Once A Month Cooking?

:dance: Just found out we have room for my friend's old chest freezer :dance:

Now to organise a time when DH can pick it up - not long til my first massive cook-up!! I'll post the cooking plan once its ready....

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

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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!

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Yep, in fact to take this idea further I have a few recipes where you make a casserole base and freeze in portions, then add different things once thawed. So a chicken base makes thai green curry, chicken cacciatore and sage and mustard casserole.

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what a shame DH refuses flat out to eat anything that has been cooked and then frozen

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Is he home while you are preparing dinner? You could easily ambush him with a lovely, pre-cooked casserole then tell him it's been frozen once he's eaten it. For example, if you made a Moroccan lamb tagine then defrosted it and while re-heating added dried figs, fresh coriander and sprinkled slivered almonds over the top I bet he wouldn't know the difference.

As for baking, muffins and cupcakes make great snacks for kids :)

He gets home earlier than me Rory, he says he can "taste" frozen things, I have tried it before but he saw it so of course could taste it.
I was so inspired by this I made a big batch of pikelets tonight!

I still reckon you should give it a sneaky go :)

I've been doing a bit of research into this at the moment because I really need to get my family eating better meals now I'm back at work. I'm exhausted and my meals are just not god enough for my family. I'm trying to think of meals that I can freeze. I'm a bit limited as DS is allergic to egg and DH refuses to eat mushroom. I'm thinking pasta bake, spag bol, lasagne, macaroni beef, chick casserole and beef casserole. What other meals can I freeze??

Generally pasta doesn't freeze well - here is a useful link

Thanks for the link. I'll have to make some alterations. thinking, thinking, thinking

hi girls, this is a great idea! Altho I'm not sure if I'm up for it.
I always cook double of whatever I'm preparing & then freeze it (I freeze everything lol). Most stuff works out ok if there's enough sauce in it, so I have frozen pasta meals, and it works if you do have enough moisture in the dish :)
We have a couple of risottos that freeze really well too :)
Good luck!

ps. I also make up big batches of potato wedges/chips & freeze them in small packets for dd. (along with things like healthy chicken nuggets etc.) I read somewhere on the net that if you slightly undercook them the first time it works - I then put them frozen in mod oven for 15 min & hey presto. instant chippies :)

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!

Bumping this thread as I am starting to do this!!

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 :dance:

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.

Kaz, you can use a container like an icecream or yoghurt container to hold the bag open, then pop it into freezer in the same. Once frozen you remove the food which is now a nice square shape.