Yesterday I spent all day at my friend's (Brooke) house cooking! She's been doing once a month cooking for about a year now, and I wanted to see exactly how she did it. So I loaded up all my groceries, cookware, 3 crockpots (I borrowed 2 from other friends), and my girls (and all their stuff!) and headed over to Brooke's house first thing in the morning. I got there at 9am and didn't leave until after 9pm! It was a long day, but I think in the end it will be worth it.
Brooke also promised me that in your own house when you're doing it by yourself it doesn't take nearly as long. She said she's normally done by 3-4pm when she starts at 8am. I had to stop several times to deal with the girls (bottle feedings, lunch, naps, snack, complete screaming fits from Kaitlyn that lasted a good 30 minutes), so I do think it wouldn't take as long if Andrew was home to watch Alexis and Kaitlyn.
We started the morning by chopping onions and green peppers. A good amount of the recipes called for either onions or peppers to be cooked with the meat. Then we started on the recipes, we started one meal in a crockpot, and one meal on the stove. Then we browned ground beef for another recipe. After a meat was cooked, we could start another crockpot going... we had a lot of crockpots! Brooke borrowed some from ladies at work, and her husband borrowed some from people at his work too.
most of our crockpots (we had 3 others that didn't make it into the picture)I actually still have a couple things to do- our spaghetti sauce wasn't enough for all the things we were going to use it for, so instead of cutting out 2 of the meals, I'm going to buy 2 more cans of tomato paste and mix that (and some water) in. And my corn soup wasn't cooked by 9pm, so I just brought the crockpot home and let it cook on low the rest of the night.
I also need to put my calzones together, but that shouldn't take long at all, I just forgot my mozzarella at home, so I couldn't do it yesterday.
Here is what's on the menu for meals in the Gentry house for the next month---
taco soup
Brunswick stew
porkchop casserole
corn soup
gumbo (I won't attempt this one on my own- Brooke is from Louisiana ;) )
spaghetti
manicotti
individual pizzas (pepperoni)
red beans (this has red beans, sausage and ham... you make rice the day of to serve it over)
calzones
chili verde
chili hamburgers (these look good! they have green peppers, chili powder and chili sauce mixed it, I'm going to shred Monterrey jack cheese on top when we make them)
chicken pot pie
mexican lasagna (this is kind of a mexican casserole- tortillas instead of noodles layered in the dish)
it's going to be a yummy month!
this is what my freezer looks like now- I actually still have room for Alexis's breakfast stuff, some veggies, etc. And another pic a little bit closer up on the frozen meals. There are bags of veggies in the baskets too that you can't really see, but those make the baskets a lot fuller.
The night before I have to decide what we want to eat the next day and put it in the fridge to defrost. Depending on the meal, before serving I either put it in a casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes (give or take), or put it in a pot and stir for 15-20 minutes. Some of the meals I have to cook rice to go with it, or put it together (like the pizza). But these are much fancier meals than I would do on a normal night because they take too long! I'll report back in a month and let you know if it was worth it!