Product Description: The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet is a comprehensive cooking system that teaches busy cooks the art of spending one day assembling and freezing a month's worth of delicious and nutritious entrees, side dishes and desserts. This "hands-on" manual includes time-saving worksheets, step-by-step instructions, healthy tips, money-saving ideas and practical advice. The manual also features: - 23 black and white demonstration photos - 7 easy-to-follow steps - fold-out tally sheet - benefits of cooking with a friend - choosing recipes for freezer cooking - shopping smart - assembling in quantity - freezing for great results - thorough appendix with: - equivalency charts - metric conversion charts - freezing time chart - blanching chart - list of basic cooking terms - freezer selection and maintenance - power failure procedures
The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet differs from other quantity cookbooks seen on the market. - Our system allows for choosing a different combination of recipes each cooking day. - Our system allows for incorporating personal recipe favorites. - Our recipes are multiplied out for time-saving multiple entre cooking. - Our recipes are "kid-friendly" and family approved. - Our recipes are not repeated elsewhere in the manual.
Thousands of 30 Day Gourmets LOVE this manual and attest to its sanity saving value.
The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy This book is very informative on how to prepare for making meals for 30 days in one day.
save your sanity, save your money: Use this book!! I have been freezer cooking for over 6 years thanks to 30 Day Gourmet. I started when my children were very young and I was a stay at home mom. Today I am a working mom with preteens and this book still never fails to save my time, money, and sanity! Nothing is better than knowing after a long day at work and a soon to be long evening of homework and errands that dinner is prepared and planned ahead of time. Talk about a stress reducer! How much is one extra hour added into your day worth? For my family it is priceless. Not to mention the savings you can get from preparing and freezing your meals ahead of time. My family saw a reduction of $200 a month in food costs alone. This comes from buying items on sale, using what you purchase before it goes bad, and NOT needing to run to fast food after a crazy day. The Freezer Cooking Manual gives you all the tools to make it possible with worksheets, recipes and a complete system for freezer cooking. Buy this book and see the results for yourself!
Great Plan, So-So Recipes As someone new to the concept of once-a-month cooking, I found the step-by-step approach and the worksheets very helpful. The authors provide a detailed description of the planning, shopping, cooking, and packaging phases of freezer cooking. They also provide worksheets and forms to help with all of these steps. The recipes, however, were mostly uninspired and/or relied heavily on processed foods. I don't really need another recipe for spaghetti sauce or meat loaf, and I don't use Velveeta or bottled salad dressing. I just applied their process to my own recipes, which is actually pretty easy. If you're looking for a place to get started in freezer cooking, this book can be really useful. If you're just looking for a source of good freezer recipes, look elsewhere.
Excellent Charts! Checklists! Makes it look easy! I have purchased several once a month cooking books after borrowing them from the library. This is one of them. The organization, charts and checklists make the price of this book worth it alone.
The recipes are like another reviewer noted, are geared toward kids. My kids are grown and I have a busy job and a husband that had a heart attack three years ago. I cook ahead to make my life easier, but I have to take into account that my husband can't eat ground beef, etc. I have used this book and edited it with veggie ground beef, turkey sausage etc. It works just as well although I have to say I haven't gotten "up to" cooking for a whole month in one day. I don't have anyone to do this with so it's just little old me.
For first timers I recommend starting with 4 or 5 recipes you would like to try and doubling or tripling them. Do this for a few weeks and it will go much easier. The lists will guide you and the recipes give you the amounts to use to make 2, 4, etc. meals.
The first time I tried to cook for a month, I picked 6 hard recipes where you had to basically "cook" them and freeze them. It took me all day long. I was so dissapointed I was ready to give up. Don't do that to yourself, work up to it. Having the meals ready made it worth revising my plan. Pick some easy ones that you just have to marinate in the freezer and the actual recipe is grilled or cooked the day you eat it. Have some pre cooked recipes that are all ready except for heating up like lasagna. Pick some that can be just thawed and thrown in a crockpot the morning you plan on eating it.
This book not only tells you the amounts you need for doubling or tripling a recipe, it usually gives you the option of doing the cooking ahead or prep and freeze to cook on the day you plan on eating it.
Alot of the other books have shopping lists and pre cooking day instructions. They are useless if you have to cut out the red meat and revise the list. This book gives you the template to make your own list suited to your family and their tastes.
Save Money, Save Time, Save Sanity! For the cost of only one meal for a family of 4, this book pays for itself! With the rising cost of fuel, think of all the money you will save being able to pull from your freezer a meal of baked chicken, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and apple pie! While there are great recipes in this book, there are wonderful worksheets provided to allow you to adapt YOUR family favorites! You decide the number of batches to make - will it be a double, triple . . . quintuple? I was fortunate enough to see the author and her original business partner on a family talk show over 10 years ago and have been a fan ever since. Over the years (4 kids later) this book has taught me the skills I needed to save so much money, time and sanity. A small investment in time yields a freezer full of homemade food where you determine how much salt and fat and sugar are in your Muffins, Quiche, Macaroni and Cheese! Having meals on hand have come in handy to share with friends coming home from the hospital after surgery or having babies. There are great tips on what foods freeze well (ones that don't, too!), containers to use (even if you have limited space) just to name a few. One of the best hidden treasures of this book is the link to the 30DG website where there is a wonderful community of freezer cooks and newsletters! Make it a family affair - shopping, labeling, cooking and eating for everyone!
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
