Stephanie Cornais found a cooking method that saved time and money, but it left her exhausted.<\/p>\n
Stephanie, who blogs about parenthood and healthy living at Mama and Baby Love<\/a>, would cook a month’s worth of meals in one day, then store them in the freezer.<\/p>\n It’s an idea that’s been around for awhile. In fact, J.D. wrote about it back in 2007. By batch cooking, not only do you have healthy, home-cooked meals when dinner time rolls around, but you also can save money by buying in bulk and not relying on convenience foods.<\/p>\n “I buy my beef and chicken straight from a local farmer, and buying beef in bulk saves me a good amount money,” says Stephanie. “And I save money by always having my freezer full of food and never having to rely on take out, fast food, or processed frozen foods from the grocery store.”<\/p>\n Stephanie was saving money and had a freezer-full of home-cooked meals, but once-a-month cooking was problematic.<\/p>\n For one thing, Stephanie experienced a lot of anxiety leading up to the big cooking day. “I was still learning how to cook, I was afraid of messing up, and I was afraid of feeling the emotions that came up in the kitchen,” she says. “My mother suffers from mental illness and being in the kitchen brought up a lot of painful memories of not having a mother who really took care of me and nourished me.” And don’t forget, you’re doing a month’s worth of cooking in one day. “I would be making a bunch of all kinds of different meals (fajitas, meatloaf, casseroles, etc.) that all required chopping, assembling, cooking on the stovetop or oven, and then freezing,” she says. “So I would be in the kitchen all day long and have a huge variety of dinners to freeze.” Then there’s the cleanup and scrubbing of pans. No wonder it took more than 12 hours, even with a friend helping out. “My feet would kill me!” says Stephanie.<\/p>\n About six years ago, Stephanie bought a slow cooker.<\/p>\n “No one taught me how to cook growing up, so I had to teach myself,” she says. “The slow cooker was the perfect beginning point. I never messed up anything in the slow cooker, it gave me confidence to try other things. I could just chop and dump and run the hell out of the kitchen.”<\/p>\n So after experiencing the drawbacks to once-a-month cooking, Stephanie tried a new method using her slow cooker. “Basically, all I was did was chop vegetables and assemble ingredients<\/a>,” says Stephanie. “I just dumped the veggies into the gallon-sized Ziploc bags, then added the meat, then added the spices.”<\/p>\n She still enjoyed the money-saving benefits of once-a-month cooking, and because she was using her foolproof slow cooker, she had a lot less anxiety leading up to cooking day.<\/p>\n The new method also saved her a lot of time. “Now it takes about two hours,” she says. “Before there was lots of time spent coordinating grocery shopping and tasks, but now I probably spend about 15 minutes getting my grocery list ready. I simply chop and assemble, then immediately freeze. This way cuts the cooking down by 75%, but it’s only slow cooker meals.”<\/p>\n<\/span>Once-a-Month Cooking Is a Lot of Work!<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nAlso, the cooking marathons were physically exhausting. A once-a-month cooking session requires a lot of planning. “Between the juggling of cooking and childcare, the prep work, organization, and scheduling, it can be overwhelming,” she says.<\/p>\n<\/span>Make Once-a-Month Cooking a Snap With a Slow Cooker<\/span><\/h2>\n