Make Ahead Breakfast Ideas

 Anyone else struggling got the first week/weeks of school blues? Fighting with kids to get out the door in the mornings? I have a feeling I'm not alone on this one. I try to be as proactive as possible when planning for the next day by getting as many things done ahead of time as I possibly can. I found 2 meal ideas that my kids love, and I have made them twice this first week of school for easy breakfast ideas. I thought I might share them here.

Banana Oat Cookies - This was a Pinterest find that was LOVED by my boys. It was easy, I had all the ingredients, and was a great way to use some "going bad" bananas. They aren't the cutest cookies in the world, but I've now made 2 batches that have been gobbled up by the boys.

2 c. quick oats

2 mashed very ripe bananas

1/4 c. chocolate chips

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 c creamy peanut butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients. Drop 2 tablespoon scoops (I used a small cookie scoop) onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Flatten slightly, forming a cookie shape (these cookies don't spread when baking). Bake for 14-17 min, or until slightly brown on the edges. Cool and enjoy or store for later use.

Egg Muffins - My boys love these. They are protein packed, and you can use any combination of ingredients you want. My kids like them "loaded". There is no exact measuring for this recipe, so I will provide what I cooked.

1/2 onion, diced

1/2 red bell pepper, diced

1 c mushrooms, diced

1 cup (or so) mixed shredded cheese

10 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 package precooked chopped bacon (I use the packaged bacon that is sold in the salad aisle)

1 handful chopped spinach

Approx 1/4 cup half and half (or milk or cream)

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook onions, peppers, and mushrooms until soft. Let cool. Mix eggs and all other ingredients in a large bowl. Add onions, peppers, and mushrooms. Spoon into a greased muffin pan. I use a 1/3 cup measuring scoop. 

Bake at 350 until eggs are set, usually around 20 min or so. It will depend on how full cups are/how many ingredients you add. I have subbed bacon for diced ham or precooked sausage. I have only used meat and cheese. You can seriously make these as "loaded" or not as you want. Store in fridge and reheat at breakfast. 

Happy Back to School All!!

Weight Watchers Meal Planning

I think the hardest part of WW is planning. It takes some forethought to decide what to eat so that you don't blow all your points. A while back I created a board on Pinterest dedicated to WW recipes. I use it all the time. When I did my big grocery shopping at the beginning of the month, I took some time to sit down and look at that board. I compiled a list of my entrée items and wrote the points beside them. Then, I tried to look for side dishes to go with each dish and labeled the points. I have used that list to plan meals and cook this month, and it has helped tremendously. I am a big meal planner, and with three little kiddos, I think if you are going to cook dinner you sort of have to be. I have decided what to make as to whether or not Jason will be home during the cooking phase/what things I can do a ton of prep before (as in nap time)/or things I can throw together very quickly. Here is a list of some of the meals with links and points:

Bubble Up Enchiladas - 7pp per serving
Spanish Rice - this comes to about 2-3 points per serving.

I made the enchilada bake for a second time. I mentioned in a previous post that I looked at the comment section and doctored the recipe up a bit by adding cumin, red pepper, and garlic powder to the meat, used salsa instead of tomato sauce, and made everything in a cast iron skillet for a one pot dish. I use a recipe from food.com for the rice and get about 8 servings out of it, so the point value is pretty low after putting it into the Recipe Builder on the WW site.

Meatloaf- 6pp
Marinated Tomato Salad - 1pp
Scalloped Potatoes - 3pp

This was good. I am picky about my meatloaf, but this one was good. I will add in some green peppers next time. The texture was a bit soft, but I think that was my fault. The boys gobbled it up. The potatoes and tomato salad were pretty good sides to pair with the meatloaf.

Baked Ranch Chicken - 5pp
Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes - 4pp
Balsamic Roasted Carrots - 2 pp

This was a good meal, too. My breading fell off the chicken, but once again, I think it was "operator error". These potatoes were good.

Chicken Pot Pie - 4-6 pp depending on how large of a serving you have
This was good. Mine was not as pretty as the one in the picture, but it was a good lightened up version of comfort food.

Tamale Bake - 7pp
Baked Southwest Egg Rolls - 2 pp per roll
I made the tamale bake a second time, and I had family here. They thought it was good, too. These egg rolls are really good. I have made them many times and taken them places. They always get eaten.

