The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy

I bought this book a few months ago after a friend recommended it. My friend has a cooking partner and they've been cooking this way for well over a year now. My circumstances do not allow me to spend a whole day cooking meals, but I have used the ideas and recipes in the book to fit our family. Instead of spending a whole day cooking enough dinners for a month, I will make 2 or 3 meals' worth of a recipe when I do cook. I freeze what we don't eat and I've accumulated quite a good supply of meals that are in the freezer. Tara and Nanci have developed quite a system. There are charts and worksheets that are extremely helpful. This book is not just a book of recipes that freeze well. It's chock-full of information and techniques. Also, 30daygourmet.com is their website and they have message boards (with the authors participating!) and if you own the book, you can see and print out an additional 50 recipes, set up just like the ones in the cookbook!The ingredients are listed in quantities for one meal, then they do all the math and multiply out what you need for however many meals you want to make. The recipes are very family-friendly and delicious. No strange ingredients that you would have trouble finding. Everything I've made from the cookbook has been WONDERFUL. I've made the Taco Rice (serve it with cornbread - yummy!), Crispy Baked Chicken, Saucy Oven Pork Chops (recipe from website), Cheeseburger Quiche (also from website), and Cheese-Stuffed Shells. I made 80 shells last time I made them and you freeze them in rigid containers and they don't stick together and to cook them, you just take out however many you need in the morning and put them in the fridge and at dinnertime, put them in a cooking dish with spaghetti sauce on the bottom (I use Ragu!) and cover with more sauce and bake. Absolutely delicious!This is a great way to have homecooked meals without having to cook every night. I really enjoy doing it! God bless you, Nanci and Tara! PS Nanci and Tara also do conferences where they give a demonstration of their cooking methods. I'd love to see one of those - they also have a great sense of humor! With 7 kids between them, they really know what it's like to have a chaotic dinner hour!Cooking this way saves you time and money and gives your family great meals. I can see that this would be useful for anyone - from young singles or newly-married to families with children at home to empty nesters! You won't be disappointed with this book!

This book is the best I have purchased in this catagory. Though my family now consists of just myself and my husband, the recipes were easily adapted for servings for two. After a delightful weekend of cooking, my freezer is now stocked with easy to cook meals, saving me a huge amount of time and money. My husband and I own our own business and a 12 hour day is very common. The recipes are good "home cooking" with out expensive ingredients, but with a good gourmet touch, and with so much variety to choose from, you can't get bored! The hints, the shopping lists, the schedules, and suggestions are all wonderful, and were a help even to an old kitchen pro like myself. And, as if this is not enough, their web site has even more information, helps hints, and is a good, easy to navigate site!

What an inspiration this book is! Not only do the authors offer a step-by-step guide to bulk or freezer cooking, but they provide you with the tools to make it work effectively, and even encourage you to have fun while doing it. Written primarily for moms, The Freezer Cooking Manual takes the dreaded chore of planning, shopping, and cooking for your family and turns it into a working system. You know you're going to enjoy a book where the authors confess in the introduction that they are NOT superhuman , but are "fellow strugglers". And you thought you were all alone!This is not another cookbook, although it does include simple to prepare foods. More importantly, it is full of checklists, food storage tips, recipe worksheets, shopping lists, meal inventory checklists, freeze time chart, and numerous other reusable forms for you to simply your life.Well organized and streamlined, I recommend using The Freezer Cooking Manual to get and stay organized in the kitchen. I got so inspired that I'm going to try bulk cooking again, and can't wait to see how much spare time I will have in the weeks to come with my family, friends, and myself.

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I have cooked this way for years and have all the "other" once a month books. This book is the best by far. The Freezer Cooking Manual has made the process so simple, I am now a "Quarterly Cook". By buying in bulk and preparing everything in advance I save SO much money. I really do feed my family of 4, breakfast, lunch and dinner, for less than $150 a month. Saving time is an added bounus. As a homeschooling mom, days can get really hectic sometimes. Knowing that I do not have to stop in the middle of whatever we are doing, to go cook, is a huge blessing. Thank you Nanci and Tara for making my life a little easier!!

I have been cooking the 30 Day Gourmet way for two years now, and I can't even begin to express the difference it has made in my life! No more stress at 5:00; no more stress when company drops in at the last minute; no more racing around in a panic, trying to make it to the grocery store after work and then throwing something together to feed the hungry family when all I want to do is collapse in exhaustion. I now have all my dinners in the freezer, more quality time with my family in the evenings, and my dinnertime blues have disappeared! My family eats nutritious, home-cooked meals instead of fast food, and we save lots of money! My biggest problem now is deciding which of the delicious meals sitting in my freezer to make for dinner tonight.This is truly the most organized, easy-to-follow and flexible freezer cooking system on the market. The recipes are good, home-cooking types of recipes without exotic, strange ingredients that kids won't like or that will cost you an arm and a leg to buy. I love the fact that Tara and Nanci have made it so easy for users to adapt many of their own families' favorites to the system so that those recipes can be frozen, too. You absolutely are not limited to cooking just the recipes that they provide. One of my favorite features is the appendix in the back. There, Tara and Nanci have done an amazing job creating equivalency charts. If that graham cracker crust you're making calls for 1 cup of graham cracker crumbs and you don't know how many graham crackers it will take to make one cup of crumbs, check the equivalency charts. The answer to this and much, much more is there, taking the guesswork out of bulk cooking and eliminating the time and frustration that comes from trying to figure it out yourself.The charts they include are glorious. They are easy to follow and easy to understand. I was amazed that something that could potentially be so complicated could be made so easy. In addition to all of this is the wonderful support that comes from visiting their website. There is a wonderful network of other 30 Day Gourmets who consistently share recipes, cooking adventures, support, etc. It's a wonderful resource to be able to turn to the message boards and touch base with others who cook this way, ask questions, and sometimes get wonderful encouragement. Also, there is an area at this website for book owners to obtain 50 additional free recipes!All I can say is, Thank goodness for 30 Day Gourmet! I'll never cook any other way again!!!!