September Menu, Grocery List, Instructions, Labels and Podcast
Print
Thanks for joining us again or welcome first time visitors! We are glad you have joined us. You can learn more about the origin of this months menu by listening to the podcast. If you are new and not sure how to get started, read here. For frequently asked questions visit here.
Podcast
- This audio podcast will describe to you the items on sale for the month, the philosophy behind the meal choices and helpful hints for preparing for this months cooking day.
- Listen in the orange player at the top of this post…
Menu
- Included below are the menu items that we will be preparing as part of our Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) BIG DAY. In the printable menu the menu items are listed as single, double, or quadruple depending on how much we need to make on the BIG DAY. The recipes linked below are ONLY for the single batch, to see the amounts we are making on the OAM BIG DAY you will need to visit the Printable September Menu.
-
Breakfast
-
Lunches
-
Dinners
**Indicates meals that require NO COOKING on your OAMC BIG DAY!
Grocery List
- Included in this spreadsheet you will find a listing of all the items you will need to complete your September OAMC BIG DAY. For more instructions on how to use this, go here.
- Grocery List
Instructions
- These are the step-by-step instructions you will need to quickly and efficiently approach your OAMC BIG DAY!
- Instructions
Labels
We have designed a set of 8 pages of labels designed to be printed on Avery 8163
Helpful Hints
What do you think of September’s menu?
And don’t forget to check out the right sidebar weekly to vote on past month’s menus!
I think my friends and I are going to do it this month! YAY!
Awesome! Can’t wait to hear how it goes!
Thanks for linking my eggwich recipe! They are super easy to make and assemble and great for on-the-go mornings.
;-)
This will be my first month doing OAMC so I am very excited.
I’m not sure if it is just me but when I click on the grocey list it says that nothing can be found.
Thanks for letting me know. I will investigate.
This makes me SO hungry! The recipes look wonderful.
This looks like a great menu!
My sisters-in-law, Mom and I did our first OAMC day last Saturday, inspired by your site. It took us 14 hours between the 9 kids running around, the things we forgot to bring to the cooking location, and just feeling our way around in general, but totally worth it. We all have freezers stocked with food and are already planning our next cooking day for the end of September.
This is my first time doing this–I am wondering if I can find out how to cook just the dinners–I’m not interested in doing the lunches and breakfasts. Can you tell what NOT to buy so I can just do the dinners? Thanks
The easiest way to do this is to print out the recipes and subtract those ingredients. I build the menu but don’t have the time to adjust for all of the different needs. Hopefully one day we will build a system that will let you do that. Good luck.
By the way, I am shopping tomorrow! Please let me know if you can! Thanks!
Thank you! That’s what I was planning on doing, but I thought I’d ask first before doing that.
The apple muffins links to something other than Baking Bites. Is that correct?
Will definitely try your recipes.
um, no, I guess I should check that link.
One more question–I was able to subtract those ingredients for shopping. I’ve bought everything, now I am wondering about the recipe links–do we double the ingredients in the recipes? I’m just cooking alone, so I halved all the items on the grocery list. But when I follow the recipe, I want to make sure I’m using enough of everything when I make each meal. Please help! Cooking tomorrow! Thanks.
You need to go to the “printable September menu” link. It has the adaptations for how to prepare the meals on your cooking day. You will just need to remember to 1/2 the ingredients on those. And don’t forget to print the instructions as well. Good luck.
Thank you so much! I think I’ve got it down now. I’m so excited! Thanks for all your hard work to put this together.
I made the Freezer Beef Stew the other day to try it out and it was AWESOME! Planned on making it today for the freezer but can’t find the bag of potatoes I bought. Sigh. It’s always something.
I’m in the middle of cooking the September menu and needed a break. I’m cooking the full menu by myself, so we’ll have 2 months worth of food. I did the February menu last month and went through everything already!
Comment on the new menu instructions. I was confused by how much chicken to put in the crockpot overnight. I ended up cooking 12lbs, but in the end it looked like I needed to cook 8lbs. I just used cooked chicken for the Deconstructed Broccoli and Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts.
Everything looks great this month. Thanks for all the hard work and coming up with recipes with lots of variety!
-Sarah
Thanks, I will look at that a little closer and make changes if needed. (I took a look and you need 6 cups for the chicken & chilies casserole and 6 cups for the white chicken chili – the estimates say to assume approximately 1 cup chopped = 1 lb, that is how I got 12). I always save any extra for making chicken salad, tacos, etc. Good luck with finishing up!
Thanks for the quick reply. I order my groceries and realized I didn’t get enough chicken (raw). I completed all the main dishes and still have the breakfast dishes to do this morning. Since I cook by myself, I usually leave the baking/breakfast foods till the next day.