Burrito Bake - 6pp
Spanish Rice - 2-3 pp per serving
This was good and easy. I had leftover rice from another meal, so we ate the leftovers with this.

Pulled chicken - 2pp
Bun - 3pp
Mango Slaw - 2pp
We've had this chicken a ton. I didn't make it as a WW recipe, but once I put it in the calculator it came out to be 2 pp a serving. I think the recipe is on here, but you put a pack of chicken breasts in the crockpot, sprinkle almost a whole packet of zesty Italian dressing, and some pepperoncini pepper juice and cook until done. Then you shred and top with BBQ sauce. The slaw was okay, but I probably won't make it again.

Enchilada Skillet - 9pp
I have this one on the menu this week.

Carne Guisada (Lain Beef Stew) - 6pp
Brown Rice - 5 pp for one whole cup
I have this in the crock pot now. I made the spicy condiment that the recipe recommends, and it is SPICY which I love. I can rate this one later.

Spaghetti Pie - 9 pp
We had this on Sunday night and again as leftovers last night. It was really good. I would make it again if I weren't doing WW. I had some extra points, so I had a small salad with it.

Meat Lover's Pizza - 5 pp per slice
This one is a great recipe. My boys LOVE it. The slices are pretty large, so after a slice and a salad I am full.

Chicken and Goat Cheese Sandwiches - 8pp per sandwich
This is on the menu this week. I love anything with goat cheese, so how could this be bad?

Balsamic Pork Roast - 5pp
Crustless Zucchini Pie - 3pp
Bruleed Sweet Potato Bake - 3pp
This was the first thing I made when I compiled this list, and it has been one of my favorite combos. Everything in this meal was good.

Sour Cream Enchiladas - 10pp for 2 enchiladas
This is a high points meal if you add rice, but I have made it several times.

Sweet and Sour Chicken - 8pp
Broccoli
Cauliflower Fried Rice - 3pp
I have made the sweet and sour chicken many times. The cauliflower fried rice serving is BIG for 3 pp, so I will make this soon. I would imagine that it would work a lot like rice. According the to the reviews, it is good.

So I realize this is a giant list. I wanted to put it out there in case anyone was doing WW and needed some dinner ideas. I usually keep lunch pretty low points and do oatmeal for breakfast. I always have extra points at the end of the day to have a larger dinner. Hope this helps!

Stocking Up and Waiting

I hope that you all have had a wonderful Christmas. We sure did here. The boys were so into Christmas this year - from looking at lights, to hearing about the Christmas story, seeing Santa, and all the fun of anticipating that one special day. I will share some pics from our day here in a few. I felt sort of like a big Scrooge on Christmas night. The hubs was at work, the house was quiet, and all I could think about was that I could sit and watch absolutely nothing on TV - because let's face it, nothing is on Christmas night - or I could be productive. Well, I chose the latter and took down all the decorations. It all went back into boxes and on shelves in the garage until next year. I have never had the urge to rip down decorations on Christmas night. However, I have never been 38 weeks pregnant on Christmas, either. There has been some serious nesting going on around here. Things are clean, organized, and today I tackled freezer meals. In 3 hours, some serious damage was done. I thought I would share the results. I tried to pick recipes that were easy, would make more than one dish, and didn't have a ton of prep. I ended up with this plus a bag of cooked, chopped chicken breasts which will be perfect for casseroles or chicken salad:

Here are the links and yields for each:

Roast Beef and Ham Freezer Sandwiches - I got 12 sandwiches (and I totally used the Cheese Whiz)
Baked Ziti - I did one large pan instead of 2 smaller ones, but you can do whichever works best
Poppy seed Chicken - I divided this into 2 round pans, left off the topping - will add crackers, butter, and poppy seeds right before baking
Cheesy Black Bean and Chicken Enchiladas - I got one large pan and one small pan of these
Crock pot Orange Chicken - this was super easy, no cooking before required, just mix and put in bag
Chicken Pot Pie - I got 3 small round pans. I should have done one more, but I didn't have enough crusts. As it stands now, I still need to place a top crust on the pies before baking but no biggie.

Most of these recipes came from the Six Sisters site. Press here for the link to 50 freezer-friendly dishes. After this bambino comes, I don't really want to have to think about meal planning and this will surely help. Now for the fun stuff.

