Once a Month Cooking December 2012 Reviews

I took a little break from Once a Month Cooking because one month we got a host of bad meat from Winco and it pretty much ruined every meal.  Also, in that time Once a Month Mom changed and started charging for their menus. We floundered and ate a lot of burritos before I decided to give a try again.  It costs $8 per month and I've decided that it's worth it to have a complete menu and shopping list made for me.  This time I did my shopping at Winco again but I purchased all of the meat from New Seasons Market.  I cooked on New Years Day and had the smoothest Once a Month Cooking Day yet.  Seriously, everything went off without a hitch and I didn't even have a giant mess to clean up!  It made me feel like I've finally figured it out.  We've just eaten the last frozen meal from this menu.  Today I'm cooking for February but I needed a little break and I know that some of you really liked our recipe reviews.

Remember, my family rates these recipes on a scale of 1 (no, thanks, I'd rather not take another bite) to 5 (I would love to eat this every day for the rest of my life).  Here's what we thought of the December 2012 Gluten Free/Dairy Free menu.  The original recipes are linked to the recipe titles.  They do not reflect the changes Once a Month Mom made to make these recipes gluten/dairy free.

• Sausage Egg Casserole   3.  It tasted pretty good but it was really hard to get the egg out of my muffin tin.  I had greased the tin liberally but the egg really stuck to it.  In fact, I could not get my muffin tin clean (and I tried everything) and ended up throwing away and buying a new one :(
• Omelet In A Cup N/A  I actually didn't make this one because we don't have a microwave.  Sorry.
• Banana Muffins  5.  Delicious!  I actually made this recipe two more times during the month of January.  I dumped all the wet ingredients into a blender to get the batter really smooth and used really overripe bananas.  Since I had to throw out my muffin tin because of the sausage egg casserole I made this recipe as a loaf and baked it for 20 minutes longer.  So, so good!

• 4 Chicken Soup 5.  This was a really simple and tasty recipe.  All of us liked it and I had the leftovers for lunches for a few days.  Super good.
• Corn Dog Mini Muffins  3.  I think the idea behind these was good and my kids were excited about them until we tasted them.  The corn muffins were just really bland.  I ended up trying again with my regular corn bread recipe and it was a hit.  For the rest of the muffins that I froze, I melted cheese on them and the kids said they were better but I didn't try them because the cheese would kill me.
• Honey Glazed Chicken & Bacon Bites 5.  Super yummy!  These are on the menu again for this month and I'm really glad.  
• Creamy Chicken Taquitos 5.  These were also delicious but I couldn't quite master rolling the taquitos so that they stayed tight.  Ours were more like the crunchy rolled tacos you can get at Taco Time.  We didn't mind, it just meant they were a little messier to eat.

• “Cheesy” Hashbrown Chicken 4.  This was pretty tasty but I really hate fake cheese so I used regular cheese and of course got a stomach ache.  My own fault.  The recipe was good but I don't think I'd make it regularly.
• Chicken & Rice 1.  This recipe might be really good, but I made a mistake on it.  It called for chorizo and I didn't really know what that was.  But when I was New Seasons in the butcher department I saw spicy ground chorizo so that's what I bought.  I mixed it in with the chicken and rice and ended up with a super spicy dish that not one of us could handle.  We tried turning the whole thing into a taco type dish hoping that guacamole and beans and sour cream would tame the fire.  It didn't work out too well.  Turns out I was supposed to use more of sausage link type of chorizo.  Oops!
• Ms. Mary’s Vegetable Soup  5.  So easy and so delicious.  This might become my go to soup when someone is sick.  I added some rotisserie chicken to ours when I heated it up because Geary is a meat lover.  Yum, yum, yum.  All the kids liked this one, too.
• Slow Cooker Beef Stew 3.5.  This was okay.  It was easy enough to make but kind of bland.  
• Chicken &  Broccoli Pie 4.  Geary and the kids loved this recipe.  I thought it was okay but I'm not really a casserole person.  I know I'll make it again for them, though.
• Gluten Free Beef & Noodles. 4  Since I'm mainly avoiding dairy, I used regular egg noodles for this.  It was pretty good but it looked pretty gross after being frozen, thawed, and reheated.  My kids made faces until they tasted it.
• Broccoli Beef 4.5. Really good served over rice.  The kids liked this one a lot.
• Navy Bean Soup 4.5.  This was a very soupy month but none of the soups disappointed.  I added a little bit of ham to this soup for Geary's sake and it was pretty tasty.  My kids say that they don't like beans but they gobbled this up.  I think the fact that it had "bacon" in it made it cool in their eyes.

I better get back to cooking for this month.  I'm trying the Paleo menu this month which so far has been very expensive.  Not too happy about that but hopefully the meals will be amazing.  I'd love to know your thoughts if you try any of these recipes out!