My Friendly Freezer

For the meat eaters, casseroles, stews, meatloaf and meat pies freeze beautifully. Cooking two or three at a time is as easy as cooking one in my opinion, so it makes sense to have some left over to freeze. If you are able to buy meat in bulk you will save money, and the freezer will help keep it fresh; either raw in servings or cooked in a meal.If you raise your own meat, that's even better.

Cooking and freezing in bulk opens up opportunities for exploring self reliance even more. I am even more encouraged to grow as much food as I can, because I have somewhere for it to go where there will be no waste. We have even less need for money. We visit the shops less. We use the harvest, shopping and cooking sessions as a family activity. What is more - it's great fun and I thouroughly adore my day or two bustling in the kitchen, it brings me back to my soulful self. Like gardening, cooking is grounding.

There are many ways you can approach this - from doing the big shop for an entire month, or to start slow you may want to simply try cooking double batches of everything you make, and freezing the extra one. In a week you will have accumulated a weeks'worth of meals. A few weeks practising this and you will find it second nature to always cook more and have some for the freezer.

I have included some links to OAMC websites, for some great reading, recipe ideas, meal plans and overviews of different methods. I would like to explore this further, so will follow with another article that gives some sample recipes , ideas for meal plans and so on. In the meantime, visit some of these great sites, and I hope you are tempted too. Bon Apetit!

A Frugal, Simple Life. The OAMC pages here have been offline, but there is info on Debi's great book, Frozen Assets.: http://hometown.aol.com/dsimple/

Real Food for Real People: http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/oamc....

OAMC page in Organised Home (featuring the much acclaimed book "Frozen Assets") http://organizedhome.com/freezercook/ind...

Frugal Mom's OAMC page: http://www.frugal-moms.com/dir/Cooking/O...

A Fast course in OAMC: http://www.mindspring.com/~debv/OAMC_101...

Beth's Once a Month Cooking Page: http://hardys.freeservers.com/oamc.htm

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