I said earlier that Christmas was exciting for the boys this year. Jason and I don't go overboard with toys and stuff for them. A)I think that is just dumb to spend excessive amounts of money on toys B) I can't stand clutter C) they don't need a bunch of crap that they aren't going to play with D) that is NOT the meaning of Christmas. That list is in no particular order, mind you, since the last reason should be #1. After all was said and done, they got new toys and books and have enjoyed playing with all of them. Everything happily has a place which makes this OCD Mama very happy. Here are some pictures of the boys at their Christmas program at school and of our Christmas morning.

The Christmas Orange

And while we are talking Christmas, may I just say that at our house Santa does not wrap. I mean, ain't nobody got time for that! Everything is already assembled, those annoying plastic doo hickies meant to make saints curse removed, batteries in place, and toys ready to go. The boys had presents to unwrap from grandparents and other family but not Santa. The man is busy!

Now I must go clean the kitchen and try to induce labor (I am almost 39 weeks and nothing going on), so I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year. Hopefully, we will be back to report news soon :)

Menus and Mayhem

Life is a little crazy in our neck of the woods right now. I am currently at 30 weeks with this pregnancy. It has flown by, and it still kind of blows my mind when I think about just how little time we have until the new little person arrives.Trust me when I tell you I have a long "to do" list to cross off in the next few weeks.Thanks to the maker of this handy dandy maternity support belt which has given me a new lease on life, they might actually get accomplished.

I skipped Bible study this morning. There, I have confessed. See, each small group has to help with the children once during this study. Today was our day. My kiddos are in preschool during this time and don't attend with me. I am in a season of life where I just honestly do not want to be around children that are not my own. I don't mean that as an insult to friends (I do like your children, I promise). But right now, child-free time is precious, and I don't want to add children to that time. Call me selfish if you want, and I am perfectly okay with that. My favorite age is the 2-4 age range, and I know that one day in the future I will find joy in helping with those ages again. Right now, as a stay-at-home-mom that is all I do, so I am perfectly happy to let those who miss this time step in and fill my shoes :)Speaking of what I do - here are some pics of the boys and what they have been doing lately.

One afternoon, the boys wouldn't stop climbing, so I decided to get out all the spare pillows in the house and let 'em go at it:

 Then there were Halloween parties at school:

Notice that little blue cast on Connor's arm? Yeah, he fought the end table and lost. Of course, it hasn't slowed him down at all. We finally carved a pumpkin yesterday. Connor jumped right in and started scooping out the guts while Jake said it was yucky and he took a pass.

I love this hair!!!

Since I did skip Bible study this morning, I knocked out grocery shopping. I made sort of a last minute decision to do some freezer meals with some of the meals I was planning. Jason is off today, so I had a little extra time to do a few things. I cooked a bunch of chicken breasts for casseroles that I will shred and freeze. Ground beef was on sale, so I bought 3 packages. I browned a pound and seasoned it for spaghetti, and into the freezer it went. I am making a pot of chili with another for the freezer - I will include the world's easiest chili recipe below. I did mix up the Pioneer Woman's sloppy joes and got 2 freezer bags ready for later in the month. Right now, our meals must be kid-friendly and fast. Here is the recipe rundown for many of our meals this month:

Pot Roast with Mashed Potatoes and a veggie
Pot Roast Enchiladas made with leftover roast
Sloppy Joes and fries
Cajun Chicken Pasta and garlic bread (one of our faves)
Chicken Piccata served with pasta and a veggie
BBQ chicken with some baked beans and potato salad
Feta Shrimp Pasta 
Poppyseed chicken making one to eat, one to freeze, served with mashed potatoes and veggie
Spaghetti - can thaw meat from freezer and add sauce
Breakfast for dinner
Chili

One of the nurses I used to work with made chili for work one day. All of us talked about how good it was. She laughed and told us her "recipe". If you need a quick and easy chili, here it is:
1 lb ground beef, cooked and drained
1 can kidney beans, drained
1 envelope chili seasoning
1 large jar thick and chunky salsa
Place in crockpot on low for several hours and done! I usually add a little water. I am going to freeze until we are ready to eat, but seriously, how easy is this?

