Eat Healthier With Party In My Kitchen

Life is busy; many parents work full time or just have crazy lives like mine and don’t have much time for daily meal preparation.  Thus many are resorting to prepackaged meals or dining out.  These options not only cost more, but are not always healthy alternatives to home cooked meals.  By preparing your own freezer meals you will have home cooked meals for your family with very little time involvement on a daily basis.  These meals are healthier than any prepackaged frozen foods you can buy at the store and certainly better for you than eating out!!

Save Money With Party In My Kitchen

One of the reasons I love best for doing freezer meals is the money you can save.  I can cut my grocery budget by at least 40% when I do freezer meals.  Even better when I do them with a group of my friends "Party In My Kitchen" style, I can save even more.  The key is buying in bulk.  The more things you are able to buy in bulk, the more money you can save.  With Party In My Kitchen you can prepare 20 main Dish meals for just $200.  When you comapre that with eating out it is a huge savings.  My family cannot eat out for less than $45 per meal.  When you consider that Pa rty in My Kitchen breaks down to just $10 per meal, it really starts to make sense.

Even if you don't eat out often, you can see a huge savings by preparing frozen meals.  You have less trips to the grocery store because your meals are all planned out for you.  I know everytime I go to the grocery store I end up picking up extra items that I don't really need.  So it is not uncommon for a trip to pick up stuff for dinner to end up being at least $100.  You also save money in gas with fewer trips to the store.

Host a Party In My Kitchen Party to see what we can do for your grocery budget.  Every little bit of savings counts for something.  You can even start a savings account by putting the extra money you would have spent on groceries each month into it.  So whether you want to save for a family vacation, Christmas, a new car, whatever, Party In My Kitchen can help you do it.

Save Time With Party In My Kitchen

Meal preparation time can't come at a busier time of day in my house.  I have 5 children that are all doing homework or needing to be picked up or dropped off for sports or other activities.  This is a time of day when minutes are especially valuable and I know that if I can shave some time off of meal preparation, it can have a huge imapct on what else I am able to do during that time.

I spent the last couple of weeks doing homemade meals on a daily basis.  I have kept track of the time involved in preparing each of the meals.  These are meals from my Party In My Kitchen Cook Book, so it is a fair comparison as they are the same meals that I also would prepare at a Party In My Kitchen Cooking Session.. 

Here is the time logged for just one of those weeks.  On Monday I spent 1 hour 30 minutes from start to finish, on Tuesday I spent just over 2 hours, on Wednesday 1 hour 10 minutes, on Thursday 1 hour 55 minutes, on Friday 1 hour 35 minutes, on Saturday 1 hour 15 minutes, and on Sunday 1 hour 45 minutes.  That is a total of 11 hours and 5 minutes total spent in the kitchen in one week preparing just 7 meals.

Now for the sake of comparison, an average month of preparing 20 Party In My Kitchen Meals is about 3.5 hours on assembly day and then about 15 minutes per day after that.  It comes to less than 9 hours total for 20 meals. You get almost 3 times the number of meals with 2 hours less time committment. 

Time is saved in the whole process because you also do not have to spend extra time planning a menu and deciding what to eat.  It is as simple as a trip to the freezer and pulling something out of the freezer each day.  Each meal comes with suggestions for side dishes to help make that easier as well and all of this information is available to you on a handy label that is right on your meal.  It is so easy!

In addition to time saved in the kitchen, I find that using my Party In My Kitchen Plans also helps me to save time in trips to the grocery store and shopping.  By planning my monthly menu ahead, I am able to do the majority of my shopping for the month in one big shopping trip.  I still have some little trips for fresh produce and dairy products, but they tend to be simple quick trips into the store to get just what I need.

I love using this method of cooking and know that if I can get more people to try it, they will love it too.  If you want to give it a try and see how much time Party In My Kitchen can save you, then schedule your cooking session today!!!!

Why in the world would I want to do Once A Month Cooking?

I have been asked on several occassion, why I do what I do.  Why would I want to prepare meals for an entire month in one day.  My response..."Because I can't afford not to."

Here are the top five reasons why I would encourage any mom to at least try Once A Month Cooking and even better to host a Party In My Kitchen Party.

1.  Save Time: 
By preparing your meals ahead of time and freezing them you will save yourself hours of daily preparation time.  A typical traditional OAMC session will last 8 hours or a Party in My Kitchen Party will last 3-4 hours and you will go home with 20 meals for your freezer.  Then you will have as little as 15 minutes of daily prep time compared to the hour or so it would take to prepare that meal from scratch. 

