Mary Beth Lagerborg - Once-A-Month Cooking: A Proven System for Spending Less Time in the Kitchen and Enjoying Delicious, Homemade Meals Every Day

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to these friends who helped: Debbie Lee Renae Loring Erica Rinde Julie Luplow Colette Compoz Janae Martinez Jennifer Stealing Cori Peth Rebecca Pasquariello Anne Gates Darran Metzler Sue Herd Cynthia Bahlman Captain Lois True Ginger Brown Linnea Rein Sandi Hanson Cala Doolittle Marge Rodemer Alice Tate Linda Strohkorb Julie Witt Introduction Whats for dinner? is the perennial, pesky question that has probably compelled you to open the pages of this book. You might have tonight covered, but what about tomorrow? Your familys need to eatbetter yet, their need to eat togethercomes in relentless waves.

But, lets face it: You have better things to do than cook! So what can you do? Well, were here to provide a solution. Once-a-Month Cooking is a foolproof method of getting dinner on the table thats perfect for anyone who doesnt always want to cook, but who wishes they had something prepared and ready to go. You know your family well and you know that nothing unravels the seams of quality family time faster than having nothing on hand for dinner. Having an empty refrigerator or pantry gives everyone the grumps, forcing you to pile into the car and drive over to the local take-out place or fast-food restaurant. You generally sacrifice in nutrition, added expense, and a riskier stab at quality family time. Even storefront versions of the Once-a-Month Cooking plan cant beat the cost savings and flexibility of our time-tested system.

If youre getting nervous at this point, with visions of glistening roasted chickens, complex recipes that take hours, and a pile of dishes in your sink, dont. You dont need to be particularly well organized or a spectacular cook to try Once-a-Month Cooking. You dont even need a separate freezer. What were going to show you is an easy method of cooking one months or two weeks worth of dinner entres at a time and freezing them. People always ask us, Does it work? Its the question weve been asked most often, and we can say without hesitation, It does! Besides being a smart cooking method that gets everything ready in advance, it will also help you save a significant amount of money on your weekly food bills without scrimping on taste and variety. We will take you by the hand and give you a shopping list and lots of direction.

Well tell you what size containers to freeze the food in (most meals will fit into freezer bags) and suggest what to serve with your entres. When youre finished, gazing into your well-stocked freezer will be a near-spiritual experience. Afterward, on any given day you can cook from scratch if you want to, but if you dont have timeno problem. This is a great way to simplify your life, relieving it of the daily stress of what to fix for dinner. The beauty of Once-a-Month Cooking is that it provides the convenience of a home meal replacement with the aroma, appeal, taste, nutrition, and cost-savings of home cooking. For the investment of one large grocery haul and a day of megacooking, you have a months (or two weeks) entres available on time each day with little effort on your part beyond heating a meal and steaming vegetables or tossing a salad.

And you dont need to dash out for fast food or Chinese takeout, or go to the neighborhood deli. This system will save you money. Convenience foods are costly. So are forays into the supermarket at 5:00 P.M. with two preschoolers. A list that began with four items yields a cart holding twenty-two, including Froot Loops and Big Chew gum.

With Once-a-Month Cooking you will have one large shopping trip a month (or every two weeks); then youll only have to shop perhaps once a week for fresh produce, breakfasts, and lunches. A bonus from your days cooking investment is your flexibility. Having guests is more fun when the main dish is ready in advance. Your family can still have a home-cooked meal even if youre busy, have a new baby at home, when the holidays approach, or if you are traveling. What a joy it is to be able to respond to the special needs of your family and others! We all know that nutrition fares better when we arent eating catch-as-catch-can. And if you or another family member is on a special diet, Once-a-Month Cooking is an excellent way to feed the rest of the tribe.

You may want to try the two-week plan rather than the one-month plan if you are cooking in bulk for the first time, or if your family is small (fewer than four people). In that case, two weeks worth will last you three weeks, since youll package it in smaller containers. But the greatest benefit of Once-a-Month Cooking is that it gives you a better shot at pulling the family togetherat least a few evenings a weekto disengage from the concerns of the world and engage with one another. A warm meal on a set table wafts the aroma of care and value to a family. As one mom said, When the food is ready, and were gathered at the table, the rest of the craziness doesnt seem to matter. Home meal replacements make it too easy for a family to separate, grab the meal when each family member wants, and see to his or her own needs.

Once-a-Month Cooking will help you have a meal to gather round, including the rich aromas that are a delightful accompaniment to home cooking. Share the kitchen chores as well as your mealtimes together. Once were at the table its discouraging to fall into the same conversation ruts about work or teachers, or how a child has misbehaved today. With our own families and friends weve found its helpful and fun to sometimes put a question on the table. We ask a question that each person at the table must address, but for which there is no right or wrong answer, such as What is the funniest thing you saw today?; What is your favorite room of our home and why?; If you were an animal rather than a person, what animal would you like to be? Weve included table-talk questions to prime the pump for you. Turn off the television, ignore the telephone, and enjoy what you will learn about one another.

Mimi Wilson devised this cooking system to meet the daily needs of a busy family who entertained often. In the years since then, we have been encouraged and sometimes amused by the many uses people have found for, as we call it, the method. Here are some that stretch beyond the obvious feeding of a busy family. Perhaps they will expand your vision for how you can use the wealth of food you will soon have on hand. Freeze individual portions to stock the freezer of an elderly parent or friend. Develop this as an at-home business to serve busy, two-income families.

A day-care provider uses Once-a-Month Cooking so that, for a fee, parents can pick up a dinner entre with their child! Cook the method with friends in a church or community kitchen and use the entres to take to families in crisis. Give entres as a gift for a new mother or for a woman experiencing a difficult pregnancy. We cant resist sharing our personal favorite application. On a visit to Peru, Mimis husband Calvin, a family physician, was part of a medical team that trekked into the jungle to treat a group of people dying from their first-ever exposure to pneumonia. When the team needed additional food, Mimi took frozen entres, packaged in Tupperware and wrapped in newspapers, to a nearby airstrip. The pilot flew over the teams campsite in the jungle and dropped the entres to them.