April Cooking Recap – TONS of food!
My poor overstuffed freezer!
I can hardly believe that Cortney and I did another cooking day. Except now I have an overflowing freezer to prove it so there is no denying. Folks, I think it is fair to say we here at Once A Month Mom have a problem. A good problem, but a problem none the less. We have TOO MUCH food. I think I might run a clearance sale on our entrees when we get back just so I can open the freezer without stuff falling out on me.
What you are really looking for is the menu recap and helpful hints for navigating through this month’s menu. So here it is:
- Due to vacation circumstances (and lack of refrigerator and freezer space)my husband and I put together the pork chops when I arrived home from the grocery store with them. 48 pork chops is A LOT. It is enough for 6 pork chops per entree. I was thinking that this would be good for those men who like to eat an extra one but once we got them home I realized that 6 is way too many for us to eat at one sitting. So we packaged them into bags of 3 each. We figure if we have company than we will just defrost two packs. They look and smell really good though.
- The pizza-stuffed meatloaf looks and smells amazing. I made it tonight and shared it with another couple so that we didn’t have a bunch of leftovers in the refrigerator. I thought it was quite tasty.
- I waited to cut the ham until the day we were cooking because I had already done the pork chops (and honestly – don’t you think Cortney needs to a do a little work? I did. he he). I wish I hadn’t done that though. It took me forever to cut! So cube your ham beforehand.
- I would also mix the pasta salad in two large stockpots, or even 4 if you have them available. It is A LOT of pasta!
- We also decided that the Chicken Cordon Bleu would be better in deep dish pans. I have changed this on the menu card and in the grocery list. So you may want to take note. We didn’t have extra deep dish but we did have extra regular 8×8 pans so I put the ham & hashbrown into 8 8×8′s instead of 4 deep dish. Yea that really helped the freezer space issue! *sigh*
- Other than that, all things went rather smoothly. My husband was watching my son at the house which I again, would NOT recommend. It is just too easy to get distracted.
- As for $$$, we spent $146.91 each, which is actually more than we spent the month we did seafood. HOWEVER, we made more meals (42) because of the pork chops and pasta salad making so much. So our per meal total was $3.49.
Hope you have a great OAMC experience this month and we look forward to hearing your stories.
Here is a picture recap of some food I was able to take. If you click on the picture you will see a description. You can then scroll through by mousing over the left or the right of the picture.
Just wanted to leave you a note on the Ham and Potato Pockets. I only used the single recipe, which makes 8, but I had way more filling that I needed (and if you look at it, the measurements make it that way…2 c ham + 1 c cheese but you only use 2 c. of that filling altogether). BUT I mixed the remaining filling and potatoes with 4 eggs, and then filled a few tortillas with it for breakfast burritos. YUM!
Wow, that is a LOT of food! I still haven’t started OAMC, but am thinking this is the month to start. I traveled a lot, so my cupboards are pretty bare. Perfect time to fill ‘em up with a month’s worth of food!
We are getting ready to do our cooking this Saturday and I have to admit that I am getting nervous. I don’t want to mess up all of the hard work that you have put into the menu.
Just be willing to laugh at yourself and you will do just fine!
I did a kind of hybrid-OAMC thing this month…I only did a couple of dishes for each meal, and I made them at odd moments throughout the month instead of one big cooking day. BUT my end result was similar to yours – I have a TON of food just waiting for me in the freezer! I am already looking forward to making a menu for next month!!!
Love the pics of the food–I used to do OAMC and stopped (not sure why). I LOVE your website and I am planning on starting back! Thanks
By the way–are those just regular tubs you have put across the lip of your deep freeze–I need something like that for my deep freeze to keep it more organized.
Those bins came with my Whirlpool freezer. If you don’t have a ledge to hang them on regular ones would work just fine.
Love the captions on the pictures, especially the one on the eggs that says it is the image before they went into the muffin. *snicker*
I did mine a little bit at a time this month too. It just seemed to work well for us that way. We haven’t tried everything yet, but so far the food is great this month. We just grilled some of the burgers and they are really good.
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