ICE ICE BABY

I feel pretty joyous right now. I actually did it. That thing that I've been trying to do for years and even attempted a couple of months ago and kinda failed. I cooked a ton of food and stuck it in the freezer in the goal that each day around 5pm isn't a nutso event of trying to figure out what to make for dinner. It probably doesn't seem like much of an achievement. To me it is. Our family of four eats food daily and on the weekend what seems like hourly and my husband and I have a strong aversion to processed and prepared foods. This aversion keeps us healthy, but must take us longer to figure out what to eat and longer to make our meals.

I've spent (wasted) hours (days I'm sure) of my life pouring over recipes online and mommy blogs and menu planning websites looking for great ideas to help me get this food on the table with minimal stress. Don't get me wrong we both cook a lot and feed our family pretty well even without meal planning, but it gets stressful and I want more harmony in that already stressful time of picking up the kids, getting home, feeding the hungry dogs and in that moment where I really need to unwind I just wind up. Back to the meal planning websites, typically as soon as I get excited about the site's meal planning theory I then read a recipe for tuna casserole or beefy mexican cheesy dip and they lose me. The Once a Month Mom (OAMM) site offers options other than their Traditional menu (read pizza rollups and tuna taco pie). I made their Whole Foods menu in August and made a number of items from their Diet menu yesterday. The recipes are pretty good, some winners and some acceptable but it does take a lot of thinking out of preparing a whole lot of food at once.

When diving into the food prep yesterday in an attempt to stock our freezer for the month I realized a couple of things. I don't need to pre-make fancy breakfast items - we eat a lot of greek yogurt, frozen pancakes (we make a double batch on the weekend and the kids eat them throughout the week) and kind of an absurd amount of oatmeal. As long as I have a dark cup of coffee in the morning I don't really care what accompanies it. For lunch the kids are fed very well at their schools and we're fine with bringing leftovers from dinner to work and/or some simple soups with a roll. Dinner on the other hand in our house needs to be kind of exciting. Not always fancy, but prepared well with good ingredients and we like to talk about it a bit. So, we don't really require all of the breakfast and lunch items that the OAMM site includes in their monthly menus. A nutritionist friend introduced me to Pepperplate and I'm now thinking that this site is the current answer to my freezer cooking woes. You can hunt online for recipes (EatingWell, Food and Wine, Real Simple and Gojee are good places to start) and even use the recipes on OAMM as a guide for what will freeze well and add them to your Pepperplate account. You can then modify the number of servings, add the recipe to your shopping list and even create a meal plan for the week. Very cool. I like being in control and this site allows me to plan my meals and makes the hard stuff (grocery list and calculations) easy. The Pepperplate meal plan is my next experiment.

Oh and I finally bought a crock pot. It's so easy use, but I do feel older now. I balanced out the crock pot purchase by going to a rock show last night until 2am. Ok where was I? In case you're curious here is what I made and froze yesterday:

1. Pork Carnitas
2. Lentil Soup
3. Lime Coconut Chicken (used thighs instead of breast - cheaper)
4. Chipotle Shrimp
5. Spinach Turkey Burgers
6. Vegetarian Cassoulet
7. Broccoli Lasagna (I omitted the cream and the greens are for a side salad, not the lasagna, oh and Prince brand lasagne noodles are the bomb)
8. Chicken Taquitos (I left out the cream cheese, it's not an item that I like cooking with, I also boiled a whole organic chicken instead of using just breasts it's cheaper and then I end up with free chicken broth for other meals)
9. Orange Ricotta Pancakes this was a blend of the recipe from the OAMM site and a recipe we use all the time from another book. 2 cups milk mixed with a tbs of vinegar for a few minutes (set aside), 2 cups WW flour, 2 cups unbleached white flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda (Mix above) .zest of an orange, 4 eggs, .5 cup canola oil,  2 cups ricotta (mix all and cook).