Meal Plans 6/4/2012

I generally post my meal plans on a Monday or Wednesday.  However, my planning has been a little...ummm... sporadic.  They happen but it's not always one the same day.  Sometimes I plan for a little longer than seven days or I have to go to the grocery store on a particular evening.  That's another thing, I generally relegate my shopping now to the evenings or maybe a Saturday morning.  Not my favorite but that really is the best for the season of life that we are in right now.  Maybe that is a post post for another day.  HA!

I am actually pretty excited about some of the recipes this week.  However, there was one that I was particularly excited about and it turned not as over-the-top-delicious as I thought it would be.  Maybe I did something wrong??

Anyway, here's what's cookin'

• Chicken & Avocado Salad w/ veggies and hummus  (I made the original recipe that is mentioned here before and I will say that I like this updated recipe much better.  I think it's the bigger chunks that helps)
• Man Pleasing Chicken w/ Quinoa & Pine Nuts side dish , strawberries (This was the one that was abig disappointment.  While good, I was expecting more.  My kids LOVED the quinoa though!  We added the strawberries because the plate was looking a little brown)
• Tacos w/ Avocado, black bean, and corn salad.  Chips.
• Monterey Chicken  w/ zucchini tots
• Roasted Chicken w/ Orzo-stuffed peppers
• BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad

More on Hickory

...he put the grapes in the oven. (L) As I was trying to leave.
...he put the grapes in the potty. (L)
...he put the avocados in the fireplace (Daddy)
...he put the apricots in the pool (Mama)
...he put the avocados all over your shirt (L)
...he put the strawberries all over the house.  So now we have to paint it. (L)

Who is Hickory?

Freezer Meal Update: Review

At the beginning of February all the meals that I made in preparation for the arrival of Miss S were basically gone.  Oh how I wished they could just multiply themselves!  Between the meals that our church brought us (an out pour of such love!) and a few take out meals on our part were just really having to think about actually going grocery shopping and a whole new meal plan.  Simple was the name of the game for sure.

I am still trying to figure out how to cook a dinner with a three year old and a 21 month old under foot... plus an almost 6 month old who usually needs to be fed around the dinner hour.  Sigh.  I am thankful that my mother-in-law comes over pretty often and I cook while she plays with the girls.  Blessing beyond measure!

Now that we have had a chance to see how all the meals turned out after being frozen I thought that I would give a review of each meal.  At some point I will put all these tidbits in each post as well.  For now, they will all be here should you be enticed to use any of the recipes for bulk freezer cooking.  Which, by the way, is something that I think I would like to look into doing more often after this little adventure.  You can check out my final list here.  I am just going to go down the list and some will be similar or the same so I will just lump their reviews together.

Beef Stew (from Mom C) - Beautiful.  I don't have the recipe but I am sure that I can get it.  Froze well in a zip lock bag and thawed well on our stove.  I dumped it in a pot and warmed it up.  Super easy.  Highly recommend.

Tator Tot Casserole - Meh.  It was alright.  I think it was my particular recipe.  This recipe almost needed to be doubled to make one good sized casserole.  I like to have left overs and this just didn't cut it.  It wasn't my favorite.  Froze fine, thawed and cooked up nicely.

Meatloaf- Probably one of the best things to freeze.  They are probably better once they have had the time to sit and have the flavors meld, especially in the thawing process.  I originally was not too impressed with the Italian Stuffed Meatloaf.  However, I really liked it the second time around.  I think the kind of sauce you use can make a difference, too.  I think I changed my mind.  I would make this again.  Meatloaf you really need to let thaw probably two days in the fridge.  It was also helpful to label each loaf with what pan I used.  Made it easy to know which one I should use that night.  Good tip.  Implement it!

Stuffed Peppers (from Mom C) - Again, I don't have the recipe for this but I am guessing any recipe you have for them will do.  They froze nicely in a freezer zip bag.  The peppers were pretty soft when they were done cooking.  I think that had to do in part to the freezing and in part the liquid in the stuffing mix.  They were still really delicious and the girls enjoyed them, too.

Lasagna-  Do I really need to review this?  It's a freezer meal staple.  If you have a recipe you love... do it. Always good to have on hand.  If you are going to make a lasagna for dinner just double it and have it on hand when you are in a pinch.

Okay, really... there is a lot to review. Everything really did well freezing and was super yummy.  The only things that I had to finagle was warming up the breakfast burritos.  Basically, I used a wet paper towel, defrosted, and then warmed on a lower power setting.  I cannot give you times because it varies by appliance.  However, I can see that a toaster over would be helpful for these if you are not in a hurry.  I would do all of these meals again.

If you have any questions please fell free to comment below and I will get back to you.

Pizza Dough

Remember my 2012 Crafting Plan?

Well, I finally finished ONE of them.  The pizza dough.  I have tried a couple of different recipes.

My first one was a simple recipe I got from my bread machine book.  I made a whole wheat version for this Black Bean Nacho Pizza.  I think whole wheat in general is a little dense but it was still quite good.

A couple of weeks later I tried the regular white flour recipe.  It turned out good.  I will say that there is a trick to working with pizza dough.  Gravity is your friend and I now understand why pizzerias twirl their dough.  However, the whole wheat dough was by far easier to actually roll out.

