Cooking TipsOnce A Month Cooking Tips
Modern women are more than just housewives, housekeepers and cooks. They want to have successful careers, enjoy their lives, have more time for themselves. But that doesn"t mean to affect the way they care of their families. Nowadays, there are plenty of ways to make everyday chores easier and more time-sufficient. All of them have their cons and pros. I don"t want to dwell upon fast and junk food meals, health issues and eating out expenses - everyone knows about it. I just want to share my own experience on cooking time-saving tips. Have you heard of OAMC? Once A Month Cooking. Sometimes it"s referred to as bulk cooking. Or freezer cooking - call it however you want. If you adopt this simple technique, you will only have to cook once a month, literally. And every other day you may enjoy delicious, freshly-made meals without spending time for cooking. Take your meal out of the fridge, put it into the oven for 5 minutes - voila! ready! And this is nothing like pre-cooked microwave meals you buy in supermarkets - high in fat, carbs and devastating for your digestion. They are real home-made meals, both healthy and tasty.
But there are several things you need to know before you start your first once-a-month cooking session. You see, just having good freezer recipes is not enough for successful freezer cooking. Believe me, I know it. When I decided to give it a try for the first time, believe me or not, my session turned into a real nightmare. So, over months of trial and error, I developed a number of rules for once a month cooking sessions.
1. Since you cook about 30 meals during a single day, decide on a day that you can devote to cooking only. If an entire day is not possible though, consider cooking at night, when your house is quiet.
2. Build a monthly meal plan that will let you know exactly what dishes you need to cook, how much and what ingredients you are going to need for that.
3. Plan your grocery list. This step is absolutely crucial, because even if you are not a list-maker and usually do without them, once a month cooking implies extended shopping lists, and leaving something behind can mess up your whole cooking day.
4. Do your shopping. Here everything is pretty much clear. But don"t forget to buy freezer bags, foil or containers for your food.
5. Cook the meals. Prepare the recipes of every meal you are going to cook, decide on the order of the meals (it"s better to write the plan down), combine the same steps for various meals: chopping vegetables, boiling eggs etc.
6. Leave each meal to cool down fully before freezing it.
7. Freeze the meals. There are several methods for freezing meals: plastic or foil wraps, freezer bags, reusable containers, vacuum sealers. The latter is the most preferable, since it prevents freeze burns and keeps your food taste fresh for long periods of time. When packing the meals into wraps or bags, make sure your food is fully covered and sealed, so no air can get inside.