For many people, panic strikes around 4 p.m. That's when they realize they don't have anything ready for dinner. They weigh the alternatives: grabbing a bag of burgers to bring home, opening a can of soup, or throwing together some odds and end from the refrigerator. None of the choices are satisfying, and more likely than not, the take-out burgers win.

It doesn't have to be like that. Your family can enjoy home-cooked meals—-lasagna, Salisbury steak, vegetable-beef stew, orange-glazed chicken, enchiladas and turkey tetrazzini-- for a month and all you have to do is fix a few side dishes like salad, bread and steamed veggies. Sound appealing?

But there's always a catch, isn't there? You don't just get 30 home-cooked meals for nothing. If your curiosity gets the better of you the way it did for me, then go to Once A Month Cooking. There, you'll find all the specifics about spending one day in the kitchen cooking up a storm, and then reaping the benefits for the next 30 days. I tried it, and by golly, it really does work. Let me explain my journey.

I'm a self-employed writer, and part of my job involves doing interviews at all hours, often at the last minute. I can never say for sure that I'll have an hour or two before dinner to prepare a meal.

Add to that two teenage children who have busy schedules—one is in the high school marching band, and is working four days a week on his black belt in karate; and the other is in the middle school band, the community band and has a list of friends as long as your arm—and suppertime is hectic at best.

I sometimes make four round trips to the school, karate studio, band rehearsal hall and friends' houses each day. But it's a top priority for our family to eat together every evening as a way to reconnect and when our schedules overlap, that's when it gets difficult.

The folks at the drive-through windows were getting to know us on a first-name basis, so anything that could put dinner on the table with a minimum of fuss had my undivided attention.

Once A Month Cooking—OAMC for short—isn't a new idea, but its promoters have taken all the questions that might arise and answered them. You can take advantage of this accumulated wisdom and avoid frustration and pitfalls.

The idea is to prepare five or six dishes in bulk: two, three or four meals' worth at a time, divided into meal-sized portions and frozen. Then, throughout the month, you take the pre-frozen dinners out of the freezer, thaw, heat and serve. Amazingly simple. But amazingly complicated to actually carry out.

The key word is planning. When the grocery store had a sale on boneless chicken breasts, I bought not one, but 10 pounds. If ground beef was what was on sale, I stocked up. Then I went through my OAMC Recipes – they have plenty online -- for meals using my stockpiled ingredients.

I planned to fix several chicken breast meals, for instance, and chose a couple that use other common ingredients: like canned tomatoes, tortillas and cheese. I picked several other recipes to round out the month's menus and created a shopping list from my ingredient lists.

My trip to the grocery store was a big one. I amazed the cashiers as they scanned the multiple packages of similar items. But they wouldn't be seeing me for a whole month, so what did I care? I even whispered my little secret, because cashiers are busy folks too. They appreciated the tip.

If you plan to try once a month cooking, you'll need some large cooking pans, several freezer- ready casserole dishes, some rigid plastic freezer containers or maybe a big box of zipper-style freezer bags.

Freezing meals in bags is the most space-efficient way to stockpile food. Freeze 'em flat, and when they're hard, stack those packages. You can fit a whole month's worth of meals into the top part of a refrigerator- freezer that way.

Other people use foil-lined casserole dishes, and once frozen, lift out the food, double-wrap in more foil, and return the packets to the casserole dish when they're ready to reheat.

On the day of my first OAMC experience, I took the advice of those who went before me and arranged for some peace and quiet. I wore comfortable shoes, put on some exhilarating music, made sure the kids were busy with projects of their own, and planned on having supper out. After cooking 30 meals in one day, the last thing I'd want to think about is fixing one more.

Now, my children are sweet as can be, but I've never been one to force them to help in the kitchen—and they took advantage of that. While Elizabeth or Joseph might, on occasion, volunteer to peel a few carrots, counting on them to cook 30 meals with me would only add to, not reduce, my work and stress. If your kids are better-trained than mine, you might want to make OAMC a family project.

The OAMC recipes include tips for organizing, storing, freezing and thawing, so I had plenty of guidance. Most of it, though, is a matter of visualizing a concept and carrying it out.

Nobody believed me when I told them about my enormous undertaking, so next time I plan to take a picture of my bulging freezer. I want some physical proof to show the nay-sayers that I did indeed pull off this accomplishment.

I labeled all packages so that when defrosting time came, I could consult the proper recipe for re-heating information. I keep all of my OAMC recipes in a folder, and when I put batches in the freezer, I attach a sticky note to the recipe, (which is on 8"x11" paper, and inside a clear vinyl page protector).

I note how many packages were frozen and the date. That way, I can look in my folder and know right away how many meals are still waiting to be reheated. I also have all preparation instructions handy.

Others have suggested keeping a list on the side of the refrigerator, but I know my lazy habits: I'd forget to mark off the foods I used and before long that list would be meaningless.

OAMC recommends taking foods out of the freezer one day before you plan to serve them, and allowing them to thaw in the fridge overnight. That seems to work pretty well, but some of the larger foods need a bit more time. For those things, I move the food from the freezer to the refrigerator two days ahead of time.

Then came the easy part. Every day of the month, I had dinner ready with a minimum of fuss. Some meals required a bit of preparation at serving time: a salad, some veggies or whatever. Other meals, such as casseroles, soups and the like, needed little accompaniment at all.

A few of the meals were pre-frozen in their uncooked state. Chicken in marinade, for example, after thawing, just needed to be grilled. It's still a heck of a lot easier than starting from scratch.

I think my success was so easy because OAMC recognizes that support is crucial. At the OAMC site I subscribed to an email discussion list that swaps recipes, offers suggestions and connected me with the other families who are trying this new method.

I dropped by the OAMC bulletin board and posted a question about using foil-lined baking pans. The OAMC site has a large FAQ (frequently asked questions) page, a sample month's menu, a list of freezer tips , including foods that don't freeze well, and quite a few links to related food sites on the Internet. This was what I needed!

Besides saving time and stress, I was very interested in how OAMC could save me money and I found out in a big way. The most immediately-visible savings was seeing how seldom I needed to rely on fast food.

Since I'm the sole food-fixer in my house (save the liberation sermon, please!) it was a relief to know that supper was always right at hand and in many cases, easier and more relaxed than fighting the crowds at the fast food restaurants.

The other big savings was in the cost of ingredients. By selecting meats that were on sale, and by buying some items in bulk, my grocery bill was sliced by $80 a month.

By avoiding those weekly and daily trips to the store for "just one thing," I also eliminated a great deal of impulse purchases. Nobody has to tell you how much *they* add up to!

Some families aren't quite up to the challenge of cooking 30 meals in one day. Instead, they use parts of the OAMC strategy to come up with their own plan.

They may fix only two weeks' worth of meals to freeze, or may freeze sporadically, depending on what's on sale, depending on the grocery store's specials that week. It's a method that can be adapted to fit each family's needs.

So if you're feeling adventurous, and if you think you have one day a month you can spend on preparation, why not consider Once A Month Cooking? You may surprise yourself.....and who wouldn't appreciate an end to the four o'clock frenzies?!

Other helpful sites:
The Food Safety Home Page