Cooking Session

Chicken ready to go into the refrigerator. I let the chicken stay in the refrigerator so the flavors of the bbq sauce could start to set in. Before I went to bed I moved them to the freezer.

Preparing the pork chop assembly line.

The lightly breaded pork chops ready to go into the freezer for flash freezing.

The only thing left to do is make the soups which I will do in a free moment today. Today's lunch is the last of the soups from the first session. Check back tomorrow for that.

Day Four... finally finished!

Before and after photos. I am so happy that I am finished. I set out to do something and for the most part I accomplished it.

Starting the calzone mixture.

Made a fresh batch of dough.

So I didn't say I was a good cook! Runny fillings. We ate the two really runny ones for dinner tonight. I wasn't happy with the dough, the filling was awesome, so I made personal pizzas with refrigerated Pillsbury dough that I had. The only thing that did not get accomplished and will not get accomplished is the rolls and breadsticks. I'm just too tired and those we can live without. This afternoon I decided that I will be doing this again but I am doing twice-a-month cooking instead. Thinking back to what my husband told me Monday about having this be fun for me I really think going to twice-a-month will be a lot better. As we eat these I will post the reviews and maybe some of the recipes of the good ones.



Wow I'm done.

Day Three

Day three went much better than the other two days. I think I'm starting to get a handle on this.
I started out breading the pork chops, then I flash froze them. Once they were hard I used our food saver of them.

I then started the goulash. While it was simmering away I packaged the fish and started a soup.

The goulash packaged and frozen!


The soup assembly line still chugging along.

All that is left to do is make the calzones and make the rolls and breadsticks that I didn't make on Monday. I will do those tomorrow! I am so happy to almost be done. I really liked doing this but I will be doing some things differently for next month. For example, the soup really slowed me down and about two soups into it I was tired of making soups. Since my husband specifically requested soup for lunch I pushed on with it. We have now decided that I will make two weeks worth of soups every two weeks. I have a months worth now and on the 15th-ish I will make three recipes. That way we always have a months worth of soup (lunches) but won't be eating the same soup four days a week. I will be giving that a trial run and if it doesn't work out then we will be doing something else for lunches.

That is it for today. I have to be awake at 5:00am to make it to a doctors appointment and I plan on sleeping like a log.

Day Two

Day two started with the chicken going into the crock-pot.

Then I finished vegetable prep while I had my batch of Tomato Basil Soup going.

After that was cooled and packaged I started the Southwestern Veggie Soup. This was a double batch! I am seriously contemplating purchasing a huge stock pot!

While that was simmering away I cooked the "Turkey" sloppy joes mixture and prepared to assemble. I actually used pork instead of turkey because it was a better deal $$.

The assembly line ready to begin!

Sandwiches all assembled. It was time for a break. After my break I took my husband over to main base for his class, came home and started yet another soup when....

it....

happened....

I splashed 5 cups of boiling water onto my hand!

Ouch!!!!!!

That was the end of day two. This is turning into cook for a week, eat for a month. I'm still having fun with it though... well, minus the hand part. And I already know that I will be doing this again next month but with a few changes!

Please note that my hand is okay just really sore and feels like a bad sunburn but otherwise okay.

Day One

On Monday while I was finishing up preparing for this adventure my husband totally suprised me.  He came up to me in the kitchen and said that he just wanted me to know that if this saves money but stresses me out too much then it is okay not to do it... if it doesn't save money but I enjoy it then it is okay with him to keep doing it.  He just wanted me to have fun and to feel like I accomplished something.  

I started out behind because I did not get the banana bread, breadsticks or crescent rolls made on Monday.  Monday afternoon my back started spasming and luckily Sam was home because at one point it dropped me to my knees and he had to help me up off the floor.  So I decided that was enough and I would make those things some other day. 

Tuesday was grocery day and prep day. I headed out at 8:00am and finished up with the shopping around 1ish.  This is what one months worth of groceries looks like. Wow!

I was very tired of shopping and wanted to get home and get off my feet for a few minutes.  So I updated the grocery cart challenge.  Then I headed to the kitchen for the cooking portion.  At this point I wasn't sure what was harder... the shopping or the cooking!

The next step was to get the calzone dough going.  I pulled out my bread machine and started it up on the dough cycle.

Next I started prepping the veggies.  I only cried through the first onion, after that I think I just blocked out the fumes.

My husband came home from work and thought I looked "just so cute" in my red apron.  So he became snap-happy and I fell WAY behind.  I managed to get all the onions chopped, the green bell peppers chopped and half the carrots chopped.  Then I was reminded that I promised him that he could buy new running shoes this pay period.  Which I totally forgot about.  Luckily I had already planned it into the budget but that ended my day of prep. I still had to chop mushrooms, the rest of the carrots, make the calzones, bake the calzones.  I might have been a bit over zealous in my "schedule" I made.  But the main goal of this is to have fun, save money but have fun doing it.  So I did not stress  out I simply said okay the rest will get done tomorrow! The dough went in the fridge and off we went to go buy my guy some running shoes.

This is what 12 onions looks like!  I chopped two extra as a 'just in case'.