10 Day Mini August 2012 Menu
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August is one of the busiest months in my house – school is starting back, as well as a flurry of extracurricular activities; fall softball, gymnastics and dance. Whew – I’m tired just thinking about that! This mini 10 day menu won’t take too much time on your cooking day, and when you are finished, you’ll have 10 days worth of dinners in your freezer to pull out on those busy days. Two of the recipes are Easy Assembly (aka just throw in a bag and freeze), and the other 3 require just minimum cooking time on preparation day. Knowing that I have great wholesome options in the freezer to feed my family makes me a little less stressed on those super busy days.
Crockpot Mongolian Beef
What are Mini Menus? Mini menus are a fraction of the meals you would see on a normal menu and can be completed quickly and efficiently in a few short hours, in the evenings when you are preparing the meal for dinner or during small bursts of times like naps. Mini meal plans are designed for the busy family who wants freezer meals in their freezer but doesn’t have time to do a full months worth of meals. If you are new and not sure how to get started we have a wonderful series starting with 5 easy steps to get you on your way to once a month cooking. Good luck!
**Don’t forget to check out the Back to School Mini Menu that debuted on the 5th of August, you might enjoy that one as well.
Looking for some other great ideas for back-to-school breakfasts, lunches and snacks? Check out our 31 Back-to-School Freezer Meals.
BBQ Meatballs
Dinners
- Chicken Cacciatore
- Orange Teriyaki Pork
- Yogurt Marinade Greek Chicken**
- BBQ Meatballs
- Crockpot Mongolian Beef**
**Indicates meals that require NO COOKING on your OAMC BIG DAY aka “throw and go” meals, perfect for the family who needs to adjust to just do the quick meals!
Recipe Cards
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Grocery List
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Instructions
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Labels
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Pinterest:
Are you a person that likes to see the menus visually? Perhaps you should check out the August 2012 10 Day Mini Menu via Pinterest to see the yummy goodness you will be cooking up on this menu. Not sure what Pinterest is all about, check out what Once A Month Mom has to say about it.
Test Cooks
Each month we have some wonderful volunteers who “test” out the menu prior to publication. They do an amazing job of helping to eliminate confusion and mistakes. They may not catch everything but they sure do catch A LOT! If you are interested in test cook, feel free to volunteer. Here is a little bit about this month’s test cooks:
- Maggie Kennedy - I’m a 29-year-old wife (our 10th anniversary is coming up!) and mother of four amazing, spunky kids, aged 8 months, 3 1/2, 7 and 9. The oldest three kids are involved in Taekwondo, so it has become very much a family acitivity. We also enjoy going out to the movies together or having family movie nights at home, going to the park, and having weekend BBQ’s as often as possible.
I work full-time as an accountant (commuting about 2 hours/day in Denver) and my husband isself-employed and works very long hours. So as you can imagine, I don’t have a whole lot of time to cook dinner during the week (or think, or sleep. :) ) However, I love to cook, and I really value being able to feed my family nutritious, home-cooked meals. I started freezer cooking about 4 months ago, and now I’m not sure how we lived without it! I can come home from work, stick something in the oven, take the kids around to their activities, and come home to a good, hot meal. It’s fantastic! OAMM rocks!!!
- Suzanne Lane – I am married to a full time firefighter, mom to an 11 year old travel baseball player and a 9 year old dancer/runner/softball player! I work part time for a non-profit and in my spare time I like to watch the kids play sports, scrapbook and cook.
Get Started
Are you new to Once A Month Mom or once a month cooking (oamc) in general? If so, you might want to spend a few minutes (or hours) on the Get Started Series. If you are in a real hurry to catch on we have written some simple steps for getting started. Welcome!
If you are feeling abundantly blessed and generous feel free to donate. 
I feel really silly, When I click on a month to view the recipe cards, I see the instructions but can’t alter the number of servings and I don’t see any cards. My page ends at the conversion chart.
When I first tried this I did the same thing. You need to download the document into excel or something similar and then it will allow you to manipulate it. Hope that helps.
On the Chicken Cacciatore instructions it says to prepare and bake Chicken Cacciatore, and on its recipe it says to preheat the oven to 350, but it doesn’t say to actually bake until the serving day. Could you please clarify?
We just made adjustments to this – you DO NOT bake it on the cooking day, only on serving day. Sorry. All documents are updated now.
The instruction sheet still says something about “When the Chicken Cacciatore is finished cooking, blah, blah, blah”.
Does anyone have a guesstimate of how long this takes from start to finish?
Our test cook said 2 hours of prep and 4-5 hours of cooking for her.
I just did this! I started the prep at 1:00 and was done with the cooking by 4:30. 3.5 hours + shopping time and cleanup time. AWESOME!
In the crockpot mongolian beef. The recipe says 1.5 cups of soy sauce. That seems like alot and the grocery list only has 0.5 cups. I have my servings set to 4. The orange teriaki chicken has soy sauce that comes up as 6 Tablespoons, that seems reasonable.
Kristina, the 1.5 cups is correct. Remember, even though you entered 4 people, it’s for two different dinners. So, really .75 cup each. You can reduce it some, it should be just fine. We are checking the grocery list issue now. Thank you!
I discovered you can burn foods in a crockpot with the mongolian beef recipe, I had the crockpot on low for 4-5 hours and then my crockpot used its keep warm function for another 2-3 hours. Unfortunately too much moisture was lost during the cooking time.
