Once A Month Cooking

Another way to save time and money cooking is Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) or freezer cooking. The idea behind this is to buy enough ingredients and set aside one day to cook enough meals for a month. There are many cookbooks and websites with recipe plans and tips on this. The meals are prepared the divided into serving sizes for your family and then frozen until you need them. I have not done this but I do a different version of it. When I make lasagna, a hotdish or something similar, since I am single, I put the leftovers in single serve containers and freeze for future uses. This way you can use it later and don't feel like you are eating the same thing all week trying to use up the leftovers.

If you have a family, another idea is if you are making something to make a second batch at the same time and put one in the freezer so in the future you just have to thaw it and heat it up.

Many towns have businesses behind this idea. They have menus you can pick from the they will have the ingredients you need and you just set up a time to go in the put the meals together, then they do the clean up. Some places will also put the meals together for you, so all you do is pick them up.

Having items like this in the freezer is also a good thing that saves you from going out to eat or takeout when you don't feel like cooking everynight.