Kale and Leeks and Squash, Oh My!

It's Done! We have a whole month's worth of food in our freezer! Wow that's an amazing feeling. It's been a learning experience, that's for sure. Next month I know what to do differently, so it really is one day, instead of three. Boy, I'm tired.

It started out like this.....

I didn't finish chopping Veg on friday night, I got a late start. So Saturday morning (about three hours later than I SHOULD have started,) I started to finish the day before prep work. At noon it looked like this.....

I was quickly running out of bowls. I was also getting tired and I hadn't even started fixing the actual recipes yet. A bit discouraging, but again, I didn't do it right. Next time, I'll start on time and use a food processor. 

I had a second wind once I actually started putting recipes together and seeing meals start to stack up in the freezer. First, I'd set aside the ingredients I needed for each recipe. Then, I threw each recipe together really quickly. Wow, having the ingredients set aside before I started mixing really made the process almost brainless. When I didn't set them aside first I almost doubled the amount of time it took to do each one. Here's how it looked as I was setting aside ingredients. I had a different recipe on each mat.

The second place where things went bad was that our oven is broken. Our stovetop works fine, but the oven doesn't heat up. I'm working on getting it fixed, but in the meantime we're borrowing a countertop oven from a friend. It's great, it will cook up to a 9x13 pan.....but my recipes come in 8x8 pans, and two 8x8s side by side are 16". They would fit fine in a normal oven, but in the countertop oven? not so much. So instead of being able to cook all four servings of each dish that needed pre-cooking at once I had to cook each serving separately, effectively quadrupling my baking time. Needless to say, between that, starting 3 hours later than I'd planned, having to do several hours of prep work that should have been done on Friday and having to take several 30min to One Hour breaks to nurse Rowan, I didn't finish on Saturday. I had about half of the work done, and lots of meals in the freezer, but I had five or six recipes that still needed putting together. If I'd started the day putting together recipes, or if I'd started on time, I'd have been done. So next time? Food processor so that prepping the produce happens faster, and getting it done early on Friday so that it's ready for Saturday. And starting on Saturday morning on time (like 8 a.m.). Also, getting my oven fixed sometime in the next three weeks so that I don't have to spend so long on the baking steps. Between that I should be able to actually manage it in one day next time. And now? It's so easy to fix meals. Loving it! I just have to pick the meals for the next day the night before and put them in the fridge (if they say to thaw before re-heating) and then throw them in the oven or on the stove before we want to eat. Totally Awesome!

Here's how my freezer looks!

 And the cool thing? Those tinfoil pans? They're two deep, like this.

And the food? REALLY TASTY! I'm loving it.

And I've had an interesting development, at church on Sunday a friend heard what I'm doing, and now I might have a once a month cooking buddy! That would be great.

So, updates. It's been a while since my last post, mostly because my baby hasn't wanted to let me get on the computer, he's been very fussy.

Saturday-Spent the day cooking, but I'm calling it a win.

Sunday-Decided Sunday is my day off, as it should be. I'm thinking of making Sunday a spiritual journal posting day, but Rowan's crying again so more on that later.

Monday-Good Day, totally exhausted, and fussing baby, but I got three loads of laundry folded, and one washed and dried. Didn't get my extra goals done, but got my main ones. :-D

Tuesday?-Fail. Got goal #2 done, spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the house. But I didn't get the laundry done, and I didn't get my exercise done.

Today? After I go take care of the crying baby, I'm hoping to make it a Fabulous Day!

Gotta run, Kids need me!