Once A Month Mom - Cook Once, Meals For A Month Or More

$250 in meals

Ham and cheddar stuffed pretzels, red lentil soup w/ lemon, taco soup, cheese-broccoli-quinoa casserole, potato and ham chowder, sriracha pulled pork, garlic mushroom omelets, cauliflower pizza bites, creamy taquitos, sweet potato foil packet tacos, pork and sweet potato empenadas, sausage and egg breakfast sandwiches, tomato-basil-parmesan soup, italian sausage stew, broccoli cheese soup, slow cooker coconut tofu curry w/rice, curried coconut lemon soup, avocado-rice barbacoa burritos, and balsamic herb lamb chops.

I just finished my 2nd cook one day and make meals for a month marathon.  Last month I signed up for Once A Month Mom - it's $8 a month or $72 a year.  I planned on only trying it out for one month, but I found that I liked it so much that I did it again this month.  

Here are my thoughts on Once A Month Mom or monthly freezer meal type cooking.  

#1 Don't do what I did this last time ie. try to cook too many meals!  I am totally burned out.  I think my 'eyes were bigger than my stomach' or at least more than my feet, legs and back could handle.  The OAMM program gives you different menus to cook every month - traditional, whole foods, gluten free, baby, vegetarian, ect.  Those menus each have 15 recipes with 8 dinners and 4 breakfasts and 4 lunches.  I don't always like ALL the recipes in a menu, so I pick and choose from all the menus and sometimes different past months.  Ok that's great EXCEPT  I ended up making 19 different recipes.  When the OAMM people make up the recipes they try to use ingredients that go together and make it easier to cook.  Not me!  I made it waaaaay harder on myself.  Lot's of fiddly things like empanadas, taquitos, burritos, pretzels,  ect.  Not casseroles that would go together a be easy.  Yes, I made a lot of soups, but they all had to be cooked in different ways, so I couldn't saute a huge batch of ingredients and then add the different flavors.  I made cream soups and not cream and lemony and not lemony.  

#2 Make sure you have plenty of clean dish towels.  I ran out of towels about 4 hours into my cooking.  Not nice.

#3 Make sure you have an empty garbage can.  I filled 2 big bags with garbage.

#4 Make sure your meat is thawed out before you start cooking.  I had to stop and split my cooking into 2 days, because I didn't have my meat thawed.  Although, I couldn't have done it all in one day anyway.  This was 2 days of cooking from 11am to midnight 2 days in a row - 25 hours.

#5 Empty your dishwasher and clean off all your counters.  Maybe get an extra table.  I ended up cooling things in the garage on top of my car.  I tried cooling things outside in a nice snowbank - forgot they were out there and lost 3 empanadas to the puppy.  

#6 Get some squishy slippers to wear and some comfy clothing.  My legs and back were KILLING me by the end of yesterday.  

#7  Be prepared to make one use-it-up soup or casserole at the end of your cooking day.  I cut up too many onions and other veggies and I changed my mind about making mini pot-pies, so I had extra ingredients.  Ham-potato Chowder to the rescue!

#8 Take a break!  Every once in a while take a break - sit down or do some stretches.  Have something to eat and make sure you are drinking water or something.  This is a marathon after all!

#9 A nice glass of wine, beer, hard cider (whatever) will make it possible to push through that 'I can't do it point'.  I very rarely drink anything, but I have to say a wine cooler at 8pm both days helped me cheer up and crank out a few more meals!

#10 Get something to listen to!  It's a lonely day in the kitchen if you don't have something to listen to and it takes your mind off your aching legs.

Now all that complaining aside......I LOVE doing this!!!!!!!!

It's fun and it's challenging.  I also like not having to cook when I'm tired and knowing that there is a healthy meal that I just need to warm up.

True I am not a Mom - I only have furry children, but I still like to eat.  Also, I was a vegetarian for 13 years (my entire adult life plus) and just recently I decided to start adding some meat to my diet.  I don't know how to cook meat, so it's nice to have direction and someone else choosing the recipes for me. 

Preparing to start.

Chopping the ingredients.

Red lentil soup with lemon.

Quinoa, broccoli, cheese casserole. 

Sweet potato foil packet tacos

Are you almost done?

Sweet potato empanadas.

Cauliflower bites 

Can I help you cook?  I'll be the tast tester!

Taco soup

Italian sausage soup

Broccoli Cheese soup

Breakfast sandwiches

Ham,broccoli,cheese pretzel calzones

Curried coconut lemon soup

Taquitos

Barbacoa burritos

Siracha pulled pork

And then another picture (or 2) of all my hard work!

Can Jam May - Rhubarb

Update 5-25-10 -Pictures! Yay! Posts are so much better with pictures!

Also, if you have extra rhubarb leaves I made a rhubarb stepping stone post here.

