Cooking once a week...

The following is an article I read from familyfun.go.com that I thought I would pass along. How nice would it be to cook once a week?!?

At the end of every busy day, the question was always the same: "What's for dinner?"
Dinner? Not only was I running out of meal ideas, my husband, Aaron, and I also seemed to run out of time each night. With school, jobs, activities, and homework, my family already had too few precious minutes to spend together. Who wanted to spend most of them standing over the stove? Worse, when I did find time to cook, the kids often grumbled about the menu.
I fantasized about having a batch of favorite meals ready to go, so we could just pluck a dish out of the fridge, heat it, and serve it. Sure, the meal prep would still have to happen. But what if we tackled the bulk of the work all at once, together -- and maybe even made it fun? This sounded like a plan.
So one Sunday afternoon last year, when my older kids were especially bored and begging to watch television and play video games, I told them we were going to cook instead.
"Cook what?" asked Lauren, then age 7.
Opening the fridge and staring at two giant packets of chicken breasts, and several packages of beef and sliced pork, I declared: "Everything!"
I took out the meat, and we tracked down as many baking pans as we could find. (It turned out I had five.) Lauren and Nicole, then age 4, coated the pans with cooking spray. I dumped the chicken into two pans, filled two more with beef (sliced in one and cubed in the other), and put the pork in the last. Nicole washed peppers and mushrooms, and Lauren carefully sliced an onion. Their 1-year-old brother, Brendan, watched it all with curiosity. The girls picked their favorite marinades and spices, which we added to the dishes, along with the veggies. We slid the pans into the oven. Next, we tackled the mess. Truthfully, it wasn't half as bad as you'd expect after prepping a week's worth of food. Most of the utensils would have gotten dirty anyhow when we made our Sunday night dinner. And then, as the food cooked, we found ourselves with free time! Here we were, all in the same room with nothing on our agenda. So we talked. First we discussed how we could turn these meats into meals: chicken sandwiches, stir-fry, and fajitas.
But perhaps inspired by our cozy togetherness in the kitchen and the relaxed sense of accomplishment we felt, our conversation before long grew more personal. We chatted about school, sports teams, problems with friends, and an upcoming birthday party. I was amazed by how easily the discussion flowed and how much detail the girls shared with me and with each other. Even Brendan seemed to love this unexpected together time.
Too soon, the oven timer sounded. We set aside some of the chicken to make sandwiches for that evening's meal, then we cooled and stored everything else in labeled containers. We ended up with seven of them -- altogether -- the beginnings of seven meals to be served through the week. The only chore we had left was to wash the extra pans -- and because we'd used cooking spray, they cleaned up easily.
The rest of that week went as smoothly as I'd hoped. Each morning, I put one of the frozen entrees into the refrigerator to thaw. In the evening, it usually took 15 minutes or less to make a side of veggies, salad, or rice.
Now, we spend an hour or two cooking on Sunday as often as we can. Every once in a while, we make batches of cookie dough to freeze. Everyone looks forward to our time in the kitchen. Sometimes, the kids pretend we're restaurant owners, and they create fancy meal ideas and a menu for the week. The children love that I'm not stuck for an hour in the kitchen every night. And because they've helped plan the meals, there's much less griping and much more eating and enjoying!