2. Save Money:  

Once a month cooking alone can save you lots of money especially if you frequently eat out otherwise. When you combine the OAMC concept with a group of friends doing it together, you save even more money because more of the ingredients can be purchased in bulk quantities.  When I do my group I can cut my grocery budget by at least one third.

3. Family Meal Time and Eating Healthy

 Life is busy; many parents work full time or just have crazy lives like mine and don’t have much time for daily meal preparation.  Thus many are resorting to prepackaged meals or dining out.  These options not only cost more, but are not always healthy alternatives to home cooked meals.  By preparing your own freezer meals you will have home cooked meals for your family with very little time involvement on a daily basis.  And it will bring your family back to the dinner table allowing for conversation time which has many benefits which I will discuss at a later date.

4. Gain Flexibility

If your meals are prepared ahead of time it allows for others to get the meal ready.  A teenager or dad can put dinner in the oven if you are running late.  If there is a need to take a meal to a friend you have one ready to go in minutes just by pulling it out of the freezer.

5. Socializing with Friends While Preparing Your Meals

This is the added benefit to having a Party In My Kitchen Party.  You can turn a few hours working and visiting with your friends into a freezer full of meals for your family. By working together to prep the meals you cut down even more on the time spent to assemble the meals than if you were doing it alone and  you get to be with your friends. It doesn't get much better. 

Over the next few weeks, I will be taking these categories and expanding in further details as to the advantages of using Party In My Kitchen. It is my plan to convince you that Party In My Kitchen is the way for you to go.

What does Party In My Kitchen offer?

I have spent the last 9 years collecting and revising recipes, alterring my family favorite recipes for the freezer, building menus and shopping lists, organizing processes to cut time, not to mention the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of meals I have put together.  I have led several group meal preparation days and helped several other moms to provide good homecooked meals for their families.

I take the guesswork out of choosing recipes.  All the recipes I use are tried and true family favorites. I have put together Meal Plans with a variety of food types so you are not eating the same boring casseroles over and over again.  Each meal plan will have casseroles, soups, saucy meals, grillers, roasts, etc.  so you will alwasy have plenty of variety to chose from throught the month. 

When you host a party, I will do all the shopping, bring all the food and guide you and your friends through the process of building your meals.  You just invite your friends and come ready to work.  While assebling meals we can visit, laugh, and have a nice time and everyone goes home with 20 meals for their freezer.

That means 20 homecooked meals for each family to eat over the coming month with very little daily preparation, 20 less days of wondering what to cook for dinner, several less fast food nights, plenty of time saved in the kitchen, and plenty of dollars left in the grocery budget.

What are you waiting for?  Give Party In My Kitchen a try!

OAMC Class

I am teaching a Once A Month Cooking Class tonight out in Johnstown.  This will be my third time teaching a class like this one.  It is basically just an informative class to talk to people about the benefits of doing once a month cooking and to help them get started on their own.  I love teaching the class and I am really looking forward to it.  Though I must admit it makes me a bit nervous tonight as I will be doing this in front of people I don't even know.

My New Adventure...a long time in the making

I am happy to announce my new venture.  Party In My Kitchen.  This has been something I have been working on for about 2 years and I am finally ready to announce it to the world.

The concept started a few years ago when I was talking to one of my friends.  She hates to cook and the family rarely ate homecooked meals.  As I started thinking more about my preferred method of cooking...Once A Month Cooking, I realized that I could help my friend to put homecooked meals on her table.  So I spent some time organized my thoughts, my favorite recipes, and shopping lists and then invited several friends to participate in a Once A Month Cooking session in my home.  We gathered one morning and spent about 4 hours and prepared a total of 80 dinners, 20 each for 4 families.  We did this with an average cost of about $8 per meal.  We all cut our grocery budgets, not to mention the dining out budget, and the amount of time spent in the kitchen on a daily basis and we were providing good homecooked meals for our families.

Over the last 2 years I have been working to expand on this by creating a business that would take me in to other people's homes and help them and some of their friends to provide homecooked meals for their families.  So here it is Party In My Kitchen.

I am very excited about it and hope to find many others who are excited about it too.  Please browse my pages using the tabs at the top of this page to find more information about Party In My Kitchen and let me know if you would be interested in hosting a party in your home.