Once a Week Cooking

Lately I have been struggling a little with preparing meals each night of the week.  We have had some weird schedules and also since we moved to the house it takes me longer to get home from work.

So I thought I would try out a "Once in a While" Cooking Method (I call it once in a while cause there are some plans that are once a month, some that are once every two weeks and...you get the point, there are options).  Since this was my first time to try it I decided to only commit to one week at a time to see how we liked it.

I got the plan from Make 5 Dinners in 1 Hour and it comes complete with a list of groceries and kitchen items you will need.

Monday night was "Cooking Night"...I set the timer for one hour (to see if it was really accurate), gathered all the ingredients and tools and got to work.

On the plus side, I was done WAY before the timer went off.  In fact, during my hour I followed all the directions for each meal, cleaned up from the preparation, emptied the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters and sat down to watch Harrison edit photos.

On the maybe, possibly, could be negative side, I'm a little concerned with the amount of directions left for preparation for each meal on the day it's eaten.  I won't make a judgement until we get to that, but from the directions it seems like there is still work to be done.

Also still to be determined is if we like the meals I've prepared!  I'm a bit of a picky eater, so I was skeptical about using a plan put together by someone else.  But I just decided to give it a shot and follow each meal directions and see how it goes.  Then we can decide which ones we might prepare again and if there are any we don't like, we don't have to make it again.

But so far I'm pretty excited about it!

So have you ever tried a "Once in a While Cooking Plan"?  How was your experience?  What plan did you use and how did you like it?