Slowly throwing in the towel

Well... I'm tired =) I didn't get any new cooking done since my last post, but I got a lot of "bagging and tagging" done, transported meals to our freezer in the garage, brought the rest of the stuff up for the lasagnas that will be put together after the kids are in bed... and I *may* still take a stab at the GF tortillas.

So, I didn't finish my whole list, but I still got a LOT more accomplished than I thought I would or could. I'll try and get a picture up before we start using it all up, but my list of what's available for dinners now:
1/2 gallon of chili (previous mega batch)
2, 24 count meatballs that just need reheating and sauce
2, 4 cup bags of cooked brown rice
2 dinners of sloppy Joes
3 dinners of Chef Mis-er-ly
6 dinners of beef tacos
4 dinners of beef stew
3 quart bags of split pea soup (I'm the only one that likes it... so this is 6-9 meals for me!)
4 rice side-dish mixes

By the end of the night, I'll have:
3 pounds of chicken nuggets
1 wheat lasagna (3-4 dinners)
1 gluten free lasagna (8 meals)

I hope to be able to continue on my list tomorrow - but we are also making the soups for soup supper on Wednesday night. I've got more planning to do!

That's better...

My body forced a nap on me. I fell asleep shortly after writing that last post and slept an interrupted 2 hours. I finally woke up when my husband took a call from the moving company that moved us on our two big moves - the last one being just before Christmas. It appears the people whose belongings were in the other half of our truck just opened a mirror box that had some wedding pictures in it - and it's not theirs. I'm sick to my stomach thinking that some of our wedding pictures are missing, but we still can't confirm that it's ours. The company is playing middle man and will call us back (our mover was less than stellar - but the company was/is great!)... and we get to dig through the downstairs bedroom and the garage that are both, just about, wall-to-wall boxes while we await our final (please?) move to our own place. Just another bump in the road.

Now? Back to work!

Maybe we'll just do Atkins

Seriously, I've done NOTHING with the bready stuff. No pizza crusts, no bread (though we still have a loaf in the freezer, and I make it pretty often - it's like a natural Glade home fragrance =) ), not even the tortillas, and they're super easy!

But I've knocked out most of the rest of the list. I haven't boiled the lasagna noodles (again with the starch!), but the rest is ready to go! The chicken nuggets are absorbing the butter milk and waiting for me to bread and bread and bread and bake and bake and bake!

Didn't have coffee... kind of afraid to have it now for fear of it keeping me up too late tonight. But I'd like to kick out a few things in the bread department yet. Going to make the tortillas after I feed the kiddos lunch. I'd *like* to still get at least one pizza crust (each) done, too - but that needs more of my attention because of the altitude issues as well... making sure it's not a big gooey ball!

Our house smells like some eclectic diner. Or the home of someone who can't decide what to eat! We have the mingled smells of beef stew, split pea soup, tacos, sloppy Joes and "Chef Mis-er-ly." I need to get something bready going to try and neutralize the smell of confusion!

Plus - I still have to bag up the soups... and take the immersion blender to the pea soup (and pray it doesn't a'splode!). The tacos have been simmering for for-ev-er... gotta stir them and set them aside to cool.

Did I mention a nap? Because I'm starting to think that is no longer an option but a requirement! The hubs is out to get our mail... and get more freezer bags =)

Half(ish) way there!

About to start pounding the life out of some (dead) chicken breasts. I'm actually quite surprised at how well this is going...

... but I'm also finally starting to get tired.

Time to brew some coffee, make sure both crock pots are off, toss some food in the general direction of my kids (just kidding - they're eating grapes right now and will have hard boiled eggs in a few seconds... plus I'm brewing some (decaf) tea for them right now. Did I mention that they never went back to sleep once the girl got up at 5:45?!?! I do believe that is the definition of insanity - especially since they normally get up sometime between 7-8.

And... in the 20 minutes since I started writing this, I dozed off, my kids got in trouble for getting into the homeschooling supplies, and it's turning out to be just as crazy as I thought it might get.

Next part of the plan - get coffee started, get some pizza dough in each bread machine (one is a dedicated gluten-free machine... for my new readers, I have celiac disease, but I'm the only one in my family that eats GF because GF flours, pastas, etc are much more expensive and much more time consuming to make), and get that chicken abused and drowned! =)

Why does cooking have to be so noisy?!?!

I blame it on coffee. I don't usually have much caffeine. Especially since moving from sea level to 6000 feet, caffeine seems to **really** effect me. But the coffee at church today was SO good. And the young woman who normally finishes off the pot gave up coffee for Lent. So even though I had my normal cup during Bible study... and filled up again (in my defense, our church building is pretty cold and I usually have two cups of decaf tea)... I finished the last cup while the kids and I were waiting for Daddy to finish teaching confirmation.

That's right, I haven't had caffeine in... weeks. And then I had THREE LARGE CUPS yesterday. At first I wrote today - because I still haven't slept (though I did snooze on the couch for about 20 minutes around 3).

