A few OAMC tips

Okay, there was some interest in this so.....

1. If you have small children - it is easiest if you arrange to have a sitter the day you are planning on cooking. When my kids were younger I had a group of ladies that I cooked with that we would rotate cooking days. i.e. They would shop on Monday, I would babysit on Tuesday while they cooked. I would shop on Wednesday and they would babysit on Thursday. OR I would get a sitter that would sit for 3 - 4 meals in lieu of $$$$ letting them choose from the meals I was making that session.

2. At one point I was also in a meal cooking group - several of us got together one day a month - we were all assigned a group - beef, chicken, vegetarian, sides, etc. - we all brought recipes we were interested in cooking and we agreed or made SLIGHT adjustments to the recipe - i.e. if the recipe called for onion and we had a child who refused to eat onion - it would be noted on the top of the recipe to substitute onion powder for the diced onion, etc. - we would all shop for and cook our assigned meal(s) and then meet back on a certain day with coolers in tow and exchange meals. It worked out really well - sometimes the meals were a little more costly than other months but in the end it worked out pretty even - we always rotated who got the chicken month, beef month, etc.

3. On both shopping day AND cooking day it is important to wear comfortable, supportive shoes. You will be doing a lot of walking back and forth and your feet will really thank you for that.

4. Shop early in the morning on the first day and then spend the rest of the afternoon dicing, chopping, shredding, etc. I personally spend the extra few cents on the preshredded cheese at Sam's simply because the price difference, in my opinion, is worth the saved time that it would take to shred the cheese and then clean the food processor or if you are still using a hand shredder all the time it would take to shred the 5 pounds (give or take) that you might be using.

5. Use disposable pans when possible - I know there is some concern about tomato based products in aluminum pans - I don't make this suggestion lightly as I have a brother in law who is an Alzheimers researcher at the Univ. of Wis. - he states that as long as you aren't storing the sauce in the pan long term that it poses very little risk - having said that - I found that the disposable pans I use fir right down inside my glassware ones so I freeze the layered items in the disposable pans, freeze overnight and the following day I pop out the meal and seal it in freezer wrap, a Ziploc of use my Foodsaver and seal it.

I hope some of these tips are helpful. I will post more ideas/recipes here next Monday and if there is enough interest - sometime after the first of the year - when the holidays are over and life calms down a bit - I would be glad to have you over as a group to discuss ideas and you can look at the recipes I have.