"A Beautiful Thing"

5 Cans of spaghetti sauce
7 lbs of hamburger
4 lbs sliced + 7 cups diced chicken
6 lbs pork ribs
4 bags frozen, diced onions (time saver)
One splash in the eye (stirring the ribs)
One knife gash on my hand (cutting open the parsley)
3 cracked knuckles (from washing my hands so much)
30 meals in my freezer = A Beautiful Thing!

A few months ago a friend told me about the book Dinner is Ready that shows you how to prepare 30 meals in one day. Since we eat corndogs or cold cereal for dinner more often than I care to admit, I decided that I wanted to try it. I hope it will help us to eat more healthy, as well as make dinner more organized so we can actually sit down together (and maybe Mason will actually take a bite of a casserole some day!). I bought the book over a month ago and finally had a slow weekend to try it--and thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr., I had today off work. There is a computer program that has all the recipes and will make the shopping list for you, but I wasn't smart enough to buy it before I made the huge shopping list on my own! Saturday night I went out for a couple of hours and got all the groceries. I purchased the software online that night and was able to print all the recipes and preparation labels for the menu I had selected (for my first time I followed her menu pretty closely). Last week I was at Macey's and happened to catch a sale on chicken--40 lbs for $40! The only problem is that it's not trimmed. So, Dan spent a couple of hours last night trimming and cutting the chicken. I went ahead and cooked the diced chicken and decided to put those two meals together last night. So, I guess I kind of cheated by making two of the recipes last night rather than doing it all in a day (I should mention that you select 15 recipes and it makes enough for two meals each).

Here's Mason checking the inventory of groceries last night.

Then he really wanted Tristyn to sit 'right here' by him.

This morning I woke up about 7, but by the time I showered and got kids fed and off to daycare, I didn't start cooking until 10 am. I started the crockpot meals, then the oven meals, then the stovetop and assembly meals. By the time Dan got home with the kids at 5:30, there was one meal left in the crockpot and a few meals on the table ready to be packaged, but everything was pretty much cleaned up (other than the pile of pans and bowls, which Dan so graciously washed!).

Here's a photo of all the junk on my counter. The author recommends that you leave everything out and that you have a separate set of measure spoons and cups for liquids and dry ingredients. So, with that plus all of the groceries, pretty much every counter was covered! The crockpots were on the counter that doesn't show. Notice the Mtn Dew can--that's what kept me going all day!

The funny thing about the book Dinner is Ready, is that the author says "is a beautiful thing" about 100 times! It's beautiful to have grated cheese, to have chopped onions, to have two sets of measuring spoons/cups, to be free from freezer burn, to have a full freezer, and to be able to say "Dinner is Ready". I'm sure it will be great to say that dinner is ready and not be referring to a frozen pizza. You can see for yourself that having a full freezer is a beautiful thing (nevermind that 1/4 of it is full of Eggo cinnamon swirls since it is one of the few things Mason will eat):

To celebrate (or really just because Dan wanted a treat), we made brownies tonight. I tried to get Mason to eat the batter off the beaters, but he just wanted to fling them around. At least he tried to wipe up the mess!

As a side note, you may notice that I'm way behind in blogging! Things happen every day that I want to blog, but I've really wanted to keep my entries in cronological order and have been holding off until I can post Thanksgiving and Christmas. Well, I'm still trying to get to them! I have lots of cute photos of Tristyn crawling and pulling herself up on things, so I've been anxious to post all of that -- it's coming (sooner than later, I hope!).