This weekend I did something I never thought I’d do.  I cooked an ENTIRE MONTH OF MEALS!  That’s right. It’s insane I know, but I did it.  I did it with the help of my friend Amy and the inspiration of two amazing women I recently had the pleasure to become friends with — Courtney and Tricia — who write at Once a Month Mom.

Once a Month Mom is a site that helps you plan, prepare and cook a months worth of meals all one day.  OAMM makes it really easy to do. You just need a partner.

Here’s how it works:
At the end of the month they post the menu for the upcoming month’s cooking day. The menu includes items for breakfast lunch and dinner and each meal links to a recipe.  Then, they go above the call of duty and they provide you with a Printable Grocery List that has all of the items you’ll need for that month’s cooking adventure. For those of us who might be mathematically challenged, they go through all of the recipes and consolidate the amounts. Then, if that wasn’t enough, each week they scour the circulars for items you’ll be needing and post the deals on their blog! They are amazing!  Finally, when the big day arrives, they’ve got a document that will guide your whole experience – Printable Instructions that tell you who needs to be doing what and when on cooking day. It’s like synchronized swimming only with cooking! They really make it soooo easy.

Everyone knows that I am not really “into” cooking but I am telling you, this Once a Month Cooking experience was great. Before we were even finished cooking (we cooked from 10:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.) I was on board for April.

It’s now just four days later and I am already reapping the benfits of the time invested doing the OAMM cooking.  Working full time, I often don’t have the energy to cook a “real” meal when I get home.  Having made these meals has not only allowed me to serve real meals after a day at work, but more importantly, it’s given me more time in the evenings to spend OUT of the kitchen and with my boys.

Here are a few pictures from the day.

At one point we had 4 crockpots going.

The soups – Spinach Tortillini and Minestrone
were portioned into meals

Amy’s husband Doug manned the flat top grill,
making more than 30 chocolate chip/raspberry pancakes

This is just a fun photo to prove I was there. I know some of you
are probably having a hard time believing I did all that cooking!

We whipped up whole wheat spice muffins for breakfast!

One of the meals for April was Shepherd’s Pie, a personal favorite.

A shot of the kitchen. You can see the meat on the stove
for the Mexican Un-Stuffed shells and at the same time the
muffin pans for the orange spice muffins. There was lots of
multitasking going on!