A few nights, I am sure the kids will get some mac and cheese from a box or frozen cheese ravioli that I boil and throw some sauce on, but this menu should get us through most of the month. Hope this helps any other busy mamas with ideas. Right now, I must go shred some chicken :) Until next time...

August Meal Planning

Now that the sight or smell of food doesn't make me want to run the other way, I can get back into the routine of cooking. Meals these days need to be prepared quickly and kid friendly. I made a list of potential meals today and made my shopping list. I didn't spend a ton on groceries, I will have meats left over since I bought in bulk, and we still have nights where quick and easy meals didn't make it on this list. I thought I would share this list since many of you guys are in the same boat whether it is staying at home with little people or working all day and needing something quick to cook when you get home. The only new recipes on the list are the crockpot lemon chicken, chicken spaghetti (this Pioneer Woman recipe is different from mine), and the penne pasta. I called my friend Julie because I could not find pine nuts for the pesto sauce. I texted something like "Brain died, where do I find pine nuts at grocery store?" She texted back with the appropriate answer, followed with a text that said, "confused for a minute, wanted to know who Brian was." Haha. After assuring her Brian didn't die, I went on to find the pine nuts. Thanks, Julie. And in case you are wondering, they are in the produce section near the specialty nuts. The following list (along with some rambling) is what I came up with for the month of August:

Crockpot Lemon Chicken
Sweet and Sour Chicken with fried rice
Chicken and Dumplings - we will have leftovers
Roast/Mashed Potatoes/Fried Okra - we will have leftovers
Red Pepper and Basil Penne with Rotisserie Chicken- should have leftovers
Man Pleasing Chicken -we will have leftovers
Taco Pie -we will have leftovers
Meatballs/Mashed Potatoes/Veggies - may or may not have leftovers depending on how much I want to cook
Pioneer Woman Chicken Spaghetti (will have leftovers)
Cheesy Chicken Ranch Pasta -we will have leftovers

I also bought bagged cheese ravioli and pasta sauce, and there will probably be a breakfast for dinner night in there, as well. Here are the recipes for a few non-linked recipes above.

Chicken and Dumplings:

Several years ago, I was looking for a recipe for chicken and dumplings. I searched for Cracker Barrel chicken and dumplings because those are most like what I grew up eating. Please do not try to sneak peas or carrots or any other veggie in my chicken and dumplings. That is NOT what I want when I want chicken and dumplings. Also, I don't want rolled dumplings. I just want little balls of dropped in doughy goodness. Please and thank you. As it turns out, Jake and Connor (and the hubs) love chicken and dumplings or "chicklin and dumplets" as Jake calls them. Here is the recipe I use:

1 (3-6 lb) fryer chicken - or you can use a whole chicken cut up in pieces with skin on
2 quarts water - for the last two times I used one quart to cook chicken and added a can of chicken broth when chicken was cooked - I like that version better
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper - I love a lot of pepper
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tablespoons shortening - I use Crisco
3/4 buttermilk (I use 1 cup milk and add 1 Tbsp white vinegar, let sit for five min and pour out 1/4 cup to make 3/4 cup)

1. Cook chicken in water and salt. Bring to boil and cook for about an hour or until done.
2. Remove chicken and skim and pieces of skin from broth. Turn broth to low and keep warm. Cool chicken. Pull off skin and discard. Take chicken off bone and cut into bite sized pieces.
3. Bring broth to boil and add pepper - this is the point I add chicken broth from can.
4. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Cut in shortening with fork. Add in buttermilk, stirring with fork until moistened.
5. Knead dough a few times until just mixed. Do not overmix dough. It will be sticky. Pinch off pieces of dough and drop into boiling water.
6. Stir in chicken once dough has cooked about 10 minutes. Let simmer for 20 minutes or so and enjoy.

Taco Pie:

Jason jokingly calls this my favorite recipe. When I worked 12 hour shifts, we ate this about once a week. It is done in about 15 minutes. Seriously, how easy is that? Plus, it makes enough to have leftovers.

