it’s a mess. Open up a cabinet drawer and it’s (usually) organized and neat. So, for the sake of specificity, my goal is stated thusly: I will de-clutter one room of my house each week (and keep it de-cluttered)!

Each goal is to take two months and I have 8 rooms in my house (I’m considering our two bathrooms as “one”).  I decided to start with clutter because, honestly, it’s the one driving me the craziest right now. I want to eat healthier and lose weight and will be working on that some, but my primary focus during the first two months of the year will be de-cluttering.

I’ll be updating my progress here, obviously.

He also stresses the importance of enjoying the journey. If I don’t enjoy what I’m doing, it’s doubtful that it will stick. I suppose this is where I let my inner obsessive-compulsive out. When I have cleaned a room, I LOVE the way it looks. It’s so neat. Everything is in its proper spot. I can’t explain the aesthetic feeling I get when I look at a neat and well put together room. I love it! My chest feels like it could pop and I want to freeze that moment forever. But without fail, within a few weeks, I get lazy and just set something down instead of putting it away. Or, I see that someone else has put something down instead of putting it away and, for some insane reason, I see that as permission. That one innocent little item leads to the path of destruction. Okay, slight exaggeration, but it’s not long after that “one item” appears that the rest of the room is suddenly cluttered again.

In an attempt to thwart that, I also have come across a plan that allows one to do a quick “clean-up” for each room of a house. It involves having all the tools together, so that’ll be part of my journey to the goal – putting together the right tools.

In one of his posts on minimalism, Leo says to look at your possessions and determine if what you have is truly important. “Whittle it down until you’re left with the minimum for the life you want to lead.”  So, each day, I will go in whatever room I’m working on in a given week and look for things that are not needed and get rid of them. I’m planning to do one section of the room each day (another option is setting a time limit, but I know I won’t want to quit in the middle of a section if time is up). So, I’ll clear out a section and divide it into keep, trash, give away. He suggests another box for items I’m not sure about: box it up, label it, if I haven’t opened it in 6 months, give it away or trash it.

I also need to figure out a trigger – something I do every day – weekdays AND weekends. Why? Because if I plan to add that task, I’m likely to let it slide when things get busy. If the task is tied to something I already do, it’s more likely to stick.  That said, I’ve also recently discovered a little site called FlyLady. This lady is ÜBER organized and I can SO see myself going there.