10 Day Mini Menu January 2012 OAMM Menu (OAMC, Once A Month Cooking, Freezer Cooking)
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Last week we rolled out our first ever 5 Day Mini Menu; today our first ever 10 Day Mini Menu. Again, we heard loud and clear that sometimes the BIG cooking menus are just too much. So we are starting a new section of Mini Menus to hopefully help you along the way.
Noodle Heaven
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 time 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.
This is a 10 day plan. This plan gives you 5 recipes that you will make for a total of 10 meals. You can make these all at one time, split them up over the course of several evenings, or even make 1 serving of it for dinner and freeze the other serving. The later would give you a meal each night for a week and 5 meals to put in the freezer. You decide!
We hope you like it!
Green Chile Enchiladas
Dinners
- Noodle Heaven
- Chicken Supreme
- Green Chile Enchiladas
- Creamy Sausage and Tomato Pasta
- Crockpot Bleu Cheese and Dried Cherry Meatloaf
**Indicates meals that require NO COOKING on your OAMC BIG DAY!
Recipe Cards
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Grocery List
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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 January 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.
Facebook Fan Party:
OAMM Facebook Fan Page Party – January 15th 2011, 9:00 pm – 9:30 pm EST – We will be able to chat via video AND messaging during the event through FACEBOOK! How cool is that? We will be talking about the current month’s menus, answer your burning questions about freezer cooking and have fun getting to know one another. You can also see other past recordings from that tab as well.
Instructions for viewing live-stream:
- Go to the Once A Month Mom Facebook Fan Page.
- Click on the “FB Fan Night” Tab on the left side margin.
- Hit “view live recording” – If I am live streaming it will show you what is happening in progress. If I am not live streaming at the time, you will have the option to click through other videos that I have recorded in the past.
- Enjoy!
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! Here is a little bit about this month’s test cooks:
- Candice Storm – She is a mother of 2 boys, 7 and 6. She works full time outside the home with a long commute. The ability to use Once A Month Mom and the services provided saves her so much time and money in an already hectic day. As a test cook she is thorough, thorough, thorough. She has a great eye and terrific insight on how to make menus better. She has been a wonderful asset to menu testing.
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. :) But don’t feel guilty if you aren’t able.
The link to the post on how to use the Yellow Box is not working and I love your site but find this part of the process extremely frustrating…since I don’t use the menus every month, I always forget how to use this feature and usually just give up. Can’t you find an easier way to utilize this feature of the recipes?
I am sorry that you are frustrated with that process but there is always this post to reference: http://onceamonthmom.com/all-menus-saving-printing-google-document-grocery-lists-recipe-cards-instructions/. And short of charging you money to access this site, the answer is no, this IS the simplest way. After spending hours preparing free menus each month it hasn’t seemed like that big of a task to have readers spend a few minutes copying documents for themselves. If you have an idea for a better solution we are always open to hearing those!
Thank you so much for the mini menus. I have always wanted to try “once a month” cooking but have felt overwhelmed on how to get started. I cooked the mini menu over two nights and not only did we have great meals this week but I have a freezer full of meals for next week!! Thank you :)
I’m completely novice here and have wanted to try the OAMC menus for quite some time but have always been a tad intimidated, so I was glad to use the mini menu as springboard. I printed out my recipe cards (for family of 4) and it doesn’t seem meatloaf amount was done right. It said I would only need 1.33 lbs of meat for that. Is each loaf supposed to be only about 2/3 lb? Usually my meatloafs are 1-1.5lbs. All my other calculations seemed appropriate. Did I do or understand something wrong? Thanks for all your work!
Yes, that is the correct amount. If you would like your loaf to be larger I would recommend doubling the quantity. But I see what you mean.
OK, thanks for clarifying. Maybe next time I will just put in 5 people instead of 4 to make a little larger amount but also because I certainly don’t mind making a little extra to have for lunch leftovers!
Tricia -
I’m a first timer…I’ve got all my lists all printed out for this. I’ll go grocery shopping on Saturday and do my cooking on Sunday. I’m planning on posting a blog post about my experience. I’ll let you know when that is done.
I appreciate all the time you put into this and offer it for FREE to everyone! What an amazing gift you have given me. Thank you. :)
I am new to this freezer cooking and I love what you all have done with this site so far. I just have one question. From the Creamy sausage & Tomato Pasta recipe it say to portion out pasta and place with sauce bag in a gallon bag and put in freezer. Does this mean that I’m going to just measure out how much dry pasta I need and put it in a seperate ziploc bag than the sauce but then put both the dried pasta bag and the sauce bag in one larger ziploc bag? The larger question/confusion was I didn’t realize that you can freeze dry pasta, and would it be ok if I just cooked and then froze the pasta instead of putting it in there uncooked?
Your interpretation is right and you can freeze dry pasta. We have a get started post on this you may also want to check out.
My family loves the recipes!! The minis are a wonderful addition to the site. It was easy to quickly prepare the 10 meals and clean up afterwards. Thanks!
About how long did it take you to get the meals done and cleaned up? I don’t have time to do the entire menu this month, but I thought I could make the mini one after the kids go to bed one night.
Test cooks report a couple of hours.
Thank you for the mini menus! I combined some of these recipes with some from the 5 day mini menu and stocked up my freezer for a few weeks. :)
I am heading to the store with this list today. I love it! If you were to add a breakfast/lunch portion to this, I’d be in heaven. However, I’m delighted that you have provided me with a do-able starting point to OAMC and I thank you so much! I’ll provide feedback when it’s cooked if I have any.
I am confused about the difference between the five and ten day meals. They both make 5 meals, and the ten is supposed to make two of each, right? But when I open up the printable recipes they all have the defaul serving of 1. I have done the big meal plans twice now and put in a number two and it is the perfect amount for me and my husband and and some leftovers, and sometimes some meals make enough for two nights for us (with the number two put in the spreadsheets). Can I put a two in the ten day meal plan and yield the same amount as the big menus, or is the ten day meal plan already portioned out to double? I hope I am making sense! :-) Thanks for everything you guys do!
You are making sense. Every menu but the 5 day mini menus will yield TWO portions of each recipe for every 1 person you indicate in the yellow box. If you are cooking a 10 Day Mini then just put in a 2 to the yellow box. If you are making a 5 Day Mini but want two meals of each you would have to put in a 4 for 2 people. Do I make sense?
I think so. So if I want to make the same amount on the five day menus that I did on the entire menu I need to put a four in the box. But I only need to put a two in the ten day menus. Thanks!