1 lb ground beef
1 can light red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 jar picante sauce
taco seasoning
2 cups cheese - cheddar, taco blend, whatever you want
1 package cream cheese, softened

1. Brown ground beef. Drain and add 1/2 package taco seasoning.
2. Spread softened cream cheese on bottom of 9x12 or similar sized dish
3. When ground beef is cooked and seasoning is added, stir in picante sauce and beans. Pour mixture over cream cheese
4. Add remaining taco seasoning to cheese and spread on top of beef mixture. Place in 350 degree oven until cheese melts. Serve with tortilla chips.
5. I have added in an onion, green chiles, black beans, etc. You can add in whatever you'd like. Easy peasy...

Roast:

Any size or cut of beef roast to your liking
1 can Progresso French Onion Soup
1 package of Mushroom/Onion Soup mix
1 can water - from soup can

Place in crockpot and cook on low all day

Meatballs:

My sister gave me this recipe a long time ago. If you like meatloaf, this one is for you. What is great about this is that it makes a ton, it goes in the freezer and you take out exactly what you want, mix up a quick sauce, and cook.The following recipe for sauce is for the whole batch of meatballs. I just eyeball ingredients for sauce until it tastes how I want it to taste.

3 lbs ground beef
12 oz can evaporated milk
1 c. rolled oats
1 c. saltine cracker crumbs, crushed
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp chili powder

1. Mix together and form into walnut sized balls. Place on cookie sheet and place in freezer to flash freeze. Place balls in gallon sized freezer bag. When ready to cook, mix up sauce (below), place frozen meatballs and sauce into baking dish, and bake at 350 degrees until done (about 1 hr, if cooking from frozen).

Sauce:
2 c. ketchup
1 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup chopped onion - I use onion flakes

I mix up small amount of sauce to taste using the above ingredients since I never cook the whole batch at one. These are usually served with mashed potatoes and a veggie.

Many of these can be prepared ahead of time to some degree. I might get ambitious and cook the chicken spaghetti and freeze. I will prepare the meatballs for the freezer, divide up my chicken and ground beef. I got a rotisserie chicken to "beef up" the penne pasta dish, so I will take that off the bone and freeze in a gallon bag until I get ready to use. I chose these because most are super fast. I made the cheesy chicken ranch pasta the other night, and the boys gobbled it up. Best of all, it was ready in about 20 minutes! I hope that this is useful to at least one other person on the planet. It was a lot of typing :)

Goats, Knights, and Dinner, Oh My

Last week, we had a playdate with our MOPS group. It was at a stable that had a whole little farm. The kids had a great time playing with the goats and bunnies in the pen. There were also roosters, ponies, a donkey, and an alpaca. I told Jake about this the week before (poor idea), and I got asked EVERY.SlNGLE.DAY when we were going to see the "sheeps". There were no sheep, but there was a good time had by all.

One afternoon, we decided to wash the golf cart. That was a big hit as well. As you can see, proper attire is needed. The "tizers" also known as tires were really dirty.

Little Jake is a child after my own heart. The boys does love things to be in their place at the end of the day. He loves to help clean, and I have often said that it takes me twice as long when he helps. However, I do love that he wants to help, so I always include him when I can. Here he is helping me vacuum and dust the other day. With a baby on one hip, vacuum in the other hand, and a knight at my side, we managed to clean the house :)

Okay, so now for the real reason for the post. I thought I would share a few easy, quick recipes. I have been obsessed - yes, obsessed with this dressing. My friend, Lauren, brought it to small group a few weeks ago, and I made it the next day. I ate it everyday for about a week straight. I have tapered off a little now, but I had it yesterday again. It is that good. The original recipe calls for a spinach salad with strawberries and walnuts. As you will see in the pic below, I went a more savory route with avocados, yellow peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Still yummy. Please forgive any food pics because they were taken (with the exception of one) while I was juggling 2 crying, hungry children.

Yummy Dressing

Dressing:

1/3 c. apple cider vinegar

3/4 c. sugar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt

1 c. vegetable oil

1/2 small red onion, grated (I only used a little bit of the onion that I grated)

1 1/2 Tbsp poppy seeds

1 tsp dry mustard

1/2 tsp paprika

Heat vinegar, sugar, lemon juice and salt together until the sugar dissolves.

Cool to room temperature.

Whisk in oil, onion, poppy seeds, mustard and paprika.

When I read the ingredient list, I thought for sure it must have something else in there. Nope, that was it. And it is GOOD...