But the things that I had hoped to do in preparation for today's big cooking day? I couldn't do them. Because they're loud. I can't pound the chicken with a mallet for the chicken fingers/nuggets. I can't be rolling out tortillas and pizza dough on our wood table because *that's* loud. Did I mention that our kitchen/living room is right over the master bedroom where my incredible husband is trying to sleep? Yeah.

So, I added to my list. I had found a couple rice mix recipes in a gluten-free cookbook I recently received, and I wanted to try them out. They're quiet to assemble, easy to walk away from when the 3 year old wakes up because she peed in her pull-up... only to find out she didn't really, but she did wake her brother who now also needs to go potty. And will you tuck me back in when I'm done, Mama?

I got 4 different rice side-dish mixes made up: Herb rice for chicken, Herb rice for beef, Beef rice, and (the one I'm really excited about) Curried rice! I just need to type up the instructions that go along with them and attach them to the little glass pint canning jars that house them for now.

Got 5 of 10 pounds of ground beef browned, the soup and stew are almost done, and the 8 cups of brown rice had the distinction of being the first things added to the freezer! Even took a picture of me and my first bag of freezer food - but Blogger hasn't returned my text to let me post it here. In time. It's a good feeling to be ticking things off the list.

Everything that needs to be done either requires making wake-up-someone-sleeping noise or needs and electric outlet (two of which are absorbed with crock pots right now). I don't want to blow a fuse (flip a switch?). So I think it's time for me to curl up on the couch and take a little more of a nap. And then when I get up? COFFEE =)

OAMC/Freezer Day Update

Just to try to keep it simple, and since I know I have some people following me from MoneySavingMom.com, I'll be updating THIS post below as the day goes along.

And, as promised, I'm cheating and have already started =)

I'll come back - probably not until it's over - and break down Saturday's shopping trip, too. I hit some AWESOME sales that allowed me to get all that I needed for March's freezer fill day, as well as a bunch of produce and extra chicken for about $120! Since my goal has been $40-50/week, under $30 rocks my socks!

My first (real) attempt at a OAMC freezer-fill day

I read posts on Money Saving Mom all the time about her freezer cooking days. I'm always saying I'm going to give it a try. I even gave it a half-hearted try when we first moved here (as in, while standing among mountains of cardboard boxes).

It didn't work.

I'm good about making a double to quadruple batch of things when cooking and freezing the extras... tacos, chili, soups. But I've never really hunkered down to say I'm going to just spend all day in the kitchen.

So... I'm gonna give it a shot!

I'm in the planning stages right now, and I'll keep editing this post until I have my real menu down (and I'll do another with my prep list). If I'm being honest, I'll probably get a head start on some of this Sunday night, and there's a good chance that one or more of the "dough things" will get carried over to either Sunday night or Tuesday - since there will be a lot of breadiness going on and will have to separate wheaty from gluten-free (thank goodness for two bread machines!).

Current running ideas:
1-2 batches GF pizza dough
1-2 batches wheat pizza dough
1-2 batches brown rice tortillas (experiment with recipe below - 2 only if it works!)
1-2-3 batches wheat tortillas
1-2 Best Bread Machine Bread
1-2 baked brown rice first OAMC foods to be frozen!
Whole wheat lemon poppy seed muffins (if time allows)

Rice mixes for quick side dishes:
1 Herb Rice (chicken)
1 Herb Rice (beef)
1 Rice for Beef
1 Curried Rice all from Incredible Edible Gluten-Free Food for Kids: 150 Family-Tested Recipes by Sheri L. Sanderson

Outside the all-starch-festival...
Double batch of Slow Cooker Beef Stew cooling in crock to bag and freeze
Slow cooker split pea soup ditto
2 lasagna (1 wheat, 1 GF) (meat filling was made a few weeks ago and frozen. It is thawed in the fridge, I'm using spaghetti sauce, and I've got everything else ready... just need to do it!)
1-2-3 GF Oven fried Chicken nuggets/fingers I replace crumbs with crushed rice or corn chex! (chicken breasts have been pounded and chopped and are soaking in buttermilk in the fridge - and we keep a bucket each of crushed corn and rice chex)
1-2 Sloppy Joes*
Bacon, Egg and cheese biscuit cups I'm going to make these later in the week
1-2-3 Chef Mis-Er-Ly's beefy macaroni* I made a double batch, but was enough for 3 freezer bags - so it counts as 3
1-2-3-4-5-6 pounds beef taco filling Cooling to be put away =)

*As much as I would love to put away completely finished sloppy Joes and Chef Miserly's dish, I can't claim that I'll still have the energy. I will, however, start out by browning a bunch of ground beef and refreezing it after that. At least it will be ready to grab and throw into whatever recipe needs it. Never mind =)

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 pounds ground beef, browned Done

Now to see if I have any sanity left over with which to complete this undertaking!