Since September I’ve been part of a group of women trying to make our lives a little bit easier. Three of us got together and thought about doing some “Once a Month Cooking”. The more we thought about it, that sounded overwhelming and time comsuming. So, our original idea morphed into, “let’s each cook 2-3 dishes but enough for our three families- and swap.”

That still sounded a bit much. Working full time this year, I dreaded spending one whole day cooking on my day off and miss out time with family. Then someone came up with the idea to expand the group to 7 and make 2 meails for teach giving us 14 meals. We decided to expand the group to 9 and just try making one meal.

That’s where we’re at 4 months later. I’ve really enjoyed getting all the meals. It has completely eased up on dinner preparation at 5:00 every evening. It’s also fun to get meals that I’ve never made. So far, making my 9 meals has taken no more than 2 hours, with a little extra time for packaging. Sometimes I stretch pieces of the meal out over the course of a few evenings after my kiddo is in bed.

You can see a picture of our latest swap on my spouse’s blog.

The meals I’ve made have been, stuffed shells (good but too labor intensive for me), chicken noodle soup (yum), chicken, rice, broccoli and peanut sauce (super yum). The meal I passed out this week was similar to last months, rice, frozen stir fry veggies and Baked Asian-Style Chicken. The verdict on that one will be known at our Feb. swap when we rate our meals:
1 = would love to have again
2 = would be ok to have again
3 = please don’t make again

We’re still working out the kinks like portions (how much is enough?) and do you make a dish again that got all 1′s and one 3, but so far it’s been a positive experience . We’ve even branched off and another group is currently being formed. I also told my pal Sam in Michigan about it and she’s trying to sell it to a few friends.
I’ll keep you posted.