Nesting has officially begun! Chad took off the week of Christmas and boy did I take advantage of it. On Christmas Day, we began converting our guestroom over to a playroom. Then, later in the week, we (okay, Chad) moved a shelving unit from our garage to the basement so that we can store our new grill in the garage. Oh, then we took a ton of clothes to Goodwill and also recycled some old computers. Plus, we rearranged our bedroom to accommodate the nightstands from the guestroom and the playpen for the new baby. So, the house feels much cleaner and more manageable to me :) I have also started a hospital bag for the baby, which involved washing some newborn outfits. I will say it would be much easier at this moment to know what the gender is for clothing purposes, but the surprise will be worth it!
Okay, so my biggest adventure regarding nesting happened this past weekend. I did my first marathon session of freezer cooking. In about 2.5 hours, I made about 20 freezer meals. Of course, some of this is just taco meat three times over or BBQ pork five times over, but we will put these staple items to good use in the Prentice household. They also will make great leftovers for Chad's lunch. I have only done freezer cooking once before with some friends a few years back and I made a few meals and absolutely loved it. I just somehow never kept up with it. I was thinking how nice it would have been to have had some meals on hand for when Meredith was born, so that was my motivation for getting it done this go around.
So, I started with pulling some recipes from the Internet specific to meals that would freeze well. Then, wouldn't you know it, I got caught on Pinterest. I've never really been on there before, but man can I see why it is an addiction. Just type in "freezer cooking" and you will see what I mean. So, once I had my recipes pulled together, it was a 2 hour trip to the grocery stores to get what I didn't already have in my pantry (it wouldn't have taken that long if I didn't compare prices and use coupons). My word of advice is not to go either shopping or cook with a toddler underfoot. Thankfully, I was able to do the shopping on my own (my time of relaxation...how sad is that?), but I started cooking while she was still awake. BIG mistake!
Anyhow, here are some pictures of my adventure. I would love to do this again sometime, though I may just do a meal here and there until baby arrives, rather than undergoing a marathon session.
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| These are just the ingredients I started with for this session of freezer cooking. I have several other meats in the fridge I need to assemble into freezer meals later this week. |
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| This is a new recipe for me, but sounded really good. Salsa chicken: chicken breasts, corn, salsa, black beans, taco seasoning, and tomato sauce. I made enough for a double-batch. It is cooked in the crockpot and can be served over rice or with tortillas. Yum! |
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| This recipe was easy to put together (all raw ingredients; no cooking involved) and I hope it tastes good, as it's a new recipe for me. It's chicken broccoli alfredo and was super simple - chicken breasts, broccoli, and alfredo sauce. It just has to be cooked in the crockpot. |
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| We are taco/burrito lovers here in the Prentice house. This one was a no-brainer to have on hand. I cooked three pounds of ground turkey with taco seasoning and converted them into three meals. We just have to freeze and then reheat! |
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| Chad mixed these up for me while I was busy prepping some of the other meals. He just followed the recipe and mixed the frozen hashbrowns, butter, sour cream, etc. together and we were able to freeze two of these containers. This will make a nice side dish! |
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| These are two meatloaves I put together for individual pans. I didn't pre-cook anything, but wrote instructions on the outside to remind me of the temp and length of time to cook, and froze as is. |
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| I have fallen in love with soups recently and have gotten Chad to join me, with eating ingredients such as black beans and tomatoes. It really is a miracle :) Since I have already cooked the ground beef in this recipe, it's just a matter of heating it up on the stovetop or in the crockpot when we are ready to eat. This was another double-batch. |
** It was around this point in the cooking process that I realized I had been putting 2012 on everything. Oops! I redeemed myself with the pork, though. **
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| There was a really good sale on pork loins at Meijer this week. I bought two large ones and used one to just cook BBQ pork. It cooks in the crockpot all day long, then I shred it and bag it for individual meals. We use this for BBQ pork sandwiches, on top of nachos, in tacos, and over baked potatoes. I will probably cut up the other pork loin this week and bag it as pork chops marinated in various sauces. |
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| I am so grateful we have two refrigerators. This one is in our basement and we cleared it out specifically for my freezer cooking meals. I can't wait to fill it up even more! |
