Kitchen Adventure

So I had this bright idea to make freezer meals for when Baby J gets here.

Ya...great idea Pam. Let's spend 8 hours in the kitchen when you have plenty of other nesting things to get done. 

Why did I think it was a good idea? Well..I hate cooking. No, I don't hate it. I don't have time for it. Yes, I would have time when I'm home on leave but I won't have time to go grocery shopping...or the determination to go. We will be on a pretty tight budget during this time. We live 20+ minutes from a decent priced grocery store. I had to think ahead!! 

To start my journey, I spent a few hours on a random Saturday finding recipes on Pinterest and then printing them, and then writing down every single ingredient I would need and how many meals we could get from it. 

Then I spent a few hours on my afternoon off price checking each item between Woodmans, Target, and Walmart. I knew it wouldn't be cheap to make over 30 meals, but I didn't want to spend more money than necessary. We aren't exactly rolling in the dough right now. It sucked. A lot, but it was actually really interesting.

People all swear that Woodman's is cheapest, but it's not for everything! Jack's pizza for example. Woodman's is more expensive than Target AND Walmart. It may sound like a pain in the ass, and it was, but when I'm shopping and see a "sale" I can figure out quickly if it's actually a good deal...or if Target wins. Target usually wins in my book. But anyways, totally worth it to save that 20 cents on pizza. I can use that 20 cents to buy formula.....I wish. 

If only I had had the ambition to look up coupons before I went...sigh. I could have saved a buttload more. 

When it came down to it, I got pretty much everything at Woodmans. I asked Thane to go to Wal-Mart for me to pick up the pasta because it is dirt cheap there. Target had a great meat sale the other week so I got almost off of the chicken from them. You can't beat a "spend $20 save $5" and 20 % on cartwheel!!! or something sweet like that. 

I decided on Saturday that I would at least get the chicken cooked up and the spaghetti sauce made. Um...thank God I did that. If I had to add that to my Sunday cook-a-thon I might have lost it.

So 21 chicken breasts later....I had to chop them all up and shred some. Shredding chicken breast is awful. It is so annoying. I finally remembered that I have a chopper from Pampered Chef that I thought may help me out a bit. It worked pretty well..huuuuge killer on my stomach muscle that is killing me though.

Need some Pampered Chef stuff? Check out my girl: Pampered Chef

 

I didn't buy enough chicken so I panicked. I had to sort out what I needed for each recipe to see what ones I could pull a little bit from to give to another. 

 So Sunday morning rolls around....I have $200+ of groceries waiting for me. I had no choice. I had to do it.

I started at 10...ended at 5:30. Almost spot on to my prediction of it taking 8 hours.

I did take a quick nap in there while Thane went to town...but besides that I was pretty much on task. Go me!!!

I make 6 batches of spaghetti sauce on Saturday....wasn't enough. I had to make 2 more on Sunday and barely got what I wanted from it. Sigh. 

This was the first meal I did...the Southwest Rolls. I am pretty excited about those. Super easy to make and they looked really good. 

I had every intention to take pictures of each meal and be like a real legit blog. I took 2. 2 pictures. I'll never make it in this world...

This was after round one. At this point I had to do the dreaded wrapping of each pan. Talk about stressful. If any of these go bad or get freezer burn I am going to be so annoyed.  I got 200 feet of aluminum foil...and thankfully it was enough. That's so much tinfoil. 

On to the recipe I am most excited about!!! Chicken Pillows. Kind of a pain in the butt to make..but man they look good!!

This can...this can explains why the crescent rolls only cost 99 cents. Who cares though...Thane was able to jab it with a knife enough times to get it open. 

At one point I was thinking, "My god...I wish I could drink wine. Wine would be so great right now...or a Bud Lite Lime.  Sigh..." and then..THEN I realized that I had some NA beer in the fridge. Let me tell you...that is a close second to winning. 

I needed it for the very last dish...pot pie. I had been putting the pot pie off the entire day. I did not want to chop up the potatoes. I didn't want to make the sauce. How annoying. It was my LAST meal. I HAD to push through. 

Apparently I should buy potatoes more. Parker was in awe of them and me peeling them. I explained to him that he doesn't know what I'm doing because we don't live in 1940..or at grandma's house. If we need potatoes like this...we can just buy them in a can. 

Jokes jokes. I peel red potatoes all the time...I swear. 

This pot pie though...it looks amazing. I can't wait to eat it. 

So stats from my day:

*21 chicken breasts
*8 pounds of hamburger
*7.5ish hours of cooking
*30 minutes for a nap
*2 swollen feet
*1 super achey back
*32 freezer meals
*1 meal made for this week but groceries for all 3 meals
*$239 in groceries.

Final meal cost???? 

$6.82 a meal. 

Boom.

I call that a big ole win. 

It was such a long day...this is exactly how I felt. Bernie gets me.