Yes, I am trying hard to reduce the amount of time and effort I spend in the kitchen preparing and cooking meals even though I have to cook from scratch almost all the time. Sounds impossible? Ha! I think so too! 🙁 But the amount of time I spend thinking, preparing and then cooking daily is ridiculous.
I am an ardent believer in Menu Planning. And I usually do mine once a week so that I can adjust and change it according to our ever-changing schedule. But although I love what Menu Planning does for me I still hate doing it weekly. So I decided to just bite the bullet and plan a full month’s worth of meals, just bearing in mind that I need a slow cooker or crockpot meals on certain days as I may have to pick up a certain child up from outside activities.
Once a Month Cooking Re-Explored
Then I re-explored once a month cooking (OAMC) again with the hopes of actually being able to cook and freeze a whole month’s meals in two days – one to shop and prepare and one to cook and freeze. But just reading about it made me tired! Plus imagine trying to buy up all the meat we need in a month! I think the butcher will faint! So, no go.
Cook Once, Eat Twice
So I re-explored cooking once, eating twice (or thrice) instead. It is more appealing to me in many ways.
In a nutshell, you cook one single meal but you double (or triple) the portion so that you get to eat one portion immediately that day or night and freeze the other portion/s for another day’s meal. If you consistently do that, you will soon build up a stash of freezer meals with much less effort compared to setting aside one day to grocery shop, and another day to cook with OAMC. This method sounded even more fantastic to me now. I had done it on a small scale previously but only for one or 2 meals so far. It was helpful for days when I am too tired/busy/hot to cook.
Spurred by that positive experience, this time I am trying to freeze a whole month’s meals (including breakfast, lunch and dinner, ie. 90 meals! Having experimented again, I think for us, marinating and then freezing the food raw is better. No one likes thawed and reheated food here 🙁 Yeah, I have fussy eaters.
Have any of you done this before successfully and for the long term?
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2 Comments on Cook Once, Eat Twice
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Great job Serene in trying out all that with such patience 🙂
Ive tried cooking an extra portion, eating on the day, freezing the rest for another day as well. Mainly meat dishes.
Freezing doesnt work too well with veges as they go really soggy with defrosting and re-heating.
I realised freezing works better for curry or gravy based types of food. They seem to hold longer with the spices . Even if you refrigerated them and have them on the alternate day.
So all I do sometimes is just cook up a veg and any other dish and have with stocked up reheated meat dish (which i find is the more time consuming dish to make)
Aubergines seem ok with freezing though.
🙂
Freezing and veggies – yeah. We found out the hard way. Even carrots taste funny defrosted! Freezing raw works best for us at the moment. Oh and only dh and my oldest will eat aubergines 😉