OAMC Update

Several of you asked me to report back after my first OAMC session was over. Sorry it took me so long; this rash/allergy business has been sucking my time right up, and combined with my upcoming wedding anniversary (March 8th, baby!) and my trip to South Carolina next week, I just haven't had ANY free time.

Let's elaborate on the South Carolina business. I'll be driving by myself with a 14 month old for 17 hours. I do have a death wish, yes. It's kind of a spur-of-the-moment trip that I just decided on but I think it'll be lots of fun if we actually survive the getting there thing.

So, back to the original point of this post. My first month of OAMC went great, but (and this is a big but), I came in at a $450 grocery budget. This is what I had originally budgeted for, but as you might remember, I assumed I wouldn't spend more than $250 after it was all said and done, giving us $200 extra to put toward debt. Yeah. That didn't really happen. First of all, Tim was out of town. I had these big meals all put together in the freezer but I didn't want to cook them because it just seemed like too big a meal for little ole me. So then I did things like swing by Target for a goat cheese/mozzarella pizza (to-die-for in case you care) and some fancy pasta and other such UNnecessities. And that still wouldn't have put me much over budget. But then the whole allergy debacle happened and I decided we needed to go on an elimination diet. One of the key points to an elimination diet is to shop all organically. Plus, do you know that goat milk is $4 per quart and Ben can drink a quart a day? Needless to say, that all really added up.

I would still call it a huge success, despite making a few mistakes. Having dinner all put together is AWESOME!

I decided to go for round 2 this month. Besides my separate budget for Ben's food (yeah, it's come down to that), I've probably spent $200 on groceries for March. We will have to make a milk run every week and we'll need to get eggs twice this month, but that's it. We have tons of frozen veggies in the freezer and all the supplies I need for bread all month long. Since I'll be gone a big part of the month, I've put together some really simple and basic meals for Tim. This month's menu is NOT fancy.

I'm behind on this whole OAMC business and will just be starting my cooking session here in, oh, five minutes. Hopefully I can get it all knocked out by tomorrow night and relax this weekend before this impending 17-hour drive.

So, the menu:

P Dubz steak bites x 2
Chile Relleno casserole x 2
Weight Watchers lasagna
Turkey Taco Lettuce Wraps (minus the lettuce part...we're tortilla fans over here!)
Red Beans & Rice x 4
Spaghetti x 6 (My husband is sort of obsessed with spaghetti and since I'm gone part of March, I'm indulging him in his favorites!)
Weight Watchers meatloaf
Chili x 4
Multigrain blueberry pancakes & eggs x 3
BBQ beef sandwiches x 2
Black beans & rice
Mac 'N Cheese (Sorry to the recipe poster, but we did NOT like this at all. It tasted like cardboard. So this is leftover from last month and I just haven't been able to bring myself to eat it yet).

A few of these things aren't make ahead-able and there's a reason for that. I found that I REALLY enjoy cooking. It's therapeutic and, well, enjoyable. I just don't like to do it every day and I especially don't like to clean up afterward. So I'm thinking my ideal monthly cooking schedule will be twenty prep ahead meals and ten that I get to cook as I go. We'll see!

Anyone else doing OAMC this month?

Freezer cooking!

Inspired by two of my favorite Mommy Bloggers, Money Saving Mom and Life as Mom, I decided to try my hand at OAMC (once-a-month cooking).

I started by breaking a cardinal rule of OAMC: attempting to do both the shopping and cooking in one day. I had big plans to shop beforehand, but they fell through for various reasons. So I found myself absolutely exhausted by 2:00 AM this morning, and for good reason. The second rule I broke was to go in without a plan. I just sat down, starting plowing through my recipes and churning out meats and mixes and other things. I should have laid out a plan beforehand, because things would have gone more smoothly. But oh well! Live and learn, right?

Overall, I'd call it a huge success. Back in the pre-couponing days, I used to spend $800 on groceries & dining every month! Shocking, I know. And kind of sickening to think about all the money we could have in savings now if I'd have gotten our food budget under control ages ago. But it's in the past, so all I can do now is move forward and learn from my mistakes. Despite becoming a couponer, I've still managed to spend $450 to $500/month on food lately. Something had to change. But I'm kind of a food snob, so I knew it wouldn't be easy to reign in the budget.

I sat down this week, plotted out a month long menu that included multiples of all my favorite recipes (to try to save the maximum amount of money by using all the ingredients) and went shopping. Amazingly, I only spent $166! On a month's worth of groceries! This even included organic meats, cheeses and dairy. I'll have to go to the grocery store once a week to re-stock our milk and produce, but I can't imagine that I'll need to spend more than another $100. And since I budgeted $450 for groceries this month, it looks like we'll get to put about $200 extra in savings. This makes all the work yesterday and today SO worth it!

Everything just clicked this weekend. The reason I've been spending so much money on groceries, despite the fact that I use a lot of coupons, is that I buy a lot of convenience foods. I buy loaves of bread, tortillas, baking mixes, frozen waffles/pancakes, premade food for Ben - the list goes on and on. Since I'm lucky enough to stay home with my little guy, I have extra time. Time that I could use to bake my own breads, make my own pasta and tortillas, freeze my own waffles and make all of Ben's food from scratch (which is great for more than that reason alone - I now know exactly what goes into his food, so it's easier to eliminate allergens). OAMC is something I will definitely continue doing!

