Oh my goodness, I love this girl.
There are many things that I could write about. Do I go back to the beginning and write about everything that's happened in the past seven months? Or do I skip it all and just write about the things that are fresh in my mind and relevant now?
I'll probably do a bit of both. I'm a big fan of moderation. Anyway, I have to go back even before my last blog and tell you about the time I was nesting and decided to make a month's worth of freezer meals. I was 9 and 1/2 months pregnant at the time, and I decided that it would be awesome if I had some pre-made meals to eat after my daughter was born. I poured through Pinterest and various Google searches. I had never made a freezer meal before, and I wasn't quite sure how it all worked. After a little research, I decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to go ALL.THE.WAY. My beloved moderation was thrown out the window in a hormone induced week of insanity. I decided to make all of the August meals as outlined in this website.
Have you ever gone to Once a Month Mom before? It's quite incredible. They have shopping lists and recipes to help you make a month's worth of meals all at once. They will tell you that you can do it all in one day, but that is bull crap. There is no way in the world that it can be done. You know how trying out a brand new recipe is kind of stressful and time consuming? Yeah, do that 15 times (doubling each recipe to make two meals) and tell me if it took you less than 24 hours and if your sanity remained intact. (Don't forget that you will have to wash dishes constantly, unless you have 30 bowls, 20 cookie sheets, 15 sets of measuring cups and spoons...you get the idea.) I did have enough foresight to realize that I might get tired since walking to the mailbox was making my pregnant self tired, so I decided to do my cooking over a week. This was still pushing it BIG TIME.
It started with an expensive shopping trip. The new recipes meant quite a few food items that were not yet staples in my pantry. I was then committed. There was no turning back, and even the recipes that started to look less appealing were going to be made. (Partly because I couldn't figure out how to exclude their ingredients from my ready made shopping list.)
Then I got to work. My kitchen basically looked like it had blown up for two weeks. And I am not kidding you- I was CONSTANTLY cleaning it. Here are some pictures of my oh so cute pregnant self and my messy messy kitchen.
Do you see any counter top? Yeah, neither did I. I survived it, though. I did it. 100%. Every last bit of those August meals were done. Even that stupid tomato bisque that turned out to be a more fattening, expensive, and gross tasting version of Campbell's canned tomato soup. (Also I'm pretty sure that that's the recipe that burned my arm. I cooked the ingredients and then put them in the blender to puree and my blender exploded hot soup all over me and my kitchen. Stupid soup.)
All of the meals were tucked away in our fridge freezer and the used deep freezer on our patio that we were very grateful to get for free. I was ready to have my baby.
A while later (days? weeks? I don't remember,) I went outside to re-situate my beloved meals, and I smelled something funny in the deep freezer. Also, it didn't seem quite cold enough. A few other observations confirmed it- our deep freezer was broken, and my food was rotting.
Commence Nervous Breakdown.
It was almost poetic. All of that work, and my nine month pregnant self had to deal with losing it all.
It wasn't all lost, though. Luckily, the nasty bisque was in the fridge freezer, along with the chicken cacciatore that I threw up during labour. (Ironic eye roll.)
Okay, there were a few good things that survived, too. Also, there were a few recipes that were ruined that I immediately made again, because I just really was looking forward to eating them. There was a lot of deliciousness, and a few yummy recipes were added to my repertoire. Like this:
and this
And most of all, THESE:
Seriously, if you get nothing else from this blog post, grill some chicken wrapped in bacon and bake some taco meat in won ton wrappers. You will not be disappointed.
Here's what I decided about freezer meals, though- at least for me. They're great. But you don't need to do a month's worth at one time. And you don't need to use other people's recipe. When you're making something that you like for dinner, think about if it would freeze well. If you think it will, then double the recipe. Put half in the freezer. Now you've got dinner tonight, and another dinner that you can have another day. If you do that enough, you'll get that freezer full of yummy dinners for days when you don't feel like cooking. That makes more sense to me than making yourself crazy for a day or four every month. Seriously, what does the Onceamonthmom do with her kids when she's busy being a Mom?
