Shop and Chop

Well, it is 11:34 pm and I am still preparing food for tomorrow's big cooking day. I am tired and want to go to bed so badly! I just put beans in the crock pot to cook overnight. I need to get 2 cooked chickens, the broth, a roast, and 3 lbs of taquito meat put into the fridge and then I can go to bed.

I didn't get to the grocery store until noon. Baby was fussy today and that, plus the fact that it was pouring down rain all day, kind of hindered my early start I had planned.

But all of the shopping is done, I have chopped veggies and cooked meat, and I am almost finished! All is well.

Planning and Preparation

• Mom’s Spaghetti (2 dinners)
• Orange Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry (2 dinners)
• Taco Soup (2 dinners)
• Beef Gyros (2 dinners)
• Shredded Beef Tacos (2 dinners)
• Crock pot black bean salsa chicken (2 dinners)
• Vegetarian Taco Stuffed Potatoes (2 dinners)
• Annie’s Taquitos (3 pounds of meat)
• Garlic Lime Chicken (2 dinners)
• Sticky Chicken (2 meals)
• Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas (2 meals)
• Chicken Fajita meat/Chicken taco meat (2 meals)
• Pizza kits (6 kits) (2 meals)
• Black Bean and Turkey Chili with Frito's (2 meals)
• Shepherd’s Pie (2 meals)=
• Hamburger Soup (2 meals)
• Spiced Citrus Dump Chicken (1 meal)= 33 meals

I made my revised menu today. Then I made the grocery list and planned what I am going to do tomorrow.

Basically, I am going to shop early, then come home, get the kids their lunch and put them down for naps. Then dd13 and I will brown hb meat, cook chickens, chop veggies, and cook beans in the crock pots and pots on the stove.

Hmmm...sounds like a really hot kitchen! Hopefully it will be cool here tomorrow. It was in the upper 80s today. That wasn't too bad. It rained here all day and I enjoyed that.

I just remembered that I printed out several Body Clutter(go to www.flylady.net to get info on Body Clutter) menus and was going to look at them to see what I could cook and freeze. I really wanted to use some of those recipes, but I totally forgot until just now.
I think I will just keep it the way it is and figure out the points on each meal tomorrow. The Body Clutter menus have the points listed for each recipe and I was looking forward to having healthy meals (with low points) that already had the points figured up for me. Oh well, I will just have to figure out the points myself this month. Next month I will use the Body Clutter meals.

Once A Month Cooking Ideas

Here are some ideas I had last night while I was thinking this through. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to get all of this done while shuttling boys back and forth to school all day (take them at 7:30-8:00, then pick up at 11 and 3:30), taking care of 2 babies, and homeschooling my 13 year old daughter. Here are my ideas:

Day One: Preparation and Planning

· Go to grocery stores and see what is on sale (got sale papers last night~nothing great on sale)

· Clean out fridge and freezers

· Look at calendar for the next month and decide how many meals I want to freeze

· Make a list of meals to cook and freeze

· Make a list of ingredients

· Make a list of what I need to do to prepare and freeze the meals

Day Two: Shopping and Chopping

· Get shopping started early

· Peel, chop, cook meat

· Store it all in fridge

Day Three: Cooking Day

· Cook

• Cut the amount of meat in half (I wonder if I should double the veggies or something else to make up for the missing meat?Are you wondering why I want to cut the amount of meat in half? 3 reasons: 1)we need to eat less meat for health reasons 2)if I buy meat for a family of 9 for a whole month of meals it will cost a fortune 3) I have a real problem with animal cruelty and I feel that it is wrong to make them suffer their whole lives. Now, I do not think it is wrong to eat meat. But I want to make sure the meat I buy is from animals who had a normal life and were not raised in a stall and never got fresh air. But free-range, grass-fed meat is expensive. Enough said about that. )
• Use crock pot to make whatever I can
• Freeze meals in gallon sized bags, freeze flat, then store them vertically
• great article
• Stick something in the crock pot to cook while I am preparing stuff (shop and chop day)
• Add spices, onions, garlic, celery, and carrots to chickens while cooking to make healthy chicken broth. Freeze the broth.

OAMC website

Here is a great website for learning how to do OAMC. This is just a great website all around! I could spend hours looking through their articles.

Once A Month Cooking Recipe List

OAMC Recipe List

• Mom’s Spaghetti (2 dinners)
• Pizza kits (1 dinner)
• French Bread Pizzas (2 dinners)
• Orange Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry (2 dinners)
• Just Like Thanksgiving Chicken (1 dinner)
• Taco Soup (2 dinners)
• South of the Border Cheesy Potato Soup (2 dinners)
• Old-Time Beef Stew courtesy Paula Dean (2 dinners)
• King Ranch Chicken Casserole (2 dinners)
• Beef Gyros (2 dinners)
• Cream Cheese Chicken (2 dinners)
• Hawaiian Chicken (2 dinners)
• Easy Chicken Quesadillas (2 dinners)
• Shredded Beef Tacos (2 dinners)
• Magnificent Casserole (2 dinners)

That is a total of 28 dinners. I am going to work on my grocery list later this week. If anyone wants me to post one of these recipes, let me know.

I didn’t make it to church tonight, which is why I had time to work on this list. Dh took the younger kids and I stayed home with the 2 oldest kids and the baby. It’s a long story that I don’t wish to share. Just one of those evenings…