Cooking For a What?

So for the last two weeks, I've been trying my hand at once-a-month cooking. If your not familiar with the term 'once-a-month cooking', also know as 'cooking for the month' it is an idea that is supposed to "revolutionize" the way you prepare food for your family. The method is heralded as an EASY way to save time, cut cost, and conserve energy. All under the banner of their catchy slogan, "Cook for a day, eat for a month!" Horse hockey.
I've been reading about once-a-month cooking for years, and have tried a few variations of it. I almost always cook several meals on the weekend and have them ready to go in the fridge for weeknights. And cooking double batches and freezing half for dinners down the road, saved my butt and my budget when I was teaching full time. When we went to Russia, I had extreme guilt about leaving my mom to cook and care for the kids (not like she hadn't been doing it for 30+ years, but still...), so I prepared and froze a bunch of yummy dishes that she could just pop in the microwave and serve. But I've never been consistent, and I've never done an entire month. Since the master has taken this new job (which cut our monthly budget by $1,000), and taken over the money management department of our marriage (read--reduced my grocery spending allowance to 500.00), I figured that it was now or never. Or maybe I should say, now or starve. Doing the mail run at four in the afternoon, which was my normal time for supper preparation, is an additional factor. I was having to choose between getting dinner ready and getting my nap. Sweating in the kitchen or lazing in the bed, sweating in the kitchen or lazing in the bed....zzzzzzz
I started out on June first with my $250 determined to buy enough to eat on for a month. Ha! Ha! Give me $500, I'll show you! I'll only use half. But I think the joke is on me. I've put far more than $250 dollars of labor into this project (which has stretched from one day to ten) and I still don't have a month's worth of meals in my freezer. I only have 20. Now they say that you should not make any decisions about continuing the once-a-month method until you have enjoyed your frozen bounty for a few cycles, but this cooking marathon is hell. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Having my monthly," let me tell you.
For those of you considering taking the once-a-month plunge here are Jessy's Pros and Cons.
PRO

1. Does save money. Even for someone who never bought prepackaged or prepared foods, this has reduced my grocery costs still further. Because, I bought like a half a pig, 10 pounds of potatoes, vats of tomato sauce. The larger the quantity the cheaper per ounce/pound. Also you go to the grocery store less, so save on gas and eliminates impulse buying.
2. Able to combine steps. Instead of browning ground meat three times a week, you brown 10 pounds of ground round at once and use it in three different meals. Same with marinara--just cooked up a soup tureen of the stuff and used it in four different suppers.
3. Those are actually all the pros I can think of at present. But keep in mind I'm still in the trenches of getting this thing accomplished. Perhaps I will feel better about it, when I've spent five minutes defrosting instead of five hours slaving. I'll keep you posted.

CON

1. Arrrghhhh! The mess! The mess in my kitchen. The mess in my house. The books say you should not clean your kitchen until you are done, but in my case, that would be leaving the filth for 10 days, which is out of the question, and besides where would I continue to cook and what would I cook with? After each cooking session, every utensil/pot/pan/dish is dirty and the counters are spilling over with food and packages, and it's a real nightmare. My house is a wreck too, because all I've been doing is cooking and all the other housework has fallen by the wayside. Guess my savings would be lost if I hired a maid?
2. Whoever wrote these books do not have real husbands or real children. Because they set the same dinner on the table five times a month with every meal having one ounce of meat and everybody in their fake family says, "YUM! YUM! Thanks, Mom!" If I followed their meal plans, I'd be hearing from my folks something more along the lines of, "We just HAD cheesy potatoes last week." "We're sick of spaghetti!" and "Where's the beef?" At the Su_______ house we are accustomed to greater variety and much more protein than the once-a-monthers generally allow.
3. You have to plan every teeny, tiny, detail for the whole month. Have I ever mentioned that I'm not much of a planner? I'm more of a free spirit. I liked the, "Hmm....what sounds good tonight?" way of life. Now I have to decide a month in advance what will sound good on any given night. It is really cramping my style.

Some things that I have learned from this experience:

1. The old fashioned way of cooking truly is the cheapest way of cooking and it still works.
2. The old fashioned way of cooking is the hard way of cooking.
3. My family consumes on average 5 gallons of marinara a month. That boggles my mind.
4. When all of these children are consuming adult size portions, we will have to move to Montana, where we will kill and eat elk and forage for roots all winter long, and till the ground and scavage for berries in the summers.