OAMC tricks

I do occasional once-a-month-cooking days still, but I've started to work out a few tricks to make it a bit easier lately.

The biggest trick I've figured out is that you save a lot of time by not cooking specifically for just the next month. Instead, you cook a lot of similar meals, but you are cooking 1/3rd of the meals you will eat for the next 3 months. Cooking similar meals is a major timesaver, cuts down on the number of ingredients and prep-steps you need to do, and most meals that can be frozen for a month won't have any issues if they are in a deep freezer for another two months.

So far, I've figured out a few groupings of meals that work well for my family and have similar preperation steps: Bean soups and chilis, pizzas, marinades and meats, stir fries, and pasta sauces.

At this point, I've done this style of once-a-month cooking with bean soups and chilis, and with pizzas. I got a lot more done in the same amount of time. Now I'm trying to decide what I want to do for next week. I'm leaning towards marinades, but meat is expensive and our budget is tight right now. I do have a lot of fish already in the freezer, so maybe prepping marinades and marinating the fish and seafood this week, then buy and marinate some beef and chicken next week? Stir-fry could be fun instead, but pasta sauces would probably be really easy and something lighter sounds good right now.

Maybe I'll just reorganize the freezer so it's easier to get to what we already have. That might be more useful in the long run.

My long-term dream is to eventually be able to do this with friends, as a potluck-style party. Something like, have everyone bring 10 cups of pre-soaked beans and one other item off of a list of ingredients, and then enjoy making bean soups together with what everyone brings. Or "bring your own crusts and some toppings" and make pizzas together.

Kids say the cutest things

I got a few good quotes from the girls recently.

A few weeks back, Lenora offered me some of her food. I thanked her, and she told me that she was feeding the baby!

Lenora is so ready to help nurture and care for her baby sister. Iliana seems to be more ready for a playmate, so I suspect she won't show more than curiousity until the baby gets more active and can interact a bit more. Lenora wanted a baby sister, and Iliana wanted a baby brother. I suspect Iliana has noticed that younger boys tend to be more active than younger girls, and therefore more interesting (to her mindset). Lenora wants something to cuddle and love, so "more active" isn't a good thing to her. Judging by the kicking, this child might be more like Iliana than Lenora. Then again, it might just be that this little girl has more room to move around.

Other cutisms:
When I got home from work on Monday, Iliana ran up to me saying, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" Then she got to me and asked, "Did you buy anything?" I think she wasn't asking for presents, so much as she was realizing that when I come home before their bedtime, I've usually bought groceries. But it was still funny!

At bedtime, Lenora was talking to herself a lot - then suddenly out of nowhere she looks a little concerned and says, "But Mommy, if you keep getting bigger, then maybe you might not be able to fit in the house." I reassured her that the baby would be born and would finish growing outside of me, just like them, and I would go back to my normal size. She didn't seem convinced - I think she then said, "But you might not . . ."