Happiness Is a Full Freezer

By Diane Stark

It pays to plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
~Author Unknown

"Mom, what's for dinner?" my ten-year-old son, Jordan, asks me. It's seven a.m. and the child is shoving in the Apple Jacks like he hasn't eaten in weeks.

I sigh. The what's-for-dinner conundrum. It's the question I most dread being asked. (Well, besides the whole where-do-babies-come-from thing. But that's a whole other thing.) Yet each of my five children -- yes, five! -- asks me at least three times a day what fantastic fare he or she will be dining on that evening.

Often, the question is posed before I even manage to get out of my jammies.

This bugs me and they know it, but it doesn't seem to stop them from asking. Once, I asked Jordan why he did this. "Why, oh why, do you need to know what you'll be eating for dinner twelve hours from now?"

"I like to know what to get hungry for," he said with a smile. "It makes the food taste better when I get to think about it all day."

I thought about his answer. It made sense in an odd sort of way. And really, I was doing the same thing -- spending inordinate amounts of time thinking about dinner. But I was worried about the cooking aspect of the process. (I've got the eating part down pat.)

All day long, the what's-for-dinner deal plagued my thoughts. "What am I going to make?" The question hung over me like a proverbial dark cloud. It was time to find a little silver lining.

I'd heard about this thing called "once-a-month cooking." Cooking only once a month? That sounded like heaven on earth. So my friend Google and I checked it out.

I waded through what felt like a million hits. I printed dozens of recipes and joined a really great online cooking group. The general consensus among the group was that if I wanted to start doing once a month cooking, I needed to start small.

Start small? Not me. I never do anything halfway.

I set aside an entire Saturday for my first marathon cooking session. I bought every boneless, skinless chicken breast within a fifty-mile radius and a whole cow's worth of hamburger. I purchased canned vegetables, fresh veggies, and some frozen ones too. I got tomato paste, tomato sauce, and even tomato puree. I bought so much food that I had to ask Jordan to grab a second cart. To which he said, "Ooh, I can hardly wait to have dinner tonight!"

I took everything home and started sorting the food. I got out the brand-new recipes I printed off the Internet and started compiling casseroles. I quadrupled all the recipes, figuring I could make four casseroles nearly as quickly as I could make one. All afternoon, I was like the Tasmanian Devil in my kitchen. Finally, my freezer was full of a month's worth of casseroles.

Inevitably, one of my kids meandered into the kitchen and asked the inevitable question. "So, Mom, what's for dinner?"

I grinned because for the first time in my life, the question didn't irk me. I already knew the answer. I retrieved one of my fabulous new casseroles from the freezer and put it in the oven. "Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes," I said, patting myself on the back.

I was still singing my own praises as my family took their first bites of my very first once-a-month cooking creation. "Wow, this is... not my favorite," my husband said slowly. And my kids were not nearly as tactful. "Mom, this is nasty," one said. Another child actually spit the food back onto her plate.

They didn't like my casserole. And I had three more in the freezer just like it.

After I finished crying, I got back online and discovered some important advice I'd ignored the first time around. It said, "Don't double, triple, and certainly don't quadruple any recipe that you haven't tried before. It doesn't make any sense to have dinners in the freezer that nobody will actually eat."

Now they tell me.

I revisited the "start small" advice and realized it had a lot of merit. The ladies in the online cooking group advised me to consider making meal starters, rather than whole meals for the freezer. "Catch a good sale on ground beef," they said. "Buy a ton, brown it all, and then freeze it after it's cooked. Then when you want to use it, thaw it and turn it into tacos, sloppy joes, or use it in a casserole."

I cringed at the thought of another casserole, but the taco idea sounded great. A few nights later, I put it to the test. I thawed the meat in the microwave, added the seasoning and warmed the tortillas, and had tacos on the table in less than ten minutes.

It was so easy and stress-free.

And best of all, nobody spit their dinner back onto their plate.


My new online friends told me I could do the same thing with chicken. I put some boneless, skinless breasts in my crock pot with a bit of chicken broth. I let it cook all day and then that night, I shredded the chicken with two forks. I froze the pieces in small containers, ready to be thawed and turned into chicken salad, quesadillas, or barbecue chicken pizza.

Or even -- gasp -- a casserole.

Another part of the "start small" philosophy is to double familiar recipes. If you love your lasagna recipe, make two pans or even three. Eat one for dinner that night and toss the extra one in the freezer for another time. It will come in handy, but remember, only do this with a recipe you've tried before. (Trust me on this one. Remember those casseroles I made? They're in my freezer, where they've been for a year and a half now.)

But I've come a long way with this once-a-month cooking thing. Now, when one of my kids asks me what's for dinner, I don't panic. I know that my freezer is full of foods that make dinnertime easier, more organized and far less stressful.

Once-a-month cooking has helped me become a much happier mama.

And by the way, if you happen to know anyone who's holding a potluck dinner, I've got some casseroles in my freezer I'd like to unload.

http://www.chickensoup.com