Your Cooking is Heavenly...With Once A Month Cooking...

So I have succumb to the masses and am finally doing my first book review here on From a Desperate Housewife. And appropriately enough, I've had the opportunity to cook through the Once-A-Month Cooking Family Favorites Cookbook by Mimi Wilson and Beth Lagerborg. Any good housewife, as you know, has mealtime covered with gourmet courses every night of the week.



I'm not quite sure how I hooked up with this book review gig, but before I knew it, I was cooking in my kitchen with it. All I know is that a few months ago I happened upon something about once a month cooking while aimlessly eluding a half-written verdict article on my computer that my editor had been anxiously awaiting for some time. It was then that the idea kind of hit me on the head like a rock.

Who would have thought to do all that daily food prepping all at once??? What a concept?

The book outlines "cooking cycles" with each cycle containing 30 recipes. Each cycle comes complete with the grocery list, by category, of everything you'll need for the entire cycle along with detailed instructions on exactly what your cooking day will entail.

There are even summer grilling cycles, gluten-free cycles and gourmet cycles for all you fancy red-wine-with-your-dinner-types.

The whole idea is that rather than spend a half-hour each night prepping for dinner, you spend a day, one day, during the month prepping and freezing the entire month's meals so that all that's left for dinner time is the thawing, some final preps and maybe a side dish or two.

I have to admit though, I'm still working my way up to actual once a month cooking, after having the book for about a month now I'm onto Once a Week Cooking right now. (Baby steps.)

Because I am the pioneering woman now, out in the middle of nowhere, my shopping trips go something like this, "Goodbye Pa, I'm hitching up the horses to take the kids into town for winter supplies. We should be back in a day or two." So, I shop for at least two weeks worth of groceries when I make it into "town." I say "town" because I guess I technically live in a town, while it's a small one, it is still a town per say, but in my opinion, I live in a village. Going into "town" is making the 55 mile trip into Minot where there's a mall and a Super Wal-Mart. A town just cannot be a town without Target, a mall and a Super-Walmart.

So anyway, for the first two weeks of my once a week cooking, I took ten recipes out of the first one-month cycle that I thought would give us some variety and some new flavors. Then I put my grocery list together based on everything I'd need for those two weeks' recipes. A trip to Super-Walmart and a good $200 later, and I had everything I needed.

Then I took some time on Saturday to prep for the entire week, in between pulling up my entire garden, re-planting like 1005 bulbs and bushes in the backyard, oh and the usual cleaning, laundry folding and tending to the dog, kid and hubby. But alas, I simply followed the assembly order for the required meal prep in the book, and I had five meals in the freezer for the week and a week's worth of ingredients awaiting the next week's cycle.

Another bright idea I had? Since most of my precious weekend time has been consumed with fall yard work, I have had a week or two where I didn't quite get the entire week's meals ready during the Saturday before. So on the nights that I've had to cook dinner, I've been prepping double and putting half in the freezer for another night's meal. How lame-o is that that I just came up with that idea, now, after about 10 years of cooking?

So after all that, my point is, get the book. You'll thank me later, maybe by placing a small amount of money in the mail and addressing it to me. Or maybe just a nice thank you note with a gift will suffice.

The once a month cooking has replaced a lot of my go-to meals out of the freezer section at Super-Walmart. There always seemed to be one night out of the week where I just would not have time to prep a meal, so that's when we'd whip out a frozen pizza, mix up a fruit and veggie salad, and I'd be happy enough that everyone was getting a veggie, a fruit and some protein for supper. Now, I still have the frozen pizza that I bought a month ago, just sitting in the freezer.

But the thing that saddens me about the whole cooking thing? A little while ago I brought a meal over to a friend who had just had a baby. I simply doubled a lasagna that I had made one night and I froze half of it for her. At the last minute I thought about how I had forgotten that she has four mouths that require feeding every night rather than the three I cook for every night. So I was a little worried that it might not be enough, after all, with a lasagna I get enough to feed all of us for a night with a little left over for hubby's lunch at work the next day.

Well, I got a thank you note from her the other day thanking me for the wonderful mean that fed them all for two dinners and a lunch. What in the heck?????? How is that possible?

I think what's happening is this: hubby, the massive person that he is, actually eats enough for two people, average people that is, and Kaydn Rye, massive person that he is, consumes about the same amount of food in a day as I do. So that means that I'm actually cooking for roughly four grown people every night.

Anyway, for more info on the Once A Month Cooking, check out wwww.once-a-monthcooking.com

And here's a fun little recipe sample from the book that hubby and I thought was a "mixture of vibrant flavors for the palate." That's my official food critic critique of this Picadillo Pizza recipe:

1 cup salsa
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cumin
2 boneless, skinless chx breast halves, cooked and chopped (or in my case, I required 3)
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins
1/2 cup pitted, chopped green olives
1/4 cup chopped onion (i'm picky and don't like olives or onions, so I just left these out)
1 tbsp sliced almonds
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 12-inch Boboli Italian bread shell (I went even cheaper and got a Jiffy crust)

On prep day, combine the salsa, cinnamon and cumin in a 1 quart bag. Combine the chicken, cranberries or raisins, olives, onion and almonds in a 1 quart bag. Combine the cheese and cilantro in a sandwich bag. Clip these bags to the unopened Boboli packaging, which can be bent to fit the freezer if necessary. Freeze them.

To serve, thaw all the ingredients and place the Boboli on a medium round pizza pan. Spread the ingredients on the Boboli in the following order: sauce, chicken mixture, cheese and cilantro.

Bake the pizza in a preheated 400 degree oven for 16 to 18 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the pizza is bubbly.

Kaydn Rye described the pizza as, "interesting."




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