Who knows about once-a-month cooking?

[ThreeKids]

My sister and I are thinking about doing once-a-month cooking. She would come to my house from a city 1.5 hours away and we'd do it all in a day.

I barely know what it is, but I'm willing to jump in with both feet. The term seems descriptive enough to me.

Does the two-person scenario with one person living in another city sound feasible?

Here's another twist: what if we offered a one-third share to a pregnant woman on bed rest, where she chipped in for 1/3 of the ingredients/supplies, but we did the cooking. Are there unforeseen snags in such a plan?

[Mother of Sons]

The hardest part about doing it with someone else is making food you all like. Agree on that first, don't experiment (Always try a new recipe before adding it to your OAMC) Organize and plan, plan, plan.

[ThreeKids]

Organize? Plan?

I was hoping this would cause me to need to plan less.

The closest I get to meal planning is picking up something at the grocery store and using the recipe on the back as a shopping list.

My sister will get really gung ho about it and crank out some serious planning, though. She's also familiar with a lot of casseroles, so I'll trust her judgment about what will turn out good. Thanks for the reminder to agree on the choices first.

This will work out good for my sister since she needs to not cook at her house due to having it on the market ready to show.

[tigerlily]

The planning is almost all upfront -- deciding how many meals each person wants for the month, how many of each meal your willing to eat, shopping lists, organizing a cooking schedule for efficiency. Once you have that down, all you have to plan is what night you want to eat the meals. You want to give your food 24-48 hrs. defrost time in the fridge if you only want to have to heat up for 30 min or so. You can do frozen to oven, but cooking time increases of course.

I think it would be such a blessing to the pregnant momma! OAMC is great when you know you have a busy or hectic time coming up in your life. I think having your sis help would be very feasible as long as you two get along well in the kitchen. It would be one big day of cooking, but after that -- done for the month!