June OAMM Cooking Results

Saturday was my Once a Month Mom freezer meal cooking day! I was so proud of myself for being able to make all the dinner meals in one day. I started cooking once a month in March, and it's taken me two days to make all the meals. Now I did not make any of the breakfast meals this time, so that's probably why I was able to do all the dinner meals in one day this time! haha I'll be making the breakfast meals later this coming week.

One of the biggest helps for my monthly freezer meal cooking is buying some of my food from Angel Food Ministries. It helps take the guess work out of grocery shopping, definitely for the meats, which aren't always priced good at the grocery stores. And with working full-time, I don't always get to devote a lot of time or energy to pricing the sales ads and getting to the grocery stores. I do what I can, and AFM makes up the difference. Plus, I'm getting some really great deals on some really great food. Click here for more information about Angel Food Ministries and here for some of the reasons why I started buying food AFM.

I plan my freezer meal cooking day to coincidee with my AFM pick-up day, which is usually the 3rd Saturday of the month. Since I'm bringing home a stack of meats, it makes sense to just cook everything up all on the same day. You can view my menu for June here. Below is what I got from AFM for just $74.

June Special #3 Box, $22--4.5 lb whole broiler/fryer chicken, 3 lb split chicken breast, 2 lb breaded chicken tenders, 1.5 lb boneless/skinless chicken breast

June Special #4, $22--1 seedless watermelon, 1 cantaloupe, 2 mangoes, 3 lb Valencia oranges, 1 lb kiwi fruit, 4 ears super-sweet yellow corn, 2 zucchini squash, 2 yellow squash (we've got squash & zucchini coming out of our ears from our garden, but I figured, what's a few more squash?), 2 lb Vidalia onions, 1 head cabbage, 1 head iceberg lettuce, 3 lb Idaho potatoes, 1 16 oz bottle Italian dressing and marinade

One regular box, $30--1.5 lb ribeye steaks, 2 lb homestyle lasagna dinner entree, 2 lb beef & bean burritos, 2 lb boneless/skinless chicken breasts chunks, 28 oz jumbo beef pattie entree with gravy, 1lb lean ground beef, 1 lb all meat hot dog, 10 oz cheese slices, 20 oz shoestring fries, 1 lb broccoli cuts, 12 oz peanut butter, 1 lb rice, 1 lb pinto beans, 1 lb tub margarine, 32 oz 2% shelf stable milk, dozen eggs, lemon raspberry cream pie, (not pictured, 1 doz eggs)

This OAMM freezer meal cooking day was a little stressful to me, probably because I really wanted to get the dinners cooked in the same day, and I didn't get to start working on the freezer meals until about lunch time. My kids were a constant flow in & out of the kitchen, and that didn't help. Hubs did his best to try to corral them into the living room or encourage them to play outside, but sometimes they just didn't want anyone but mommy, a fact I had to face back when my oldest was just a little tyke. But all in all it was a great day and I really felt like I accomplished a lot.

Several of the meals called for oregano, so I happily used some of the fresh oregano growing in our organic garden. I need to pluck some more sprigs and make homemade dried oregano.

Above: Cooking up some Chicken & Garden Vegetables. For this particular recipe, the squash and zucchini came from our garden.

Above: Chicken and Squash cooking in the skillet. This recipe came from a recipe card I got in my May Angel Food Ministries order.

As always, I'll post the recipes as I cook them up. I've got the Angel Food Ministries menu for July, so I'll start working on a July OAMM menu as that month approaches. My next once a month mom cooking day will be here before I know it!