freezer cooking

Are you ready to cook once, eat for a month?

Once-a-month cooking. Frozen assets. OAMC. Meal assembly. Whatever you call it, cooking many meals in a single session banks home-cooked meals--and precious family time--for busy home managers.

What's not to like about freezer cooking? Economies of scale speed cooking chores. Buying in bulk saves money. Home preparation fosters good nutrition.

New options like "meal assembly franchises" help home cooks build frozen assets quickly.

Whether you cook once and eat for a month, sneak up on freezer cooking, or fill the freezer fast from the meal preparation storefront, get ready to feed the family--fast!

Click the links below to get up to speed on freezer cooking:

So, what do you eat if you're trying freezer cooking?

Take heart! Many favorite recipes adapt well to freezer cooking--and it's not all casseroles and lasagne.

These family recipes have been specially adapted for freezer cooking. They include a range of entrees, side dishes and desserts.

Familiar favorites, these recipes illustrate how to adapt cooking methods for freezer storage:

side dishes and desserts
includes garlic mashed potatoes, carrot cake and freezer coleslaw!

Freezer Carrot Cake
Blast from the past, this traditional recipe freezes well, icing and all. Be prepared for the next pot-luck dinner!

Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Creamy. Rich. Flavorful. So good that a single serving won't do!

Computers and cookbooks are a tasty combination! Today's cooking software makes meal planning--even planning once for a month's worth of dinner entrees--nearly effortless. Improved import-export capabilities permit capture of recipes from on-line services or text files; software menu plan and shopping list functions spell an end to tedious hours of sifting, sorting and listing. Recipe junkies are in food heaven as the Internet shares thousands of recipes available for the downloading.

Cooking software can create a freezer cooking menu plan in a matter of minutes, complete with shopping list! To make full use of the power of your computer to speed the planning/shopping process, keep in mind these "computer cookbook conventions".

Be Consistent. Remember, your computer is a high speed idiot; it won't know that a bay leaf and a bayleaf are the same article. When entering recipes into your Freezer cookbook, pick your terms and stick your guns! Is it "hamburger", "ground beef" or "ground chuck"?

To begin, you'll need to create a freezer cooking plan. It's your road map to an easy, efficient freezer cooking session. Find a large table, spread out and get comfortable! Planning your freezer cooking session should be fun!

First things first: time. You'll need two days--one partial, for shopping, one total, for cooking--to fill your freezer with a month's worth of meals. Before you devote the time, you'll need a plan. Ready? The first step is to create a freezer cooking game plan: the menus, shopping lists and recipes you'll need for your freezer cooking session.

To start your family's freezer cooking plan, begin with the bottom dollar: the weekly newspaper food sections. Scanning these, jot down all the best weekly meat specials; after all, economy is one of the goals of the freezer cooking plan. Write the type of meat special--Sirloin Tip Steak, Whole Ham, Chicken Breasts--across the top of a 3-by-5 file card, one for each cut of meat.