Pot Roast Enchiladas

Pot roast, cooked in crockpot and shredded (I cooked a big roast and we had it for dinner one night with    mashed potatoes, and asparagus/tomatoes and shredded the rest)

Green Chilies (I used 2 4oz cans)

8 oz cream cheese, softened

sour cream

black beans, 1 can rinsed and drained

refried beans, 1 can

colby jack cheese

salsa, guacamole, sour cream for topping

tortillas

Mix shredded pot roast (as much meat as you want) in with cream cheese, beans, and green chilies. Place mixture in tortillas and roll up. Place in pan and top with sour cream (I used about 1/4 of a 16 oz container) and cheese. Bake at 350 for about 25-30 minutes. Top with salsa and enjoy. You can make these meatless or add in jalapenos or whatever you'd like.

Spicy Sausage Pasta

I found this on Pinterest. This is a horrible picture. I will just add the link to this one. I really liked it. It was spicy (which I loved). Although, I have no idea what made it spicy. I used mild Rotel and was honestly surprised that it had a nice little kick. You don't have to cook the pasta ahead of time - woohoo!!! Here is the link:
http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dinner/spicy-sausage-pasta.html

Rachel Ray's Southwestern Pasta

We had this one for dinner tonight. Jason came in and said that something smelled really good. It smelled better than it tasted. It wasn't bad, but this needs salt. That is something you won't hear me say often. I'm not a heavy salter when it comes to food. This was just okay. We'll eat the leftovers, and it was an easy dish to prepare. Since it's all over Pinterest, I thought I'd share that I made it, and we thought it was just okay.

http://livinglight58.blogspot.com/2012/03/trying-something-new.html

I have recipes and ingredients to make two more recent Pinterest pins. One is sesame honey chicken, and the other is a chicken quesadilla pie. So far, the boys have gobbled down all these recipes, and I will be sure to post results of the others.

Monthly Meal Planning

This Mama is tired. I told Jason this morning that I would rather have a tooth pulled with no anesthesia than take my children with me to the grocery store. It was pretty painful. However, we are almost out of many things, and with Jason working all weekend I needed to put on my big girl panties and just do it. So, off we went to Wal-mart, Sams, and then to Kroger. Yep, you read that correctly. I had to park at Sams to get one of the carts with the 2 seats in the top, then headed to Walmart where we proceeded to fill it up in the cart and underneath. I don't know how many times I pried something out of the hands of my children. It took about 30 minutes longer than it would have if I had been by myself.

I said that we had been working on a budget, and last month was the first month we tried cash envelopes for most of our spending. I will say that when I had cash instead of a card, I was WAY more careful about what I spent. We've got some tweaking to do, but for the most part things went great. One of my problems last month was in meal planning. I decided this month that I was going to do a "once-a-month" meal planning approach. By that, I mean that I sat down and planned meal ideas for a whole month with the idea of having leftovers for certain nights, accounting for small group, etc. I felt like we had a lot of food leftover that didn't get eaten because it would sit in the fridge for days when we weren't around in the evenings to eat it. Also, by the end of last month, I felt like I had to watch spending in order not to go over my limit. It wouldn't have been a big deal to go over, but I took this as a personal challenge to come in at or under our set budget. I am a nerd that way. Here is a pic of the screen because I was too lazy to print and scan this:

I do realize this is a little intense, people. I just figured that if we knew up front how many meals (at least in a round about way) we needed, we wouldn't run low at the end of the month.

While the boys were napping, I got busy with my freezer cooking. There were groceries EVERYWHERE to put away.  In 2 hours, I had a ton of food prepared, and one dish cooking in the crock pot to head to the freezer. I bought a few meats that I either am going to cook soon or went into the freezer right away. Be warned, doing this much food at one time is not a clean process. I turned around at one point and had to laugh and almost cry a little. My kitchen looked like this:

And I promise I didn't put an empty pan on the stove to make it look like I was working :) There was butter melting to saute some veggies. In the end, I ended up with a bunch of food, and our monthly meals are pretty much set. I am not saying that we have to stick exactly to the schedule or anything, but other than fresh veggies or the staples like bread and milk my monthly shopping is done. Here is what I ended up with (not pictured are the honey BBQ ribs which were cooling in the crock pot):

