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Once-A-Month Cooking, Revised Edition: A Proven System for Spending Less Time in the Kitchen and Enjoying Delicious, Homemade Meals Every Day

Spend less time in the kitchen and more time with your family...

Since the first edition of Once-a-Month Cooking was published in 1986, its proven, practical method has helped hundreds of thousands of families cut down their cooking time and still enjoy home-cooked meals every night.
Newly revised to satisfy today's lower-fat tastes, this easy-to-follow, family-tested cookbook explains how to: plan ahead, spend less time in the supermarket, cut down on prep time, group similar kitchen tasks together to get them all done at once, make kitchen clean-up more manageable, use the freezer, computer, and our head to create a month full of delicious, nutritious meals and actually have enough time to relax and enjoy them. Once-a-Month Cooking is the perfect cookbook for today's busy lifestyles.

Prawns are sweet and have an enticing flavour. Undoubtedly, they are one of my favourite ingredients. They may be caught in salt water and fresh water and they are being farmed too.

There are prawn farms in Singapore. One such high-tech marine prawn farm is located at the sea front on Pulau Ubin. This farm produces both black tiger prawns and white prawns all year round. Due to intensive cultivation, black tiger prawns are harvested every 120 days at the farm. Annually there are two and a half cycles.

Usually prawns caught from salt water are more expensive. Although shelled prawns or shrimps are available from chiller or freezer of the supermarkets. I prefer to buy them fresh and raw from the wet market because more flavour is retained. When using prawns in your dishes, overcooking should be avoided as this makes the prawns tough. To avoid this, it is always better to saute the prawns till just cooked and then set aside. Add them back to the dish at the last stage of cooking.

When purchasing prawns, look for glossy, undamaged shells, legs and tails, plump and shinny black eyes. They should be no signs of dark or discolouration. Refrigerate as soon as after purchase. For convenience, divide into quantities required for each meal or recipe and keep them in plastic bags before freezing.

Before cooking prawns, whether they are used with shells intact or shelled, remember to remove the intestinal veins. Prawns shells are segmented just bend the shells to expose the joint, make a small incision in each prawn’s back and carefully draw out the dark vein. A toothpick is a handy tool here. When recipes call for prawns to be shelled, retain the last segment of shell and the tail fins to give a more decorative appearance to the finished dish, as shown here in the picture.

Shells and heads of prawns make good stock. To obtain this, fry them in a little oil on high heat, add just enough of hot water to cover, and boil for 10-15 minutes. Strain, discard shells and freeze the stock if not immediately required. . This type of stock is used in our local fare, prawn noodle soup.

I've been experimenting with a mostly gluten-free diet (about 98% gluten-free). My friend Matthew has celiac disease and so when I'm with him, we go to places that specialise in gluten-free food (Risotteria and Friedman's Lunch are two of my favorites now). I started buying gluten-free versions of staple items and have been really pleased with the results.

This is something I made while experimenting with smoothies. In the Vita Mix, I blended 2/3 cup of unsweetened, vanilla flavored almond milk, one banana, 2 tablespoons of almond butter, and one heaping scoop of Whole Foods chocolate flavored soy protein powder with spirulina. This makes a rather thick shake, so I put some in a bowl and set it in the freezer for about 15 minutes. It went very cold and even more thick, about the consistency of custard. To switch up the texture, I crumbled some Mi-Del gluten-free mini chocolate chip cookies on top (one serving of five cookies has 130 calories).

This was really awesome. I'm going to make it over and over, and I'd even serve it to guests. For more of a shake/smoothie, add more almond (or soy, or rice, or oat) milk. I've also made a variation of this with fresh raspberries, too, which was good, but chocolate/raspberry isn't a combination I'm ridiculously crazy for. If it is for you, totally try that.

Nutrition wise, this is not light on calories (NOTE - this makes a very large serving; I could easily halve it and no one would feel cheated.): The almond butter has about 190 calories, the banana is about 70 calories, the protein powder is 108 calories, the almond milk has 30 calories, and the cookies have 130 calories. That's about 530 calories for this dessert. BUT, it's a treat and one made with great ingredients. Also, if you mostly eat vegetables all day and lay off high calorie dishes during other meals, you can still manage to have a low calorie day. (My total for this day clocked in at 1200 and I feel still full hours after finishing eating for the day.)