Comments on: Once A Month Cooking

By: Dani

Dani — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:29:21 +0000

Ok, that’s what I kind of figured. Glad used to make something called OvenWare. It was like storage containers, but they were safe for the oven (except for the lids). I wonder if it still exists. I found some in Mom’s basement but she bought hers ages ago.

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:27:04 +0000

When we’re cooking, we try to use our good cookware that we got from my mom as a wedding present. (Emeril ware or somethng like that. It’s been very good to us.) We bought a bunch of rubbermaid containers when we were starting, and those come in a lot of sizes. We have three glass casserole dishes that we use for things like lasagna (two 13×9 and one 8×8 or 9×9, I’m not sure which.)

We do go from freezer to fridge (or counter sometimes for a while, because damn, some of these things just will not thaw in the fridge), and it has worked very well. Sometimes we skip the oven or the stove and just heat up individual servings in the microwave when things are already cooked. The lasagna that we froze and the chicken pot pie will be cooked after we thaw them.

I guess the short of it is:

- Rubbermaid containers, lots of them
- Glass casserole dishes

We don’t use throwaway ones, and I wouldn’t anyway because that’s pretty wasteful and will end up costing more in the long run. We got a couple of boxes of containers for about $20 each at target. It came with a lot of little once which we don’t use as much, but they stack up really well and they don’t take up as much space because of that. Those are useful for storing individual servings of soups, or I’m using one for a powdered cream of chicken soup mix that I made.

By: Dani

Dani — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:52:47 +0000

Laura –
I was wondering.. when you are preparing your meals and such – Do you use regular plastic/glass containers, or do you use the aluminum throw away ones? I’m tossing around the idea of doing the meals like you and John do, since school and work is not very conducive to cooking regularly. I am looking more at the aspect of I’d like to be able to go from freezer->fridge to thaw -> oven to cook. It just would require more containers than I currently had.

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:12:57 +0000

@kreachr I think it could work for a family of four if you cooked the right things. For instance, this month, I cooked five quarts of chili in about an hour. That fed us for about seven meals, so that would be eight meals if you had kids (versus teenagers who would be likely to eat adult portions). A lasagna would probably make one meal with leftovers. I try to make sure whatever we cook has enough leftovers for at least lunch for both of us for the following day. It could work, depending on what you chose to cook! It wouldn’t be as cheap as it was for us, but you’d be cooking for twice as many.

By: kreachr

kreachr — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:06:36 +0000

This is such an inspired idea!! I love the concept. Unfortunately I don’t think it would work quite so well for a family of four I forget how much less food you need for only two people…

Keep it up!! And enjoy the money saved (not to mention the healthier diet)

By: Dani

Dani — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 02:55:39 +0000

We have a small chest freezer (I believe it’s a 5.0 cubic feet), and it’s the best thing we ever have received. It was about $220 (just to give you the rough estimate of cost), and it only increased our electric bill by maybe $6/month to run it. I have the mindset to something similar to you for the winter time, when we’re less likely to cook anything. However, I once stored 4 turkeys, ice, and lots of other things in there before I actually came close to running out of room.

I can’t give exact dimensions, but it’s smallish and fits well in our smallish kitchen/dining room. Now we use the freezer part of our refrigerator to put ice, and other small things in. I think it’s been well worth it to have.