Laundry Day Issues

Ever noticed how when you try extra hard to do something nice, things often go so wrong it's comical?

Tell me I'm not the only one that happens to.

Take today for example. I came home from work, was super productive with designing and headed off to go Visiting Teaching. Visited with a super cute girl from church for about a half hour and then came home to make dinner for C who was biking back from class. I was looking fabulous today. Turquoise satin shirt, brown slacks [size 4 baby! don't hate. :) I haven't been able to wear them since the wedding], and heels.

Thai pasta was on the menu, and I had some cooked chicken pre-chopped in the freezer. Pulled out the chicken, threw the sauce together, etc. I thawed the chicken under some cold water, but it was still frozen into some chunks so I was just going to let it thaw the rest of the way while the sauce thickened. I'll admit, I was feeling pretty on top of it.

One poorly guided swoop of the spoon later and there is thai peanut sauce [read: El Pato jalapeno salsa and peanut butter] splattered all over my satin shirt, the bread machine, the floor, the far wall, the fridge, and the stove, none of which are in the same general direction.

I immediately take my shirt off in a panic, thinking about the grease and stains that are inevitable. Additionally, wonder-husband had started the laundry, and so all of my shirts are in the kitchen/laundry nook, but they're all wet. Kitchen window is WIDE open, and I realize I'm wearing a hot pink bra. [It's laundry day, after all.] Thus, walking back across the kitchen, past the window, is not exactly going to happen. The sauce is burning, and I can't run upstairs to grab a shirt, so I begin to rummage through our delicates batch. Miracle of miracles, one of my white-ish blouses made it into the delicates batch on accident.

Let me paint this picture for you.

Hot pink bra + white blouse = very visible hot pink through white.

However, if C's the only one who's going to see me, who cares. And so, we enjoy a nice dinner together and watch make it or break it on the couch eating ice cream right out of the carton. I, then, head back upstairs to package up some of my new scrapbooking products, and C heads to the kitchen to finish up the dishes. [love him.]

And...there's a knock at the door. At 9pm. I ignore it because I know full well how I look and I'm not about to go welcome the world into our home. C can't hear it. The water's going. I call down to C. He can't hear me either.

Knock at the door #2. More urgent this time.

So, I go down and open the door, doing the strategic half-way hide behind the door without looking awkward move.

It's our home teachers.

We completely spaced it.

Feigning pleasant surprise, I excuse myself for a moment and invite them in. Panicked moment #2 begins when I realize 90% of my clothes are downstairs in the laundry nook and therefore none of my colored tank tops are up in my bedroom. Why I didn't just put a different [darker colored] shirt on is beyond me. So I grab a white jacket. Really Kristin? Really?

And all through our conversation with the Home Teachers, I'm moving all over the couch trying out different ways to sit to potentially shield my fluorescent bra with a combination of C's body, my pathetic jacket and completely avoiding eye-contact.

Fail.

And all because I wanted to have dinner on the table for C.

Some days you really just have to wonder if it's all worth it.

lol.

Poppyseed Chicken

This recipe has been C's favorite since the very first time I ever made it. It used to be the meal we ate on the major cooking day, but since converting it to a freezer cooking recipe, we can have it whenever we want!

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breasts, cooked & cubed


• 1 can of cream of mushroom soup [we also like this with cream of chicken. depends on what we have on hand most of the time!]


• 1 cup sour cream


• 2 cups crushed Ritz crackers


• 3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine [margarine kind of makes the crackers soggy, but it's up to you!]


• 1 heaping tablespoon poppy seeds

The How-to:

• Put chicken in the bottom of a casserole dish


• Mix soup & sour cream; spread over the chicken


• Combine crackers, poppy seeds, and melted butter in a zip lock and mix


• Spread cracker mixture over the sour cream & soup


• Cover & freeze!

On Cooking Day:

• Thaw


• Bake at 375 degrees [uncovered] for 30 minutes

May 2010 OAMC: Spicing Things Up!

C helped me with OAMC this weekend! It was wonderful to not be alone in the kitchen all day. Happy Saturday to me! We only had 16 meals to make and I grossly miscalculated how much chicken we already had, and so we're left with an extra Costco bag for next month. True to form, I definitely modified almost every recipe from the cookbooks I told you about in my plan. So stay tuned for my version of these delicious freezer meals!

We made:

• 2 Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches* [Homemade BBQ sauce that made our mouths water every time we opened the crock pot to stir it. YUM!]


• 2 Chicken-Asparagus Pot Pies [More on this later.]


• 2 Poppyseed Chicken [YES. C's favorite dish gone freezer style. I was giddy when I figured out this could be frozen!]


• 2 Italian Chicken Rolls*


• 2 Cheese Mushroom Burgers* [Really excited to try different combinations of fillings for these! Jalapenos are next on our list!]


• 3 Lemon Chicken Marinades*


• 2 Souvlaki Marinated Skewers


• 1 Buffalo Chicken Pizza*


• Homemade Refried Beans*


• Homemade Baked Beans


• Lemon-Dill Rice Mixes*


• and 20 Whole Wheat Brown Bag Burros

We finished in just a couple hours so we decided to go ahead and make up the salsas we'd planned for Sunday. Holy Cow they're INCREDIBLE. We like things spicy! These salsas are about a 5 on a 1-8 scale. [The book's scale, not mine. Who makes a scale up to 8? Really.]

• Tomatillo Salsa Verde


• Salsa Mexicana

Still to make:

• Blackberry Jam [Got a good recipe that uses Sure Jell? Please send it my way!]


• Strawberry Jam [These were on sale $4.44 for 5 lbs. Jam time it is!]

