Meal Making Extravaganza

As some of you might remember, back in January I got together with two friends to cook and two wonderful ladies to show us just how to do. Now this wasn't just any ordinary cooking lesson. It was a day of making 13 recipes for our families that became almost two months of meals. Well, we decided to try this again. So, the girls picked out 13 different recipes to try again, Tuesday we went grocery shopping and Thursday we spent 8 hours in the kitchen cooking. Thankfully, our boys were willing to play and watch movies all days, the girls when the got home from school, played nicely together and the husbands were content to eat Little Ceasar's when they got home. We all now have a very well stocked freezer with all sorts of yummy meals just waiting for us.

Now, the rest of this blog is more the how to do this for those of you that have been asking. Enjoy!!

We start by selecting the meals. Alison was give 5 or so cookbooks that are designed for just this, cooking meals for the month. They come for cooking 1, 3 or 6 meals per recipe. They are designed to then be frozen in either foil containers or double bagged in freezer bags. They are frozen as flat as can be in order to conserve on freezer space. This time around we chose from 3 cookbooks: "Dream Dinners," "Fix, Freeze, Feast," "Don't Panic, Dinners in the Freezer," and "More, Don't Panic..." We've discovered that these are some of our favorites. We tried to pick meals that don't require too much preparation or pre-cooking, recipes that had similar ingredients, but not too similaar in taste. Also, we wanted more meals that were just that meals. Last time we ended up with too many just meats and found we still had to come up with sides and a vegetable. This time around about half of the meals only need a vegetable or a salad.

After selecting our meals, Rachelle, made up the grocery list. She lists things out as the come up combing ingredients from different recipes. For example: 18 lbs of beef, 24 lbs of chicken, 18 onions, 5 cloves of garlic, etc... We started a box last month of ingredients that are commonly used or significantly cheaper in the costco size, like oil, salt, a large thing of soy sauce. Then we divided up the common "pantry" items we only needed a small amount of like, some of the spices, butter, brown sugar, etc. This saved money and did not waste the ingredients in our pantries.

Two days before cooking, Alison and I meet up at Costco, treated ourselves to lunch and then headed for the meat department. Loaded up on the meat that was the best deal. We also bought some of the produce there that would be used and the cheese. The month before we had bought the freezer bags there as well. Then we went to WinCo where things are always cheap! This took a couple of hours, but we were able to get everything but 2 unusual items we had to go to Nugget for. We put everything on one credit card and then wrote the buyer a check at the end of the shopping excursion. This just simply makes the math easier.

Then, on Thursday, we got together for the actual cooking. Between distractions, stopping for lunch, picking up kids from school and making sure the little boys in the other room were happy, we cooked for 8 straight hours. Two rules we have applied for our group is lunch goes into the grocery bill for cooking day as well as pizza for dinner. This made it a little easier and kept the kids happy. The husbands didn't mind so much because they'd have yummy meals the rest of the month!!

So, here's what we each went home with:

(meals are for 4 people, if says with leftovers we assume it's more than our family can eat, each dish is considered 1 meal as well.)

-a serving of Rice Pilaf

- 2 meals of Shredded Chicken Salsa (can be used in tacos, burritos or a taco salad)

- 1 meal with leftovers of Swimming Rama

- 1 meal with leftovers of Mango Curry Chicken

-10 Chicken Tenderloins ready for Chicken Parmesan (including homemade red sauce that also went in the other pasta dishes)

- 1 meal with leftovers of Tequila Lime Chicken (great for kabobs, fajitas or in a salad)

- 2 separate dishes of Chicken Enchiladas

- 2 separate dishes of Cheesy Chilada Bake

- 2 separate dishes of Baked Ziti

- 1 meal of Quick Cheese Ravioli (homemade ravioli's!!)

- 2 separate dishes of Lasagna

- 2 separate dishes of Chimichangas

- 1 meal Mexi-Beef for burritos

(We later realized we were going for Indian and Mexican food. A little more themed than planned, but it all looked and smelled great!)

So that's a grand total of 19 meals for $107 per family. Yes, we will still have to buy breakfast and lunch stuff as well as fresh vegetables and some side dishes, but the meals will most likely get us through 6 weeks. And remember, many of the meals will also provide lunches. So far we're enjoying this and look forward to doing it again.

Cooking Away

So, lets just say cooking isn't my favorite thing to do while being pregnant. By the time it's time to make dinner, I'm crabby, exhausted and done for the day. I'm starving to the point of nausea, but nothing sounds good. Don't have energy, so going to the store isn't successful; therefore, nothing to make an easy meal is never in the fridge. So, we've eaten things like bean burritos, gone out for dinner, pasta and if we're lucky some chicken. Jared is awesome. He just smiles and says thank you if I scraped it together or runs out and picks something up for us. Thomas isn't complaining, he likes mac n' cheese or nuggets every night! However, this couldn't last much longer, but the solution had to be easy.

The solution was presented to me by a friend and her mother-in-law. Alison's mother-in-law has been "pre-cooking" her meals (along with a friend) to go in the freezer for the last several months. She loved it so much she insisted on coming down and teaching Alison and two of her friends how to do this. How in the world could I turn something like that down?! So, about a week ago we got together, picked 12 meals and then she and her mother-in-law, Jo, and her friend, Norma, came down all the way from Oregon to do the shopping and the teaching!

I turned out to be awesome!!! I helped with a little bit of the shopping and then the 5 of us got together on Saturday (after Norma and Joe had prepped some, made meatballs, mashed potatoes and pre-mixed some of the ingredients Friday night) to cook away! We started in at 9, took a break for lunch and were done with the cooking and clean up by 3:00. We all left with some leftover groceries, 13 main dishes and the mashed potatoes. Something to add is that most of the meals will provide enough for dinner and left-overs. Some will be 2 complete dinners with lunches as well. They'll all be different and so far tasty.

My freezer is stuffed and my husband is happy!! I have a checklist and cooking instructions to consult whenever a meal is needed. I simply defrost it, cook it and make a side dish. So far we've had two meals and they've been wonderful. Jared quite contentedly pointed out, "we even got a real meal for Sunday night!" (that's usually popcorn!) If it really proves to be economical as well, I just might be sold on the process!

2 New Blogs

I just found this new blog through the girltalk blog and love it. Tons of super yummy-looking recipes and none of them look that difficult either. Just might have to go through some and share with mom's group! We need some new meals at home. The old regulars are creeping their way back onto our table!! Check it out: http://www.easymealsformoms.com/

I've also been checking out the girltalk blog a little more as well. I was first introduced to them through the book "Shopping for Time" which I highly recommend. It's written by a group of 4 women, mother and sisters, who get together weekly for time in the Word together. They have a 5am club (rising early to spend time studying God's Word before their day starts). It's a great book and I highly recommend it. The same authors have a blog that I love. All sorts of great tips and encouraging notes. They're discussing hospitality right now and have explained how important it is and tips on how to do it successfully! Here's their site: http://www.girltalkhome.com/