You may notice that there aren't any pictures in this post. That's because I am an idiot and I dropped and broke my camera. Argh! I had the worst week for canning. First of all I broke my camera, then I was about to start canning and I'd borrowed my Dad's camera, but then the whole town lost power for 4 hours. Then my Dad went on vacation and took his camera with him. I also had to get Tansy neutered - yes that's right my sweet little girl turned out to be a BOY! Let's just say Tansy is not pleased with me right now - the snip snip wasn't so much fun. I also had a really busy exhausting week at work. There were also a million things I had to plant in the garden. Plants don't exactly wait very well to get planted. Soooooooo a long difficult week.

~

This month for the Can Jam we had the choice of either rhubarb or asparagus. I HATE(d) both!

My hate for the green spears stems from my childhood. When you grow up in a family that grows asparagus for sale, you eat a lot of asparagus, and in my case develop a hatred of it. This is also why I am not a huge fan of red raspberries. I imagine the same thing happens to children of candy makers. *just kidding!*

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So rhubarb. Well, my Mom never cooked with rhubarb when I was growing up, because she hated it. She hated all the sugar that people add to it. However, I turned her into a rhubarb lover with my Savory Rhubarb Soup recipe. I thought about making a rhubarb-cherry jam, but after experiencing the citric acid power of rhubarb in the soup recipe, I decided to try a savory recipe. My Mom was rooting for a chutney recipe, but I have lots of Pear Chutney in my pantry. I decided on a salsa recipe and so Rhubarb Salsa was born, er canned.

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Spicy Rhubarb Salsa

3 cups chopped tomatoes

2 cups chopped rhubarb

1 cup chopped tomatillos

1 cup chopped yellow onion

1/2 cup chopped chile peppers (I used a combination of habenero, yellow spicy and anaheim)

1 Tbs garlic paste

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 Tbs cilantro

2 Tbs cumin

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup vinegar

1/2 cup lime juice ( I used key limes)

Combine all ingredients in a large sauce pot. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 mins. Ladle hot sauce into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust 2 piece caps. Process 15 mins. in a boiling water bath canner.

This is HOT!!!

It has a sweet and smokey flavor too.

It's yummy. I think it would make a good barbecue sauce.

Filled jars before canning.

Onions.

Peppers.



I thought the tomatillo husks looked like flowers.

Chopped peppers.

Rhubarb and tomatillo.

Tomato.

Cooking.

Cooking.

Canning.

Done!

Rhubarb salsa!

Rhubarb Soup

*Sorry about the photo quality. I dropped my camera, broke it and had to borrow my dad's Kodak.*

Rhubarb Soup
Nope you didn't misread that! It's soup with rhubarb AND it's delicious. Really. I had 4 servings and everyone else had seconds - :P

This is my adaption of the Spring Pottage Recipe from this article in the Grit magazine : Sweet and Savory Recipes for Rhubarb. This is a great article with lots of interesting facts about rhubarb.

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Rhubarb is a leafy green vegetable like celery or swiss chard, but in 1947 the U.S. Customs Court passed a ruling that rhubarb should be classified as a fruit and forever after rhubarb was eaten with pounds of sugar.

This recipe uses the tartness of rhubarb instead of covering it up with sugar.

It adds a touch of citric acid without the danger of curdling the cream.

Just remember, the ancient Chinese used rhubarb as a purgative. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Rhubarb Soup

2 Tbs olive oil

1 cup chopped yellow onion

2 cups potatoes - cut into 1 inch pieces

1 cup carrots - cut into 1 inch pieces

1/2 cups celery - cut into 1 inch pieces

2 cups diced rhubarb - soaked in salt water before using

2 tsp roasted garlic paste

2 Tbs honey

4 cups hot vegetable stock (*cheater's recipe below)

2 bay leaves

1 tsp sweet marjoram

salt and pepper

1 cup heavy cream

Saute onion in olive oil until golden. Add vegetable broth, potatoes, carrots, garlic paste, honey and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender. Add celery and rhubarb, simmer for 2-3 mins. Add marjoram, salt and pepper. Remove and discard bay leaves bay leaves. Remove soup from heat and gently stir in cream. Serve.

Cheater's Vegetable Stock

1 pkg Knorr Vegetable Soup

1/2 cup white wine

2 Tbs golden miso

2 tsp soy sauce

4 cups water

Fresh rhubarb from my garden. Since moving into my house, this is the first time in 5 years that I have harvested any rhubarb. Or eaten any rhubarb.







Chopping rhubarb

Soaking rhubarb in salt water

Sauteing onion

Simmering soup

Almost ready!

Adding cream.

Yum!

This is sooooo tasty!

My Mom hates rhubarb and she even had seconds!

This is the best rhubarb recipe ever and it can make a rhubarb hater a rhubarb lover.