After a long time of not cooking because the effort was just too much (I lived on ready meals – pierce and ping) I have become reenergized in the kitchen.
By chance I came across an American led system called Once a Month Cooking (OAMC). The idea is that you have a big cook out and make 30 meals at once.
Freeze them and you have a meal in the freezer for every day of the month.
Clearly I can’t have a big cook out but I’m adopting the idea by cooking one or two a week – gradually building up my freezer inventory. The most exciting thing is that many are “dump” recipes. You assembly the ingredients and freeze them in a bag, raw. Thaw them out overnight in the fridge and then just dump them in a slow cooker or oven when you want them.
I’m using mostly frozen veg that don’t need any prep -chopped onions, sliced mushrooms and peppers, stew pack and ready chopped garlic and herbs – anything to make it easy.
The advantage of this system is that I can do it when my energy is high in the mornings and have a meal in the freezer for tea time or on those days when I am too pooped.
I’ve batch cooked in the past but never really been organized about it so my freezer was always full of anonymous packets of god knows what. This time I’m keeping a careful record on a spread sheet. Only been at it a while but there are already 21meals in my freezer
Jane