Cooking for the month

Wow! It is so difficult to work a very physical job 24-30 hours a week, check your children's homeschool work, and have the time, energy, or even brain cells left to blog! Most work days I'm so exhausted upon returning home that I only have the energy to take a bath, throw in a load of laundry, and crawl into bed. Recently, when one of the girls asked for school help, I whined as I trudged past my husband - " But I don't wanna do math!"

"You have to." he replied dryly. "You're the teacher."


Days off are usually spent catching up on school work, house work, yard work, and taking the kid's on field trips. One thing in particular I've been struggling to keep up with is the daily meal question. What will we have tonight? If we are what we eat, then my family is cheap, fast, and easy! OK...enough is enough. I'm going to fix that. In the past I have tried the "once-a-month" cooking books with some success. Unfortunately, my very picky eaters (ummm...every family member but me), didn't like most of the recipes. But I HAVE learned enough tips from my "once-a-month" cooking experiences, running a catering business, and from now working in a bakery (most of our products come in frozen!) to know how to utilize my freezer as another "servant" in my home. So I don't have the servant girls that the Proverbs 31 woman had (although my girls will swear to you that they ARE those servant girls!), but I DO have machine "servants" that she did not have that I can utilize to make myself more efficient. I have a washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, a crock pot, a bread machine, a grain grinder, electric oven, toaster oven, a refrigerator that makes ice, electric weed whacker, a computer (for self-grading schoolwork!), a printer, and a large freezer in the basement!


So...I took the bull by the horns this week when I lucked out and had 3 days off in a row at work. The first day I spent half the day working on unpacking random boxes from the basement (an ongoing project I want to finish before we've been here a year. Help! That is coming up fast!) I then devoted the other half of the day to cooking my little heart out! As I cooked each item I only allowed it to cool slightly before packaging it in a tupperware container or ziplock bag and placing in the downstairs large freezer. I started with an easy one: sloppy joe meat for 2 meals. I then prepared enough pizza sauce for 8 pizzas and froze them in some old tupperware hamburger press containers. I completed the "tomato sauce" section of my cooking by simmering some cheap canned spagetti sauce with some of my own spices and some ground chicken (I literally can't stomach beef). I followed that with simmering a homemade low-fat chicken noodle soup made with lean chicken breasts. I accidently boiled too much chicken breasts for the chicken noodle soup so I made a wonderful chicken salad with Blue Plate mayo (which my sweet mother brought me from Georgia!), fresh celery, and finely chopped pecans. this will not freeze well so I stuck it in the refrigerator to eat in the next few days. I browned several pounds of stew beef and threw them in the crock pot with carrots and diced potatoes. I used a little white wine to recover the good fried flavor out of the frying pan and added it to the crock pot mixture. Yummm....a hearty beef stew for my family.


The next day I had to go to the chiropractor and stop by the grocery store for a few more ingredients. I only cooked for half the day again and I started with my family's favorite breakfast : Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins. I then made a big pot full of a quasi vegetable chili (I have to add a little ground chicken...my husband wants SOME meat!). I tried a new recipe: a lower calorie version of sweet and sour chicken and froze it with some brown rice. I left some out for Rodney to eat for his supper since he was getting home after we left for church that night. I have been trying to avoid products with high fructose corn syrup,which can be very difficult if you pour syrup on your waffles or chocolate syrup on your ice cream. I found a recipe and made both of these! Neither was difficult! Both just need to be refrigerated instead of freezing, however they will last a while in the fridge. I finished up the day by making some fresh ground whole wheat chocolate chip cookie dough. I froze 2 rolls of them to bake later but baked a large cookie sheet of them to cut out to make my own chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. I have some ice cream sandwich containers from tupperware that I rarely use. I put Breyer's vanilla ice cream inbetween 2 homemade cookies quickly hid them in the freezer!


Day 3: A bread day! I made the best bran muffins ever. But since I only use recipes as a general "guideline" I hope I can replicate these later on! It was a banana bran muffin recipe with cinnamon added...yuuummmm. I baked homemade whole wheat hamburger buns for the sloppy joes, two braided loaves of whole grain bread to eat with the soups or stews, and four whole grain pizza crusts for the pizza sauce I already froze. I baked dozens of corn muffins....some with cheese added...some without. I finished with two containers of corn chowder...an experiment, since things thickened by corn starch sometimes won't freeze well. We will see.


I ran out of time and was scheduled to work for the next four days. No matter. I have a freezer full of good nutritious food! It has been so nice to come home at 5pm and have a nice dinner on the table by 6pm without much fuss. My next day off is Tuesday and I will resume with the basement cleaning and the cooking marathon. Some of the recipes upcoming: Scones with blackberry butter, Orange chicken with rice, Golden Corral's Bourbon Street Chicken with rice, whole wheat waffles with mini chocolate chips, blueberry sauce for waffles, blackberry cobbler, and more desserts (a request from my husband)! I'll let you know how things turn out.


Some "once-a-month" cooking tips:


Some things that sometimes don't freeze well are mayonaise or sour cream based recipes, rice by itself (you can sometimes get away with brown rice in casseroles and one-dish meals), potato based recipes (same thing...you can sometimes get away with them in some casseroles and one-dish meals....like my stew meat with carrots and potatoes), and cooked eggs.