A Busy Day

Yesterday was a busy day in the Ehinger household! I did my cooking day and Matt worked a long time on a new section of landscaping. Lucy "helped" with both, but also slept in, took a good nap and played by herself for a while which was more than helpful.

The morning started a little rough for me. When I got to the kitchen at 7am, I found 2 bags of refridgerated food out on the counter! Oops! Thankfully, it only shorted me 2 meals of food, and one recipe made more than anticipated, so I still ended with 32 meals in the freezer.

To keep things flowing for the day, I plan out the order that I'm going to make things. It is important to make sure all recipes are on the list. I forgot to write down chili so at the end of the day when I had extra ingredients, I realized I forgot the chili! Thankfully, that's an easy recipe so I just did it last. I post this list on a cabinet.

I also have all my recipes typed up like this and in plastic sleeves. The ones I'm working on, I tape to the cabinets like this for an easy reference.

Lucy watched a full episode of Sesame Street without getting up. I couldn't believe it! Turns out, she is getting a molar in, so I don't think she was feeling 100%.

This is a new spaghetti sauce recipe that I made curtesy of Jessica's blog. I had a different recipe but didn't really like it. I doubled her recipe and used some of it for lasagna (see below) and the rest I bagged separately for 4 pasta meals. It tasted AMAZING!

Here I'm putting together 2 lasagnas. This was one of 2 recipes that I put in foil pans. I wrap the whole pan with heavy duty aluminum foil when I have it put together.

Most of the other meals I put in gallon Ziploc bags like this. This is a Chicken and Broccoli Cobler recipe. Coffee cans work GREAT for holding the bags. A glass measuring cup works good for scooping. I do 1 scoop in can 1 then 1 scoop in can 2 until I get to the bottom of the bowl so that both bags are equal.

Same concept, but here is our family favorite: Mastaccioli bake. You can put almost everything in a bag other than layered casseroles like lasagna. I put the cheese topping in a second bag and then add it when I thaw it out.

It is important that everything is room temp or cooler when it goes into the freezer. Otherwise large ice crystals form in the food and it hurts the flavor and texture. I've heard from a friend that this is true. I use one side of the sink for cooling with water and ice packs. Some things also go in the fridge to cool.

While Matt was looking for the Michigan game on the radio, Lucy helped make enchiladas. We won't be giving these away, since she was eating off the spoon for the cheese. She really did help some by handing me tortillas and dumping cheese in the enchiladas. Dilbert and Lucy ate quite a bit of cheese. My mom helps a TON on these days too, so for a while we had 3 generations cooking!

My freezer is in the basement, so this cooking day, I tried to minimize trips down there and used a laundry basket. This trip had 8 meals in it: 2 lasagna, 2 mostaccioli bake, 4 spaghetti sauce.

At 2pm, this is what my freezer looked like (and still does!) the second shelf and bottom drawer are other items, but the other 3 shelves contain the 32 meals that I made. As you can see, I still have a lot of room. Using freezer bags saves a lot of space!

When it wasn't raining, Matt was spending his time working on this new landscaping area. I think it is going to look GREAT! Lucy and I came out to watch and Lucy "helped" Matt too by throwing things away and holding the measuring tape.

We were all exhausted when we went to bed, but it was a very successful day!