Well, now it is time to weigh in on the dinners we prepared in May. What did your family think? Feel free to leave comments below but don’t forget to vote in the right side bar.

Now it is time to get back to telling us what you thought of the May menu. We start this week with breakfasts. You will remember that there were Fresh Strawberry Muffins, Low-Calorie Strawberry Shake, Homemade Granola Bars. Please visit the poll in the right side bar to cast your vote. Thanks.

Hi!!  My name is Misty Newsome from The Newsome Family Blog.  I found Once A Month Mom from Andrea at Mommy Snacks on Twitter.  I’ve been reading it for a few months, and at the beginning of April sent a friend of mine an email asking if she’d be interested in doing this with me.  I knew our kids got along great and our husbands would LOVE the idea of new recipes, so I figured let’s give this a shot.  I’ve been doing batch cooking on and off for years, but was always too intimidated to do an actual once a month cooking day.  She said yes, so we started gathering our ingredients.  Our first day went really well for a first try!  My husband took the day off and watched all 4 kids (ages 3, 2, 1 and 7 months) until he had some help with friend’s hubby got home at noon.  I actually still have some recipes left that I am giving to new moms at our church.

So we spent our Memorial Day starting our 2nd ever BIG DAY of cooking.  We also had a 3rd person join us for the first time.  Two of our friends had been interested in this, and so they did the May menu last Wednesday.  However, she has 4 kids, and knew she wanted to make more of some recipes, so we said bring your food and come on!!  Plus, we thought we’d get done faster with 3 people!  (Our first day was start to finish 8:30 am – 3 pm)  We were wrong….

Seperated Ingredients

The day started off well.  My girlfriends had all brought over their chicken and crock pots the night before, and one of their families came over to hang out and play cards.  They helped clean our kitchen (I HAVE to have a clean kitchen to start) and then after they left, I thought I’d do us all a favor and separate all the ingredients by dish. It ended up being a big pain, and I would advise to NOT to that. Just have them all on one table instead of all spread out.  I’m kind of anal and an uber-organizer and I thought it would help, but it just made us all confused and unable to find things easily.  It might work if there are only 2 and you are going in order, but I’ll get to that later.

Crockpots doing their thing!

We did not chop the night before, so my two girlfriends got to chopping, while I got the crock pots going with meat balls and chowder.  Putting the crock pots out of the kitchen really helped as this saved us much counter space! Oh, had the early morning high stayed we may have finished by 1!!  After that, there was very little organization.  What we probably should have done is have one person be A, one person be B and then the third clean and help.  What we did was “what are y’all working on” and then pick something next on the list.  Which was somewhat good, except I feel like I had to clean the whole time, and poor Valerie, my pregnant friend, ended up doing a lot of the cooking, with lots of bloody meat!

Mindy working on hot dog croissants

We were on a big time roll, and around 10:30 declared to our husbands (who had all 8 kids elsewhere, GREAT by the way!) we’d probably be done by 1.  The problem is, we were so excited we were knocking things out, that we slowed way down. That and we just overall started taking longer.  Friend’s husband said he’d bring us lunch that day, and of course we needed a couple things from the store so he brought those and brought us lunch, and we took a very leisurely one! Here’s Mindy working on the hot dog croissants, which my husband has tried and really likes.  Hubby even stepped in to help at the end….we were TIRED.  It ended up more like 4 before we were all done.  But my kitchen was spotless!!  So here are the top 10 things we learned:

1. The night before when you as hostess are getting all organized and excited, do not proceed to text your pregnant friend way past midnight just to remind her of things.  When she stops texting back, it’s time to put the phone down!
2. When you’ve talked about using your friends fresh (not frozen) ground beef for the hamburgers and your previously frozen now thawed ground beef for the recipes that it needs to be browned, actually REMEMBER before you start browning all the fresh beef.
3. Always buy more tortillas.  It seems we always have lots more innards (that doesn’t sound appetizing) than tortillas to put them in.
4. Make sure everyone has read through all the recipes the night before.  We kept asking our friend who had done the cooking day and she was busy with her own recipe and couldn’t remember!
5. When you read through all the recipes the night before, you’ll catch some of the things that need to be chopped but aren’t on the instructions, i.e. the strawberries and ginger (if you go that route, we just used ground ginger).
6. Don’t just eyeball the chicken broth, I used WAY too much in the chowder!
7. Don’t make your pregnant with her 3rd baby friend do all the raw meat stuff.   Yuck, sorry Val!!
8. Don’t let your husbands come at the end and taunt you without putting them to work!
9. Even though you’ll get tired, remember ALL THOSE DAYS YOU DON’T HAVE TO COOK and it will get you through the end of the day.  My friend who did the day with our other friend before us says wine helps too!
10. Don’t offer to do the onceamonthmom.com recap when you will be out of town the day after you cook, on a school field trip the next day, and then just at church working on VBS stuff the next day.  Sorry this is so late guys!!