Just last night I used Pioneer Woman's pizza dough recipe from her favorite pizza recipe.  I like that I can do this dough up a few days ahead of time.  However, I did this one the morning of the day that I would be using it.  At some point I will try the aged option.  This was a really good recipe!  What else would you expect from PW?  However, I think for how I was using it I would use the whole batch for a thicker crust.  I would also maybe let it bake up some before putting the toppings on.

I know some people freeze dough and I may look into doing that, too.  I am all for putting things in my freezer :)

Hello?

Do you hear an echo in here??

I am not sure how many people are still out there.  Someone today posted that "time flies when you're having kids."  It's true.  I realized I haven't posted anything since February.  Sigh.  There are many things to write about or yummy recipes that I want to post and keep track of here.  I will get to it eventually.  For now, there are other things that take precedent over blogging and I will get back to it again.  Miss S is a happy baby but has given us some challenges that we were not expecting and are things we never experienced with our other two.  The difference and challenges are things that I should be grateful for but sometimes have a hard time in the midst of the situation.  Reflecting on it now makes me realize it all the more.

Sigh.

So, I hope to be around more in the coming weeks.  Updates and other thoughts coming soon...

I hope.

Minivan Musings

I always wanted a minivan.  Okay, maybe not while I was in college.  However, when I first drove a minivan for a conference in Florida I was hooked.  Although, I knew that I needed more of a reason to actually have one other than a couple of conferences a year.

Fast-forward a few years and I am married with kids.  I figured someday we would have a minivan but I thought that day would be when we were expecting child #3 as we had a SUV that worked well at the time.  Not too long after we had Miss A we got our van.  A gem of a find on Craigslist.  Needless to say, I was thrilled!  Only two kiddos and we had our van.  It would be a few months later we would find out that Miss S was on her way.  HA!

Anyway, the story of how we got our van and why is not the reason for this post.  One thing I noticed on the road is that minivan drivers sometimes were going super fast. (Or sometimes super slow)  But I would notice them fly by me at times (and I was going a bit over the limit...ahem).  I would get so uppity because they had their kids in there and they were flying by like a bat out of... well.. you know.  Compromising safety, blah, blah... like those in minivans were held to some other standard.

Well, I think I know why minivans go speeding by....

...the kids are screaming and they are just trying to get home as fast as they can because whining and crying in a car sounds about 10 decibels louder than it actually is.

...there is a preschool aged child that has frantically notified her mother that she needs to go to the bathroom and WILL NOT use a public bathroom.  She will, however, relieve herself in her car seat should you not get home fast enough.

...there is a woman in the back about to give birth.

Now, I may or may not know about one or all of these things.  Ha!  I am sure some are just driving like crazy because...well... they are.  However, these have been my musings as of late as I drove back and forth to the hospital to see Miss S.

It made me laugh.

Do you have minivan musings??

Meal Ministry

If you have never needed the blessings of a ministry through meals I say two things... a) blessings to you and b) boy, are you missing out!

However, I will have to say accepting meals from people can be a very difficult thing.  I remember while I was still single and living on my own I had been pretty sick.  A friend that lived two apartments down for me offered to make a meal for me.  In my pride, I thanked her but turned her down knowing full well that I would probably have to go pick something up somewhere because I was not up to cooking for myself.  I met with my mentor very briefly that afternoon and she basically told me that I needed to let people be generous and let them serve.  She challenged me to go back to this friend and accept the meal.  Talk about a killing of pride.  It was a good lesson.  I was blessed by my friend being so gracious and generous.  Plus, I ate a really good meal!

Fast forward to 2008 when Miss L arrived early in December of that year.  Our church at the time blessed us with an abundance of meals even though we lived almost an hour away from where most people lived.  They got creative and it was a blessing for sure.  When Miss A arrived in 2010 we were in a bit of transition but sweet friends put together meals and we were well taken care of during that time.  When Miss S arrived our church really stepped it up a notch with the meals because we were running back and forth to the hospital with her in the NICU.  And even just this week with Miss S in the hospital I find my fridge full of food because of the abundant generosity of the people around us.

However, it is a dying to self to ask for help... to ask for meals... to ask for help cleaning your home...to ask.    Why is it so hard for us to ask?  A former pastor once told me to not ask for help is denying someone the opportunity to learn how to serve others. (He said it much more elegantly)  It was a profound thought.  We don't know how to serve the body of Christ (or others) because people are too prideful to ask or they think that people are not able or will not help.  The fact is that people are willing to help.  Cheerfully!  More than one could probably ever imagine at that.

All of this came flooding back when Pastor H was visiting us in the hospital and asked if the church family could do anything else for us.  I was tempted to just suck it up and figure it out.  But there was an offer of help and this was the area I needed the most help (because grandparents were taking care of kids during the day) all I had to do was...ask...

So, I did.  Boy, were we blessed!

Needless to say, I won't be posting a meal plan this week because we have so much food left over and I still have a couple of from last week that will carry over to this week.

I encourage you to ASK for help when you need it.  When a baby comes... when a loved one passes... surgery...people are willing wanting to help.  While we as a body also need to be on the look out for areas to help people we also need to die to self and kill our pride and ask for help, too.