Your site is great! Thanks!
I’ve been visiting your site for a few weeks now and love it! Great job! I love reading through your menus and love all the organization. I love cooking and just started freezer cooking. I haven’t done an all-in-one cooking day but have been making things here and there when time allows. It’s going great! :) Keep up the good work and everything looks delicious for September!
I’m new to your site and to OAMC, loving all the helpful info, thanks! Is there a certain length of time that monthly meals are available? I’ve found that I can’t access the older menu plans…
The older menus should still be accessible. Please email which ones you are having trouble viewing.
I mentioned that I did some of Aug. I have been looking at Sept and they look fabulous. Because I feed 8 people, the chicken marsala becomes to expensive. I make 2 bigger pans instead of 4. That way we always have enough for all the hungry kids. It was such a time saver this weekend when we worked non-stop on a fort/tree house with extra mouths to feed also.
I check out your menu and see what I have on hand and what is on sale to make it the most beneficial too us. So I will make the muffins, beef stroganoff and mexican casserole.
Thanks for all your hardwork!
Just wanted to let you know that the 48 oz of water (1 can tomate paste + 1 can water) is missing from the printable menu for Carole’s Chili. That would end up being some *very* thick chili!! :-)
So true! I made it today and it WAS thick. I even added water to start with, apparently not enough according to the recipe. :) Thanks for the heads up, I will make the changes.
So true! I made this recipe today and added water because I thought it looked too thick. Good catch! :)
Did everyone like this chili? There were three of us that made it and NONE of our families liked it – we threw away the extra bag. Perhaps we did something wrong, but I’d hate to not say anything and have others not like it too.
what size crockpots are you using?
I have watched your website in awe for months. I would love to do the OAMC, but am extremely intimidated. I don’t know how to make this sound like something other than whining, but I would LOVE to do OAMC so I’m hoping someone (anyone) would be willing to help. My brain works a bit different and I’m having a hard time understanding the recipes/what exactly is needed per meal etc. I dont need nearly as much food and I will be doing all this alone. Is there anyone that could help me cut the recipes down to per meal and how many containers so I can participate in this WONDERFUL tool for moms? I would like to add that I’m a fast learner once I get going. Thank you so much and to the owners…you rock!
what state do you live in??? you might someone who lives close enough you could join into a group…I know more the merrier in the kitchen when you’re constructing lots of stuff at once..
I also cook alone, and this is my first month doing most of the recipes. I’ve found it easiest to make one whole dinner/lunch recipe each day, serve one portion for dinner, and pack the other 3 portions in the freezer. It’s been working out great so far. The idea of a cooking day sounds really great, but with a 2 year old, an always hungry husband, and A.D.D. (me) I think it would just be overwhelming. This way I can stock my freezer, have dinner ready for that night, keep my sanity, and give my son the attention he needs/wants. Hope this idea helps!
Great strategy.
I know this might be a dumb question, but in the Deconstructed Broccoli and Cheese Chicken, am I supposed to put in the chicken already cooked or raw? I buy frozen chicken, so if it’s raw, do I just put it in there frozen? Should I buy fresh? Sorry, this is my first time trying to do this.
THanks!
That is a question that has appeared several times so i made the instructions more clear. You can use fresh chicken or frozen, whichever you have on hand, it shouldn’t be cooked already. I typically buy frozen chicken or use chicken that I have bought fresh and frozen earlier in the month. Do NOT thaw the chicken for this dish if it has already been frozen. If I didn’t explain clearly feel free to email me. :)
Tomorrow is cooking day – very excited. Wondering if the grocery list calls for much too much Chicken broth. I bought 112 oz or whatever was called for, but I can only find one recipe that calls for 16 oz or thereabouts – doing it from memory. Anyone else run into this?
The Easy White Chicken Chili and the Ck Marsala both need the broth which is why so much.
Silly me – I TOTALLY missed the chicken broth listed in the chicken chili! I do have to say though we had some problems with our shopping list and converting the “liquid” measurements of cups to the net weight of products. We ended up with QUITE a bit extra cheese. Also, we had quite a bit of extra chicken when using the 1 cup equals 1 pound conversion – we’re very excited to have lots of chopped cooked chicken in our freezer, but wondering if we should have added more chicken to the recipes that called for chopped chicken.
SO grateful for all the hard work you put into this, and looking forward to reaping the benefits the rest of the month!
One more question – since there are only 8 dinner recipes and each makes about 2 meals worth of food, I’m only coming up with 16 nights worth of meals. Am I missing something?
This post should answer your questions about quantity.
For the parmesan pork chops I don’t see what temp. to cook this at. Please help!
350 degrees. Nice catch! I will make that change on the labels and such too!