How did your May cooking day go? Make sure to share your stories here.

I have a confession. Ssshhh. Come a little closer. No, closer. Okay here it is, “I didn’t cook the May menu”. There, I said it. Yes, you can tell others. It turns out I am human. A very pregnant, finicky eater human. And let’s face it, my freezer is OVERFLOWING with food. And it needs defrosted. And we were on vacation. And the list goes on and on. I love some of the recipes so after we get everything cleaned out I intend to go back and make a few for the future.

In the meantime, I have asked a fellow reader and Once A Month Mom cook to share her story and do the May recap for you. If you have a story from your May cooking day be sure to link to it below. If Mr. Linky doesn’t appear to be working leave the link in the comments section. And as always, thanks for joining us!

I hope that you had a good April cooking experience and are looking forward to May! If you are new to the site this month, WELCOME. We are glad that you have decided to join us. Here is what you will need to participate in the May OAMC BIG DAY! Not sure how to get started, read here.

Spring is in full swing and around our house, so is the grill. With lots of grill items going on sale in May you can be sure that this menu is full of great things for cooking outdoors. Don’t fear, if you don’t have a grill many of them can also be cooked in a crock pot, broiler or oven.

May Podcast

• Listen in the orange player at the top of this post…

May Menu

• Included below are the menu items that we will be preparing as part of our OAM Cooking 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 May Printable Menu.

• Breakfast

  • Fresh Strawberry Muffins
  • Low-Calorie Strawberry Shake (adding Banana)**
  • Homemade Granola Bars
    

• Lunches

  • Hot Dog Croissants
  • Chicken BBQ Pita Pizzas** 
    
  • Chipotle Chicken and Corn Chowder
  • Chicken Taco Wraps
    

• Dinners

  • Asian Flank Steak (Don’t Panic Recipe)**
  • Elliot’s Gourmet Burgers (Don’t Panic Recipe)**
  • Strong Safety Stuffed Burgers**  
    
  • Spaghetti Pie
  • Slow Cooker Saucy Meatballs
  • Buffalo Chicken Spaghetti
  • Barbecued Baby Back Ribs** 
    
  • Pioneer Woman’s Flank Steak** 
    

• Printable Menu

**Indicates meals that require NO COOKING on your OAM Cooking BIG DAY!

Grocery List

• Included in this spreadsheet you will find a listing of all the items you will need to complete your May OAM Cooking BIG DAY. For more instructions on how to use this, go here.
• Printable Grocery List

Instructions

• These are the step-by-step instructions you will need to quickly and efficiently approach your OAM Cooking BIG DAY!
• Printable Instructions

Labels

Designed to be printed on Avery 8163 or equivalent! Readers who didn’t have labels available suggested just printing them on paper and taping them. Cheap and economical; I like it!

I’ve tried turning them into pdf files so that hopefully they would maintain their properties and by-pass some of the issues we have been having printing from Google Docs. However, being on vacation, I haven’t had time to test them. SO. If you are unable to print them correctly, let me know and I will create a different solution when I return home the later next week.

• May Labels 1 – Fresh Strawberry Muffins, Low-Calorie Strawberry Shake
• May Labels 2 – Homemade Granola Bars, Hot Dog Croissants
• May Labels 3 – Chicken BBQ Pita Pizzas, Chipotle Chicken and Corn Chowder
• May Labels 4 – Chicken Taco Wraps, Asian Flank Steak
• May Labels 5 – Elliot’s Gourmet Burgers, Pioneer Woman’s Flank Steak
• May Labels 6 – Strong Safety Stuffed Burgers, Spaghetti Pie
• May Labels 7 – Slow Cooker Saucy Meatballs, Buffalo Chicken Spaghetti
• May Labels 8 – Barbecued Baby Back Ribs, Blanks

Helpful Hints

• Tips from Once A Month Mom cook Misty Newsome AFTER her OAMC day.
• Tips and Stories from other readers.

What do you think of May’s menu?

And don’t forget to check out the right sidebar weekly to vote on past month’s menu items!