Here's the breakdown of meals:

For the following, I mixed together all the dry ingredients into separate freezer bags/jars and wrote the directions right on them for quick prep:



1. Maple Oat Heart Scones x 3

2. Multi-Grain Blueberry Pancakes x 4

3. Hot Chocolate x 2

For the following three dishes, I prepared the dish up to the point that it would be ready to go in the oven, then I placed them in their baking dishes, "flash froze" in the freezer for about an hour, stuck them in freezer bags with baking directions written on the front. They'll all have to be thawed before they can go in the oven.

4. Mac & Cheese x 2- Yes, a little sinful and not exactly kind to the waistline, but it's inevitable that we'll eat crappy a few times a month. I also cooked, diced and froze some chicken to add to my hubby's. He's gotta have meat in everything!

5. Chicken Enchilada Casserole x 2

6. Weight Watchers Meatloaf x 2

7. Eggless teething biscuits for Ben. I think they taste like cardboard, but Ben loves them! I used whole wheat flour to make them healthier.



8. I cooked six chicken breasts for Ben's food. I pureed half of them with some steamed veggies because he seems to have an easier time digesting them. I divided the puree among ice cube trays, froze them and then popped them into freezer bags. The rest of the chicken breast I froze to make him other dishes later.

9. I pureed some sweet potatoes and did the same ice cube tray method.




10. Shredded beef filling - we'll use this to make tacos, burritos & sandwiches. I made four pounds and froze it in four separate one-pound bags.



11. Crockpot applesauce - Oh, this is SO yum! It has sugar in it which I'm going to eliminate next time because it's too sweet and doesn't need it!



12. Banana apple bread - I had some overripe bananas in the freezer that needed a purpose and this was a yummy way to use 'em!

12. Low-fat tortillas - My chicken enchilada casserole called for tortillas and we'll need them for our tacos & burritos, so I decided to try my hand at making them. This was SO easy and they were about a million times better than store bought! I will NEVER buy store bought again!



13. Low-fat lemon bread x 2- I got this recipe out of a magazine and it freezes really well. I'll post it sometime soon.

14. Weight Watchers Crockpot Sante Fe Chicken x 2- There's really not a whole lot to do for this recipe beforehand, but I went ahead and mixed together the dry ingredients.

15. Weight Watchers salsa chicken x 2 - Same issue as above. It's a super quick meal, so there's really nothing I could do beforehand. But man, it's my new favorite recipe! A quick note: I'm trying to get away from reduced fat stuff, so I use plain yogurt instead of light sour cream.

16. I put a few pounds of chicken breast into freezer bags with marinade to make a few quick chicken/veggie dinners. It just needs to be thawed out and cooked as you normally would.

17. I cooked up three pounds of hamburger meat/onions and froze them into separate freezer bags for spaghetti.

18. Weight Watchers Slow Cooker Lasagna - This is another quick recipe (anything that's crockpot related is!), so I just cooked the hamburger, onions and garlic and froze in a freezer bag.

19. Hummus - I made this no-tahini recipe because I can't find it anywhere. I added about five times as much cumin as it calls for because I love it that way, and I also added some roasted red peppers. I'm going to try my hand at making some whole wheat pita bread sometime this month.

I baked two loaves of bread yesterday to get us through this week. I'll have to bake a few more throughout the month, but with my trusty little bread machine, it's a breeze (and so much cheaper and yummier)!

So there you have it! My very lengthy post about my first adventures in the land of OAMC. I'd love to hear from any of you who have yummy recipes that freeze well!

We'll call this blog post YAY!

We got back most of the test results I mentioned earlier this week and I'm happy to report that we're 99% sure Ben doesn't have Celiac disease. Woot, woot! The only way to be 100% sure is to biopsy the colon, and that's not happening.

I'm also happy to report that we do not have a dairy allergy.

According to his pediatrician, "The tests confirmed what we already knew: he's a really allergic kid. That's why he has such bad eczema." But luckily he's only really allergic to peanuts. So I picked up this bad boy:

The only thing the test confirmed that we didn't really know is that:

1. He's deathly allergic to peanuts.

2. He's mildly allergic to eggs.

So now we're moving to an egg-free diet to see if we can get this horrible face rash to clear up. We'll also be removing all traces of peanuts from this ole' house.

I spent my entire day yesterday shopping and cooking up a storm. I decided to try my hand at OAMC (once-a-month cooking) to shave some more dough off our grocery budget. I did it all with a nasty sore throat, so that kind of sucked. Especially since I stayed up until 2:00 AM for some clean-up action and, consequently, woke up with an even worse sore throat. Such is life. At least I have a packed freezer to show for it!

I'll post all the deets later today! Especially the part where I brag that I only spent $166 on a month's worth of groceries!

*Happy dance, happy dance!*

PS - Rock Chalk, my jayhawk folks! We pulled off a win last night again K-State which means we'll be ranked numero uno now! Do I smell another National Championship? I do indeed...and it smells yummy!