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I am a cloth diapering, breastfeeding, cosleeping, baby led weaning, extended rear facing, eco conscious, married mommy to two beautiful children. They have changed my view on the world we live in. It is now my number 1 goal to make it the best I can for them to grow up in. I find myself always rethinking how I want to live my life and often feel like sharing my findings and thoughts with others. So I guess here's my chance :o) I will talk about topics that interest me. If you dont like them or dont agree, well... there's nothing much I can do!

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

My giant cooking day

I have been wanting to do a "cook a bunch of meals in one day" day for a while now. With Keegan going away for 2 months, I have realized that now is the time! I bought a 1 month pro membership on Once A Month Meals. All the grocery lists, day before preparation, day of timeline, recipe cards and labels are all done for you. It's a great system

I chose 2 menus, traditional and kids paleo, and since I had the pro membership, I was able to swap out some recipes for ones I wanted. I wanted simple recipes that I know my family love to eat. Lasagna, pâté chinois (shepherd's pie), muffins, banana cookies, egg cups. Tons of yummy food. They recommend reading through cooking day to timeline early so that you fully understand all the steps (my first mistake). They also suggest prepping some meats and all your veggies the day before so that you aren't stuck doing all that busy work the day of (2nd mistake). Another mistake was probably trying to do 2 menus at the same time as well. 

Well I only got started around noon. I had my sister come over and hangout with the skids for the day because there was no way I could safely be in the kitchen all day with they (more on my first day "away" from Zachary here). I only got through about a third of what I had planned. 8pm came around, the kids were tired and cranky so I left the kitchen in a total disaster and went to bed. 


I still had fresh meat in the fridge so I had to prepare a couple more meals. I picked a coup,e recipes that didn't need too much in the way of ingredients to prepare and went to work. I made sure to have lots of interaction with the kids in between recipes. Zachary even had a 3 hour nap in my arms. Little guy just wanted to hang out with me. So all three of us cuddled on the couch and watched cartoons. The recipes I managed to complete:

PB oatmeal cookies
3 shepherd pies
3 apple pie pork chops
2 sweet sour chickens
Pumpkin flax cookies
Sweet potato chili
Beef stew
Bacon wrapped egg cups
Apple chicken nuggets
Meatballs 

I still have a couple more things to make but they don't need fresh meat so they can wait until sometime later this week. 

In the end, I'm super glad I did this. Grocery shopping was quite easy since I already had most pantry items. Our meat was local and/or pastured and the majority of our produce was organic. Will I do it again? Not any time soon! It is very difficult to take a whole day to get it all done. For the next while, when I make a meal, I will just prepare a bit extra or I will prep and freeze something some afternoon.

Now, it's time to meal plan for the month of March with all the yummy food in my freezer! Do you have large scale cooking days?

4 comments:

  1. I had wondered what this would really be like. Thanks for being honest!

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    1. I'm sure it would work out better if I was a bit more prepared and didn't have dishes still out everywhere. Lol.

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  2. I have a couple of dear friends and I who get together every other month or so and we make a ton of meals for all three of our families at the same time. We use the church kitchen so that we can get massive amounts of cooking done at the same time. Works out AMAZING!

    http://everydayholy.blogspot.com

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