They Live on Drury Lane

For the past few weeks I've been flirting with the idea of freezer cooking (also known as once a month cooking, or OAMC). The basic idea is that you set aside a single day, or a portion of a day and cook lots of meals that can be frozen. Then, for the next several weeks you can just pull something out of the freezer, heat it up and dinner is on the table.

This type of cooking has been on my radar for well over a year, and in theory it sounded great, but I wasn't so sure how practical it would be for me. Heck, I have a hard enough time getting the kids out from underfoot so that I can spend 30 minutes cooking one dinner, let alone an entire day in the kitchen.

There were some other concerns as well. The main one being that we have a side by side refrigerator freezer, and no extra freezer in the garage or basement or wherever people with extra freezers keep them. If you've ever owned a side-by-side, you know that it ranks pretty high on the Useless Inventions list. Ours can hold the rough equivalent of the freezer in a dorm fridge.

There were also the questions of what I would cook, how I would reheat it, how I would shop for this kind of cooking extravaganza.

And yet, there was something appealing about spending an entire day cooking mass quantities of food. I grew up with six siblings, so I'm undaunted by the idea of cooking in bulk- but back then all of the food was consumed at one setting. I also liked the idea of only having to plan meals once a month rather than once a week. And I sure wouldn't miss those nightly half-hours of attempting to cook while keeping a toddler away from the stove.

So I did what any Domestic Engineer of the 2010s would do, I turned to the internet! I read lots of blogs by women (and maybe a guy or two?) who freezer cook and were kind enough to share their knowledge with the world. Danielle over at Blissful and Domestic had some great info on OAMC and also on OAM Shopping! Frugal Mom has also been a great resource for organizational ideas. And I found that Food.com has a ton of recipes. You just type OAMC into their search tool and you'll definitely find something appealing.

With all of this information, I decided a slow start would work best for me. I didn't want to dive in head first, get overwhelmed and give up before I really got started.

I kicked things off yesterday by baking a batch of pumpkin muffins that The Boys can eat for breakfast. I used a pumpkin bread recipe that I've had for ages and just baked them in muffin tins.

I should mention that at least one of my kids is what I like to call Breakfast Phobic on any given day. One or the other or the other of them will decide that he doesn't want to eat anything, doesn't want to eat what you've given him or only wants to eat one bite of three different things. So I was a little skeptical as to how things would proceed this morning.

Because I am the luckiest woman in the world, I'm still asleep when Cap'n feeds The Boys breakfast, but because of the aforementioned phobia, I am often awakened by the screaming of one child or another or another as he reacts to his daily breakfast. But this morning I just got to sleep- no screaming, no crying! All accounts confirm that I missed a perfectly lovely breakfast experience!

Here's the recipe, which you can tinker to meet your personal nutritional tastes:

Pumpkin Muffins

1 1/2 Cups Sugar (you can reduce this to about 1 cup if you like)
1 Cup Canned Pumpkin (or fresh if you prefer and have the time)
1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil
1/2 Cup Water
2 Eggs
1 2/3 Cup Flour (you can use all or part whole wheat flour)
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon Ground Cloves
1/2 Cup Walnuts (optional-- also yummy with Chocolate Chips instead)

Combine sugar, pumpkin, oil, water and eggs in a large bowl. Beat until smooth- you can use a standing mixer, hand-held mixer or a whisk.

In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients except nuts. Add dry mixture to pumpkin mixture and combine. Fold in nuts.

Spoon* into greased muffin tins (or use cupcake liners) and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes**.

Cool in pans on wire racks for about 15 minutes then turn the muffins out onto the racks.

When completely cool, set muffins on a pan (or plate, whatever will fit in your hopefully-bigger-than-mine freezer) in a single layer and pop in the freezer for about 20 minutes.

Then move muffins into freezer zip top bags and toss them back into the freezer.

When breakfast rolls around, take out as many muffins as you need and defrost them in the microwave for about 1 minute. If you've got a six-year-old, he or she can do that part, leaving you to sip coffee or doze at the table.

*Whenever I make muffins or cupcakes, I spoon the batter with one of these things:

I think of it as a melon baller, but a friend once told me that it was an ice cream scoop. Who the heck eats such little scoops of ice cream?? (If you look closely, you can see me and my camera in the scoop!)

** My oven is wonky and cannot be depended upon to cook anything at an even or accurate temperature. So, 20 minutes is how long it took in my oven, your experience may vary!



Later this week I'm going to be adventurous and make a double batch of BBQ Chicken so I can freeze some for later!

If you've got any tips on OAMC, please leave me a comment!