Okay, I fibbed a little in the pic. Two of the pans are empty but represent the enchiladas that I have to mix up. They will be done in the next few days. Click on the link to find the recipes:

Lasagna (I will post this recipe soon) - 2 pans
Salsa Verde Enchiladas - recipe makes 2 pans
Pioneer Woman's Sloppy Joes - 2 bags
Sticky Chicken - no cooking beforehand required
Beef Stroganoff - no cooking beforehand required
Honey BBQ Ribs
Chicken Spaghetti - makes 2 pans

Whew! It feels so good to have so much food DONE. It is my goal here in the next few weeks to create new tabs for the blog that include breakfast, crock pot, freezer-friendly and so on. That way, recipes will be easy to find versus having to search through all the files. One thing at a time...

Recipe Rundown

Okay, so in this post, I did a bunch of freezer recipes. They were the EASIEST batch of freezer recipes ever because they required no cooking. I just put a bunch of ingredients into freezer bags, froze, and for the most part dumped from the freezer into the crock pot. It has been wonderful. I also promised to give the rundown of each recipe once we had eaten them all. I made double batches of almost everything, and we have sampled them all. There is one bag of most of the others still in the freezer. Here is how they turned out:

Mongolian Beef - this one was good. I made some rice and the roasted broccoli from Pinterest (the only way I cook broccoli now). The boys, especially Connor, gobbled it up.
Green Chile Pork Stew - this one is okay. It is pretty spicy which I liked but the hubs and boys don't really do spicy.
Teriyaki Chicken - this one was really bland to me, but the boys loved it. Jake and Connor ate it up. I served it over rice. I would make it again if just for them.
Sweet & Spicy Meatballs - this was not bad. I think if you made it with homemade meatballs it would be pretty good. But I have a recipe for meatballs that I usually use, and I like the other sauce better.
Honey Garlic Chicken - I wanted to like this one, but I thought it was kind of gross.
Chicken Caccitore - We have had this before, and we will have it again. It was super easy, smells great when cooking, and served over fettuccine with freshly grated cheese - yummy.
Island Chicken - this chicken had good flavor. I think this one would be good served in a salad
Maple Dijon Chicken - this one is all over Pinterest called man-pleasing chicken. Well, Jason and the boys did like it. It was good. I did not do this one in the crock pot. I thawed and baked.
Pesto Chicken (you are only doing the chicken from this recipe, not the pasta) - this was one of the winners as well. It was dinner tonight. We have eaten the second bag. I served it over angel hair pasta with pesto and freshly grated cheese.

These recipes have all had common themes of pasta and rice, it has seemed. Jason has worked a bunch lately, and it has been so nice to throw a bag of something in the crock pot, fix some rice (in the microwave) or pasta with a baby on the hip, and steam or roast another veggie to go along with dinner. Easy, peasy.

Summer is coming, and I did sort of a summer themed meal for our small group this week. We had some BBQ dishes. I did baked beans (I think they were a Pioneer Woman recipe), those crack potatoes that are all over Pinterest (seriously, yum), along with pulled chicken and pork. As I looked at the "menu" I needed something a little more light and fresh. I found this recipe for Fresh Corn Tomato Salad from the Food Network. This little recipe will go into my "summer staple" rotation. It was super simple, and really good.

3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 ears fresh corn, husked (about 4 cups corn kernels)
2 cups halved grape tomatoes
1 bunch scallions (white and green), thinly sliced
8 ounces fresh mozzarella, I used the little balls of mozzarella
1 1/2 cups fresh basil leaves

Whisk the vinegar, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Gradually whisk in the oil, starting with a few drops and then adding the rest in a steady stream, to make a smooth dressing.

Shear off the corn kernels with a sharp knife over a bowl. Toss in the tomatoes, scallions, and mozzarella. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to coat. Cover and let set for 15 minutes or up to 2 hours. Before serving tear the basil over the salad and stir.

I know that once the corn and tomatoes are actually in season this will be even better. Yay for summer food. Of course, it is February 10th, and here in South GA the gnats are already swarming in 70 degree weather. You know, it will feel like summer by the end of next month - haha.

People have asked how the freezer recipes were coming, so I hope this helps. It surely didn't take up much space in the freezer, and it was super easy. Also, this would be really easy to divide into small batch type meals if you are cooking for one or two.