Food Galore!

While my mom was in town a couple weeks ago, she had the grand idea of doing some batch cooking for our freezer. She came prepared with a book that had multiple menus to choose from complete with a grocery list, prep day list & full schedule for cooking day.

We chose a 2 week menu that had 12 entrees. The first task was to check the pantry & refrigerator to make sure we had staple items that were included in the recipes. Then we tackled the grocery store. We did not use coupons but were still pleased with our total bill of about $135. A fairly large portion of the cost was meat.

That afternoon, we followed the directions & spent about 2 hours doing all of the prep for cooking day. We cooked about 10 pounds of chicken & chopped it up as well as chopping all the veggies that we could.

The next day, we got started in the kitchen as soon as Charlotte went down for her nap. It would have been an intense task if I were to have tried to do it alone but with my mom there, it was easy (at least for me because she made sure I was resting). We went step by step cooking & assembling dishes & it worked great! The kitchen smelled amazing!

After nearly 5 hours, all of the dishes were complete and packaged for the freezer. With 12 entrees, we actually ended up with about 21 meals! Most of them have about 4 servings each.

Our chosen menu included the following: Chili Verde, Breakfast Casserole, Meatballs, Spaghetti sauce to be used in French Bread Pizza, Calzones & with meatballs, Chicken & Rice, Broccoli Chicken Casserole, Marinated Flank steak, Chili Hamburgers, Chicken Linguine, Mexican Stroganoff & one other that I cannot remember at the moment.

My plan was to save all of the meals for June when we are not sleeping much & not in the mood to cook although my mom kept saying that we should enjoy them now. Turns out, the tiredness is beginning to set in along with the swollen ankles therefore we have eaten something from the freezer 4 out of the last 5 nights : ) Everything we have had so far has been delicious!

Thanks mom for such a fabulous idea & for being the head chef with me as your assistant!

Amongst the cooking & various other projects, Gaga (as Charlotte started calling her) found plenty of time to spend with her sweet grandchild.

Here is the pair out to dinner

I love having my mom in town & cannot wait for her return on June 1st! She is going to spend a few weeks with us as we settle into the new normal with two babies in this household. Looking forward to it!