If you are like most moms around the earth, there never seems to be enough time or energy at the end of immensely days to prepare the nice home cooked meal you would passion to have ready mythical for your familiar. Unfortunately, cooking a good family meal requires both time and energy. A few wise moms have discovered a concept that has become known as once a month or freezer cooking to assist in those nights when time, energy, or both are in short supply.
The thought behind once a month cooking is that for one or two days ( if you prefer to spread the process out over a couple of shorter days rather than one long day of cooking ) of intense culinary effort your family can dine right for an entire month. Many women who have tried this have also discovered that not only does it help by always having something nice and familiar cooked for dinner, but also helps families stay within budget.
Far too many mothers will guiltily raise their hands when asked whether or not theyve ever resorted to fast food or junk food meals simply because they were too tired to cook or were missing one ingredient for a meal and did not feel up to running to the grocery store in order to pick up the missing ingredient. This practice can get inestimable over time and rob your family of some well – earned pleasant money.
There are some important things you must keep in mind if you are being once a month cooking as a way of life for your family. The first thing you need to keep in consciousness is that planning is the key. You bequeath need to set aside a day ( or two ) for the cooking when nothing else is on the calendar. It is simply too difficult to see to all the details if you are planning your cooking event around car pools, soccer games, or dance practices. You need a full day that will be relatively uninterrupted. If you keep a spouse, partner, or family member that can take the children for the day this will be the ideal situation. Otherwise be sure to have plenty of distractions on hand for the little ones or find a street to indenture their help with any chilled, chopping, slicing, dicing, or peeling that may need to be done.
You should also create a thorough entree followed by a list of each and every ingredient you will need. Shopping needs to be done on a date other than when you are planning to cook. This means that you arent likely to rush through the shopping trip and forget something whereas a result. Bring your menu and your list and bend everything you need in one trip whenever possible. You can also save money by planning your meals for the month according to the sales circulars and coupons you posses for the week in order to stretch your budget a little further.
Finally, you need to make sure that you have all the supplies, dishes, and containers you need in order to prepare and store the meals youve prepared properly. You should also make sure that the recipes you are using for your once a month cooking marathon are recipes that freeze well. It is even choice if you have recipes that coupled well therefrom that you can get twice the results from the identical effort.
You should further make sure you are mentally prepared for your marathon cooking session. Beginning with a nice and tidy kitchen is a great opening. Folding card tables make an excellent flat surface for storing things out of the way and freeing up valuable counter space for preparing and assembling the foods that will be prepared. You should also utilize as many appliances in your kitchen as possible for maximum efficiency. Dont limit all cooking to the oven. Find dishes that freeze well and can be prepared in the crock pot or on the range top. Once a month cooking is a challenge but many women will engage it is well worth the effort on those nights when the attention of cooking seems unbearable and the wallet has been stretched to its limit.
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