Once A Month Cooking, or Freezer Cooking, is an alternative to cooking on week nights if you just can't find the time or energy. Don't take the phrase "once a month cooking" literally. You can also apply the same concept to once a week cooking. All it means is that you choose a day in the week, usually a Saturday or Sunday, to cook and then freeze many dinner dishes to last your family for a week, or the whole month as you desire.

Freezer cooking is fast gaining popularity as busy parents are getting home later and later from work due to ever increasing work demands.

Picture this....we go to the grocery store once a week and spend more than we should to stock up on groceries, meats, fish and veggies so that there will be plenty of food in the house. Then we promise ourselves to cook every night since we've bought the stuff and don't want it to go to waste.

But coming home tired after a long day in the office, the last thing you feel like doing is cooking. Then what happens to all of that food you bought a week ago? That's right, the perishables go beyond their "use by" dates and have to be thrown out.

Once a month cooking sessions over a weekend cuts down wastage since the food you bought gets cooked on the same weekend. You can also buy your meats and produce in bulk at much cheaper prices on a single grocery shopping trip since you will be cooking a larger quantity of food in one session.

Once a month cooking also means that you can return home every night from work and not worry about having to spend time in the kitchen cooking dinner or wasting time wondering what to cook for the evening. It's all been done in advance remember, so your freezer is already well stocked with home cooked meals that just need to be reheated and ready to serve.

Pick one day on the weekend to have your once a month cooking session. Make a menu for the week and thaw out the meats, poultry, seafood, etc, on Saturday.

Then, on Sunday morning you're set to start work. The kids can help out and when they do, incentivize them by letting them have a say in the menu over the course of the week.

For your weekend cooking session, decide on the menu early. This ensures that you have everything you need so you don't waste time running out to the store to get a missing ingredient.

Freezer cooking means that you are going to have a lot of cooked food that will require air-tight containers or freezer bags to hold it all. Use containers that are large enough for each main dish and smaller containers for the side dishes.

Each day, take a meat and two sides out of the fridge and heat it up for dinner, and walla! You have a healthy, home cooked meal re-heated and served in minutes.

If you don't already have a good set of air tight, microwaveable containers to store your food in, Rubbermaid has a wide variety of storage containers for all purposes.

The ones I like best stack up easily so it does not take up a ton of space in my limited cabinet space. The lids also fit snugly underneath so I don't end up losing them, as I am usually prone to doing.

Be sure to allow the food to cool to room temperature before transferring to the containers or freezer bags and freezing it. Doing so will avoid food spoilage.

As freezer cooking gets more popular, a very good selection of cookbooks dedicated to this type of cooking are readily available.

Try out these easy to cook freezer recipes to get started with once a month cooking.

Easy Freezer Recipe # 1 : Pepperoni Spaghetti Bake

Easy Freezer Recipe # 2 : Meatball Mayhem

Easy Freezer Recipe # 3 : Freezer Shrimp Stew

Easy Freezer Recipe # 4 : Crispy Chicken from the Freezer

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