I see that we are using 6 lbs of ground beef and separating it between two dishes of 4 & 2 lbs each. After I brown it I will be short by a pound or more. Do you purchase extra meat for this or is there a shrinkage rule of thumb to follow? :)
See related comment and answer below. It is the starting weight, not ending weight.
The 6 lbs is the raw equivalent, you don’t need to buy more meat. You just need to divide it accordingly. I usually measure the cooked amount and put 4 parts into one dish and 2 parts into the other. Hope that helps!
That makes perfect sense. Thank you!
Still eating up thing that need to disappear from our freezer before we restock again…had the big freezer get a plug and thaw a lot of the way before we caught it..now, trying to sort, pitch, save…
and this month we’ll skip the morning egg muffins as we bought a toaster that cooks the egg, heats the meat as it toasts…so that’s a fresh as you go meal around here…
and thanks for your work…I bet you are always scouting new recipes…
[...] is the September 2009 Dinner menu with links to the original recipe. I did a bit of tweeking due to the heavy dairy use, so a [...]
I made the apple streusel muffins, and I have a few questions.
My topping didn’t go as far as I think it should have, so I am doing some trouble shooting.
The instructions didn’t say to melt the butter or chop the walnuts. Should I have done this?
They taste great! My family loved them, and I thought that I may be able to improve my recipe for next time. :)
The original recipe does not call for the walnuts to be chopped and doesn’t say anything about melted butter. In fact, I think it is suppose to be a crumble which mean that softened might help but melted would not be good.
Thanks!
Also for Cindy…with the apple streusel muffins, I used a cup of chopped walnuts (b/c it is what I had on hand)and had plenty of streusel topping. Just an FYI for future batches! (Butter was softened, not melted). Again, haven’t tried them yet, but they looked beautiful and smelled so good!
I have a question…how much would a bunch of basil or a bunch of cilantro equal in measurements? I do prefer fresh, but I have a ton in my spice cabinet that I need to use up! Love your site! Your help with this will be much appreciated!
This one is hard to say. It looks like 1 T fresh = 1 t dried. There is at least 1 cup in this so you are looking at about 16 t, which is about 1/3 of a cup. Hope that helps!
Tricia,
How soon do you post the next month’s menu? I am just ready to start watching my sales papers for October’s menu! (I bought all of my stuff for my September cooking day in 1 day—5 stores!). I am going to plan the next one a little better! No rush…I have a freezer full of food, just wanted to start planning! I can’t thank you enough for your site!
The menus always come out on the 1st of the month. Be looking for the next on October 1st.
New to your blog! I LOVE this idea for the breakfast sandwiches and burritos! With no kiddos yet in this family i love this simple idea that keeps us from the near by drive thru! OUR BUDGET THANKS YOU!
Just found your site….Wow….that’s all I can say! I LOVE the menus. I’m going to try OAM for the first time. Thanks for all of the info! Can’t wait to get started.
Well I am about half way through the september menu. I am cooking it by myself and going to stock my freezer and my mom’s who has some health issues. So I am taking my time, but so far it has been so nice and easy to make only like 8 more things to make. they will have to wait to next weekend.
Thanks for all you do. this is my first time to cook all the items and it was really so easy to follow!!!
Can I just say the Chicken Marsala is DELISH!!! I felt like I was eating at a restaurant. I’m thinking about doing up a batch of 8 of these one day so we can have it once a week for two months! Or I can pull out two when we have company because it is definitely guest worthy.
My Mom and I did the September month’s recipes today. It took us about 9 1/2 hours today and we chopped everything yesterday. It was a lot of work, but it will be so gratifying to open up the freezer and take out a meal for the night and get to spend some quality time with my 2 year old daughter while dinner is cooking in the oven. Thanks for the great organization. I can’t wait to try everything! I do have to say that the Apple Streusel muffins were FABULOUS! I did make some lighter substitutions because I am following Weight Watchers. Can’t wait to try everything!
Hi Kim. I also follow weight watchers and wondered how this would work. I haven’t cooked anything yet, need to go grocery shopping and get started. I have calculated points on some of the recipes and they don’t seem too bad so I figured if I make some revisions it might really work out well for me. I can always eat a smaller portion and have a big salad and veggies with it. How is it working for you?
Hey, I just finished cooking the September menu. It took four days! The first day I finished the chopping and baking when my daughter came home with a bloody lip from falling asleep on the school bus and fell out her seat. Stopped everything and took her to the after hours clinic. The next morning I realized I grabbed chick peas instead of great northern beans for the white chili and had to drive back into town (I live out in the country in Texas). I also had lots of breaks to stop and nurse my 3 month old. All in all, I had a terrific time cooking. Next week I have my in-laws coming in and I’m totally prepared. I’ve already downloaded the October grocery list, and I’ll take advantage of some awesome sales this month whenever I’m in town. I’m already thinking ahead to Christmas because I’ll have everyone at my house for two weeks! Thanks so much for the time and effort you have put into this, it’s already blessing my family.
