I really love to cook. But sometimes I am so stressed out from running after 3 little ones, and making the house a home, and breaking up fights, and drying tears, and flirting with my husband, and remembering to do this and that....that I just don't feel like cooking supper. What happens is I make something simple for the kids and then Scott and I would order take out and eat it after the girls go to bed. This was taking a serious chunk out of our budget and adding inches to my waistline. A double whammy. Yuck..... Plus we weren't eating meals together as a family. Something that I remember doing growing up and strive to do with our family as well. It's the perfect time to talk to the girls and teach them about table manners and nutrition. And the girls get a chance to tell Scott about what they did during the day.
I have been dabbling with freezer cooking for awhile now. Katrina would come over in the morning and we would cook for a few hours while the kids played together. Our worst day was the time we forgot to turn the oven on when making banana bread. *slaps her forehead* Our best day was when we made 20 some meals for each of our families. Yes, they were chicken meals. It was seriously on sale that week. ;) Katrina has 4 boys under the age of 7. We have 3 girls 7 years and younger. So the extra meals in the freezers has been helpful.
However, I just wasn't making good use of them. After having a meeting with my amazing friend, Steph, who is also my accountability partner. I told her that I was going to get back into cooking meals for the family.
So on May 14th I set about getting to work. The week before I was blessed with the grocery store having yet another sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I'm pretty sure they don't like chickens as much as my husband claims I do, he always jokes that I have it out for chickens because I buy a ton of them when they are on sale.
The week before I made a plan of what I was going to cook, gathered the recipes and made a list of what I was going to need from the store. I knew I was going to need to go to several different stores to get all the ingredients needed.
Anyways, here is how the day went.
The night before I put the chicken in the crock pot with some chicken broth. I set the crock pot to low and in the morning my chicken was ready to shredd.
I crawled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. I wanted to get a good head start before the girls woke up. I started a fresh pot of coffee and got to work.
Here is my red recipe book. And my homemaker binder with all my other recipes.
A view of my stove hard at work.
Due to Lexi's allergy to tree nuts I make our own pesto.
Our freezer at the end of the day. I think I made 15 some meals that day.
Check out my new dry erase calendar for meal planning. I love being able to move the meals around if I don't feel like having something on a certain day. And right next to it is my favorite picture of my hubby. =)
I am so happy that I have taken back control of our kitchen. And due to the fact that our girls eat like birds we still have meals left in the freezer. We regularly have leftovers which works out well for lunch the next day too.
This is definitely something I am going to continue. One of my favorite sites to frequent is onceamonthmom.com . If you have any meals that are great freezer meals please let me know.
