When I was approaching the arrival of my second son, Dylan, I spent a few weeks making extras of meals to stock up in my freezer. But since he was born in September, it’s felt nearly impossible to find time to do more than dinner for one day, let alone several, except for the times where I make a recipe that makes plenty more than we normally eat and just freeze the leftovers.
Over at Money Saving Mom, though, Crystal has been on a once-a-month cooking kick for several months now. I don’t think I’m ready yet to jump into cooking a full month’s worth of meals at a time, but I did take some time tonight to reorganize my pantry, spread most of its contents out on the kitchen table to see what I had, and start writing down ideas of things I could do with everything. I’m going to try to participate w/MoneySavingMom’s cooking days and make a few meals at the same time over the next couple of days. Here’s what’s on my list:
Potato Pancakes (for appetizers that we can freeze, and because I have to find something to do with that 5 lb bag of potatoes I got for $1)
Banana Crunch Muffins (for snacks/breakfasts)
If I had more nuts and dried fruit on hand (I’m completely out right now), I would make another batch of these chewy granola bars. I made some last Friday, both to have a semi-healthy snack on hand, and to give Eli something to do (he’s really into stirring the pot these days). The only problem was, they turned out to be so good that I ate a third of the pan “for lunch” before Michael even got home to try them. They taste like a cross between an oatmeal cookie and a really good peanut-butter chocolate chip brownie (we put chocolate chips in ours) – but all without flour or eggs.
Now, if only I had my sous chef to help with chopping all the onions . . .
ha ha, is michael wearing goggles while cutting onions?
Yes. He wasn’t sure if he could handle chopping a couple of onions, but then said, “Oh, I know,” and the next thing you know, he was back w/swim goggles.