The [*] indicates that the recipe will be up soon! I realize that almost the whole list is marked, but the [*] is more for my own notes than anything else. I have to remember what I promise! If you see one you'd LOVE the recipe to that isn't starred, just let me know in the comments and I'll add it to the list. The starred ones are just my favorites for now. If you need more ideas for OAMC recipes, be sure to check out my recipes page!

Also, be sure to come visit later this week for a series on realistic money management and a Dave Ramsey giveaway!

Planning Your Freezer Cooking Day: Pt. 2

Part Two: Your Battle Strategy

Note: this will be a four part series consisting of the following. Part One: Plan Your Meals. Part Two: Your Battle Strategy. Part Three: Assemble The Troops. Part Four: Your Freezer Cooking Questions Answered! If throughout this series, you have a question, or find something I didn’t really explain too well please leave your question in the comments! I’ll be answering these questions in part four. If you’re reading this after the series has ended, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll do Q&As in the future too, or if you need an answer like, now, because you’re driving to the store as we speak-which is shamefully dangerous…worse than texting…-park the car, then e-mail me at k.call.design {at} gmail {dot} com and I’ll get back with you asap!

Note #2: If you missed part 1, check it out here!

The idea of cooking 30 meals all in one go can seem a little daunting. With a little bit of [minor] planning, you can save yourself a ton of time.

Here's a few things that I learned by not doing them in the first place:

1. Leave all the meat in the refrigerator the night before. Your little microwave's defrost feature will thank you. Besides, our microwave can only handle two chicken breasts at a time. That's a lot of excess work!


2. Gather/Print/Organize ALL of your recipes. My last freezer cooking day was not the best due to my lack of organization. I kept running upstairs to get recipes off the computer. [After the first one, I realized we were out of ink, so it resulted in me scrawling recipes out and hoping nothing was burning in the kitchen. Not good.] I recommend getting every recipe together BEFORE your cooking day, making sure everything is printed and/or easily accessible and then organizing them in the order you're going to cook them.


3. Organize Your Recipes by Meat. It's a lot easier to brown all the ground beef in one go, slice up chicken in one go, etc. Plus, you don't have to worry about contaminating your cutting board. When your recipes are already in order, this will happen naturally.


4. Check for Time-Consuming Recipes! There is nothing more frustrating than flipping to the next recipe on your list and reading the words "...in the crock pot on high for 3 hours..." If you know what recipes call for a slow cooker before hand, you can set them to cook right when you start cooking then bag and freeze them when you're finishing up. [This mentality also pertains to recipes that have to bake, rise, marinade in the fridge before freezing, etc.]

This is how I do it, it's not necessarily THE way it should be done, but it definitely works for me! Only 4 steps to a quick and successful OAMC day? Trust me, the 30 minutes or less that it takes is well worth it. Do you have a quick trick that makes your OAMC day a breeze? I'd love to hear about it!

Make Ahead Chicken Tortilla Soup

One of my favorite ways to knock out three meals for the month in about 10 minutes is to make my own mixes. This also saves freezer space, but takes the same amount of time [or less!] to prepare on cooking day.

Make Ahead Chicken Tortilla Soup

Snack Baggie 1:

• 1 cup of rice [white or brown, you pick! In an effort to be healthier, we'll be opting for brown]

Snack Baggie 2:

• 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules


• 2 teaspoons sugar


• 1 teaspoon lemon pepper


• 1 teaspoon dried cilantro leaves


• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder


• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 cup dried minced onion

Gallon Sized Bag:

• 1 can of chicken


• 1 can of corn (15.5 oz)


• 1 can of tomatoes and green chilis (10 oz)


• tortilla chips

The How-to:

1. Label Ziploc Bag


2. Place Can of Corn & Can of Tomatoes & Green Chilis in bottom of Gallon-Sized Ziploc


3. Put snack bags next to cans vertically-nice & snug


4. Put Can of Chicken sideways in top of bag.


5. Stuff remainder of bag with tortilla chips. Slightly crush them and zip tight!

On Cooking Day

1. Pour everything except tortilla chips into a pot with 10 cups of water. [Drain the chicken & the corn first!]


2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, & simmer for 20 minutes.


3. Throw half the chips in, remove from heat, cover for 5 minutes.


4. Serve with remaining chips.

Making this soup from scratch takes forever because you have all the spices to measure out, but if you make 3 at once... catch my drift?

Enjoy!

Freezer Cooking Menu April 2010

It's going to be a yummy month! I'm still building my freezer cooking year supply rotation, so even though I've got over two weeks worth of meals already made, we're still looking at a 30 meal Saturday.

Breakfast:

• Bagels


• Instant Oatmeal

Lunch:

• Brown Bag Burritos


• Freezer Strawberry Jam

Sides:

• Crystal's Butterhorns


• Artichoke Dip [This is a surprise for C. If you see this, love, hope you're as excited as I am!]


• Cheesy Potatoes

Dinners: [The Motherload]

• (3) Chicken Azteca


• (2) Sweet & Sour Chicken Bowls


• (3) Tamale Pie


• (2) Cream Cheese Chicken


• (2) Tortilla Soup


• (2) Lasagna


• (2) Caribbean Jerk Chicken


• (1) Stroganoff


• (3) Chicken Cordon Bleu Bake


• (1) Pork Roast


• (2) Oriental Chicken


• (2) Ranch Chicken


• (3) Lake Powell Chicken


• (2) Crab Pasta

I"m so excited to get this one underway. Since this weekend is General Conference, though, I'll have to wait until next week. What's on tap for your OAMC day?

http://amysfinerthings.com/brown-bag-burritos