I think the idea is to do 10 meals x 3. 30 different meals? You might as well cook every day I reckon! The idea of OAMC is to leverage your effort. It takes a minimal amount of effort to double or triple a soup recipe and have leftovers, for example, but making 3 different soups takes longer.
I think many people who use OAMC fully build up a store of frozen food over a number of months. Most recipes can last 3 months or so in the freezer, so if you made 3x10 this month and only "ate from the freezer" 3 or 4 times a week you would have around 15 meals still leftover. So the next month when you do 3x10 you would have 45 meals in your stock pile. And so on.
ahhh copy....that sounds better....we have about 80 meals in rotation, so I don't think DH would cop 4 of the same meal in a month.
but that definitley sounds better.
And I reckon one day of baking for the month would be worth it too (whether it be the same day or a different day).
Ooo, this is a great idea! At least to have a ffew meals in the freezer for those can't be bothered days. Being a SAHM, I don't mind cooking most days, but there are those days from hell that you just soo don't feel like it. Plus, when you are heavily pg in the middle of summer....and with a newborn and 2 other monkeys! Hmm, may have to look into getting a chest freezer methinks. I wouldn't fit much into our little freezer.
I haven't looked into the links yet, but in regards to doing different meals couldn't you do basic sort of things, like say a bolegnaise/tomato style sauce and then use it for different things, liek tp put on pasta, make a shepards pie sort of meal, put onto baked potatoes, put it into some puff pastry to make savoury things...ect!
What an awesome idea, what a shame DH refuses flat out to eat anything that has been cooked and then frozen- his mum is the same so thats where he gets it from but its SOOOOOO frustrating.
I might do the baking though, that sounds great and the kids and I and my dad will eat it LOL
Thanks for all that info roryrory, this is something I've been thinking of trying. I already do this with baking and I usually bake once a fortnight and then freeze.
I'm going to give it a go for dinner meals as soon I get some more containers. Not sure if I can manage a months worth due to lack of freezer space but I think I could start small and then build up! Just have to convince DH to buy me a chest freezer!
This thread inspired me, (thanks for the recent bump saslia!!) and I am doing this today!!! Not going for a whole months worth just yet but I'm making 5 different dishes plus tonights dinner!! So far I have two done and one in the slow cooker (= 11 seperate family meals) and I'm about to do tonights tea now which will do two nights. The other two need the slow cooker so I might do another one this arvo/tonight after the current SC one is done and then maybe the last one tomorrow morning with plans to eat half of that for dinner tomorrow and freeze the other half. So all up I should get about 14-15 meals in the freezer today/tomorrow
So far the biggest challenge is getting the food inside the freezer bags (as opposed to dribbling down the outside) LOL and rearranging the freezers to fit it all in!
We are kind of doing this at the moment. It started before DS2 was born, and we wanted a big stockpile of meals in the freezer, but we're finding it is so much more economical to cook in big batches and freeze portion sizes. We only have three dishes at the moment, but DH is doing a new batch most weekends, so we're building up the variety.
We have a bolognese and two types of curry - we just heat up the frozen meal and then cook either rice and pappadams, or pasta - takes 10 mins. DH has also made pizza bases in our breadmaker and frozen those, so they're ready for toppings.
We freeze the meals in the foil takeaway containers with paper lids - from the supermarket. One container does a meal for both DH and me because we pad it out with pasta or rice.
I love it, so much more convenient than trying to find time to cook - our evenings are insane so it's one less thing to worry about. Our only limiting factor is the size of our freezer. I considered a chest freezer, but there is nowhere to put one indoors, and it seems like it would use too much power to run one outside in summer.
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Just found out we have room for my friend's old chest freezer
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