For the second meal after thawing I sauted the beef strips until browned and finished cooking with the sauce while the rice cooked on the stove. Ended up tasting perfect, so I’d suggest that route if you don’t have or don’t want to use the crock pot.
Hi, I’m new to this but am soooo excited to try it! How can I add the full menu (or entire shopping list) to ziplist?
Thanks!
Here is a post we wrote on using ziplist to manage your monthly menus – http://onceamonthmom.com/get-started-creating-a-custom-grocery-list/
thanks for the response about ziplist. I guess this ties into my question in #8 – if I am on the original recipe site, ziplist will create a recipe which is different than the one once a month mom has recommended – Is there a way to use ziplist for the recipe provded on the recipe cards in google docs? I tried to ziplist it and it didn’t work :(
Thanks!
That post I think outlines that you can set the yellow box to the number you want, then go copy the ingredients and go to ziplist and hit “create new recipe” – past the ingredients. Do the same for the other sections. I don’t usually do all that as I am just using Ziplist to do my grocery list. We hope to have better solutions here in 2013.
Thank you! I should have thought of that :) baby brain! I have it in a BIG way!
I browned the chicken breast but didn’t fully cook them (I was somewhat confused in the instructions). I’m wondering if it’s still safe to eat if I froze partially cooked chicken? Thanks for the help!
Jenn, are you talking about the Chicken Cacciatore recipe? If so, yes, that is correct – you brown the chicken, cook the vegetables, assemble and freeze. Then, on serving day, you thaw the dish, then it will bake for an hour. So, the chicken will be cooked through.
Thanks Heather. Yes i was talking about the cacciatore. I used thighs instead of breasts and just browned each side. I just wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any bacteria risk for freezing it partially cooked. Thanks for the replt
No bacteria risk at all – you just need to make sure they get baked like the directions indicate so they do cook through before serving. (but I am sure that you know that).
Hi, Again I’m new so I’m sorry if this is an obvious question :)
Does once a month mom tweak the recipes because when I go to the link for the original recipe, some of the ingredients are different. I’m assuming this is on purpose?
Thanks – I am going shopping now to get everything to make my first ever mini menu! :)
Yes we tweak recipes to make them work the best for freezer cooking and for various other reasons when needed. If you are doing a menu everything you need is already created for you though. You need to go the “printable recipe cards” for the freezing instructions, etc.
Thanks! Can’t wait to get started! :)
I think there is a little glitch in your ingredient list. I have entered 4servings on the recipe card spreadsheet and the shopping list. The yogurt marinade greek chicken recipe says I need 2 medium cucumbers – based on 4 servings. When I go to the shopping list, it says I need 4 medium cucumbers – I don’t see cucumbers in any of the other recipes so I think I just need two. I didn’t really look at the rest of the ingredients – I just thought 4 cucumbers sounded like a lot.
Just thought I’d let you know.
Thanks,
Nadine
Went shopping this morning with my cooking buddy and we spent $98 each on ingredients (cooking 4 servings each). We bought almost the whole shopping list. Can’t wait to cook tomorrow!
HI! I love this site :)
I just wanted to point out (and maybe I missed it?) that on the August 10 day mini menu “Orange Juice” is missing from the grocery list…Its needed for the Orange Teriyaki Pork.
Christina, it is listed under produce. A whole orange is listed to provide both the juice and zest.
Ok, I am confused….easily. Lol. Where do I find the yellow box to enter the number I need to feed?
It is in the printable recipe cards. You will likely need this post too – http://onceamonthmom.com/all-menus-saving-printing-google-document-grocery-lists-recipe-cards-instructions/
FYI – for those of you who are curious – I shopped for this mini meals session at Safeway (8/28) and paid $75 for 4 people. I had to buy some staples (milk, eggs, soy sauce), and didn’t use any coupons. In fact, the sales were pretty dismal. I did substitute the flank steak for cheaper beef, which I had the butcher slice for me, which cut down on prep. I would buy a slightly larger package of pork chops next time.
Also, the meatballs made way more than the recipe indicated, so we are having spaghetti and meatballs tonight! YAY! And, we have 2lbs. of leftover ground beef for other meals.
I feel SO good about what I did today!! THRILLED! I’m definitely doing this again!
I made this menu and I can say it is amazing! The yogurt-marinated greek chicken is “eyes rolled back in your head” delicious. I admit, I ate way more than one serving worth… I couldn’t stop eating it!
I love this site. All my friends get so jealous when they hear all the amazing meals I have stocked in my freezer. It’s also come in really handy when I have a family from church that needs a meal delivered. Everyone raves over the recipes and they’re all easy to prep. Thank you so much. Can’t wait to buy my subscription on payday! :)
~Shannon
I made the yogurt marinated Greek chicken tonight and it was a total hit!! SO good. However, there wasn’t enough chicken! I adapted the freezer cooking menu for 4 people (so, 2 meals for 4 people), and I’m sure it would have fed 4 females just fine. My hubby would have loved more! Next time I make this (and there WILL be a next time), I’ll put in one chicken breast per person. There was plenty of marinade, so I totally could have done this! I think I’ll go cut up a couple more chicken breasts for my second meal! We’ll be all ready to go!
So far we’ve eaten the Crockpot Mongolian beef, and it was yum! I’m so glad I did this mini menu as a foray into OAMC as my son has been sick, so it’s been great to have dinners mostly ready!