Thank you so much for sharing your story! :)
I just found this website last week, and decided to give it a try! So my first OAM cooking experience was yesterday and it was positive!
My boyfriend was my cooker heler. We halved everything, and we omitted the black beans & rice, marsala, and chicken & chiles. We started around 11am, and we finished up around 4:30. Not bad at all!
Let me tell you though – bad move putting the Apple Muffins at the beginning of the day! I was eating them all day long! They’re half gone!
I’m really looking forward to the ease of cooking on weeknights from now on.
I’m not a fan of pumpkin, so October’s menu wont work for me, but I think I’m going to go back and cook July’s menu next month! Thanks for putting this all together! :)
I am going to work on making this menu this weekend and had a question about the Chili. Is there a certain brand that make White Chili Seasoning? I have never heard of this.
Thanks.
I used McCormick’s. It is usually in the section with all of the other soup/gravy mixes.
Check out my comments on my blog http://www.thecravetosave.blogspot.com. This was my first OAMC endeavor and I couldn’t have done it without all of your helpful tips and resources. Thank you!
[...] I am also trying really hard to get back into the habit of eating leftovers, which means that I am attempting to make meals that will reheat well (and that we will want to eat again). One tool I am going to attempt to make more use of is my friend Tricia’s site Once a Month Mom. If you want to be inspired be sure to check her site out! She teaches you how to cook freezer and family friendly meals in bulk for an entire month. Oh and did I mention her meals are budget friendly too? Check out her September Menu here. [...]
[...] kids love pancakes. LOVE THEM. It all started with those pear pancakes from our first Once A Month Mom shindig. After we had eaten every delectable morsel of those pear [...]
My friend and I have both cooked the deconstructed broccoli & cheese casserole according to directions, they were thawed completely before baking, upon cutting the center chicken was still raw. both of us have had this same issues. is this common?
It sort of depends on how thick your chicken breasts were to start with. I have gotten in the habit of cutting my fresh chicken breasts into smaller cuts or strips before freezing them to help avoid this problem. The already frozen chicken breasts you can’t do that with though. But I would say there are times that I had that problem as well.
THANK YOU! I have GF for 5 weeks and needed inspiration for Once a Month Cooking and Angela has given it to me here…
Are there more recipe and meal plan adaptations. I just happened upon September 2009 by using GOOGLE search.
Please HELP!!
YAY!!! I wish I had time to do that regularly. Good luck and let me know how it turns out.
[...] organized on this site and tried the Deconstructed Broccoli and Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts and Apple Streusel Muffins, both so [...]
[...] bloggers raving about Once a Month Mom, so we looked there for a menu, and we decided to settle on this one. Yep, that’s right. All that food is now prepared and in my freezer, and we did it all in [...]
[...] the Reader did the September 2009 OAMM Menu recently – she wrote about their adventures and their first experience. And what a cute [...]
Hi there. I told my friend about your site the other day and we decided we wanted to try it sometime. Then my friend called last week and said she was going to have disk replacement surgery on her back at the end of the month (next week!) I did the shopping on Tuesday and we got together on Wednesday. We had a ton of fun preparing your menus and we have enjoyed everything we’ve tried. I’m so happy because I know this will help her and her family out while she is recovering. Thank you so much for doing this!
That is such a great story! Thanks for sharing it with us. And you are right, it will be a huge help to her during that time.
[...] September [...]
[...] Freezer Beef Stew (September) [...]
[...] I am not able to do the full September menu I chose a few of the September menu items, a few of us shopped for the goods and on the night of [...]
[...] Mom’s September 2009 Breakfasts and Lunches. Now it’s dinner time! Below is the September 2009 Dinner menu with links to the original recipe. I did a bit of tweeking due to the heavy dairy use, so a [...]
Stop Panic Attack…
[...]September Menu OAMC menu from Once A Month Mom | OAMC from Once A Month Mom[...]…
Do you have the recipe for the Freezer Beef Stew? I couldn’t find the link.
Thank you much.
The link appears to be broken and I can not find it on her site. The best thing to do is to go to the printable recipe cards from this month and get it from there.
[...] babe and have all that homemade goodness on hand. She was gracious enough to let me adapt the September 2009 menu to gluten and dairy free and post it here. Thanks [...]
Hey, I have a question about the freezer beef stew. So you just freeze big chunks of raw veggies (carrot, potato, etc) in a gallon bag. How well do the veggies “keep”, do they get freezer burned? Is this a recipe that I’d have to make soon after freezing? TIA!