The Realities of Freezer Cooking

I love the idea of freezer cooking.  For this reason, I have repeatedly tried freezer cooking.  I have done the marathon cooking sessions as well as swapped meals with a friend.  It is all great.  It truly does save time and money.  There are times when just whipping a meal out of the freezer at the last minute has been a great help to my family.  The problem for me is that I actually really enjoy cooking.  Coming home to make dinner after being gone all day usually isn't a problem because it gives me a chance to de-stress in the kitchen alone while my husband takes care of the kids for a few minutes.  So in reality, what happens at our house is, I put all these well-planned and carefully cooked meals into the freezer where they stay for months until I finally work them into our dinner plan because they need to be used up, and then we ended up eating a sub-par meal that has been in the freezer a bit too long no matter how well wrapped it was.  So my new take on freezer cooking is to stock our freezer with a few homemade convenience foods.  I have already been freezing batches of chopped onions and peppers, cooking large quantities of hamburger and freezing it in the portions needed to make some of our favorite meals like tacos or nachos, and pre-marinating meat for the grill prior to freezing.  After reading Money Saving Mom's 4 weeks to fill the freezer series, I'm also going to start making some lunch and breakfast type of convenience foods for my husband.  New recipes from her website (www.moneysavingmom.com) that I plan to try are pizza pockets, ham and cheese pockets, energy bites, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Now that I've told you how I feel about freezer cooking, why don't you tell me what you like or dislike about it and how you go about freezer cooking if you do.

Happy Mother's Day!

While today was not a noteworthy Mother's Day, I am still thankful to be a mother.  I have to keep reminding myself when day to day frustrations arise that we do it all while we hope and pray that the end result will show all of the work we put in.  The hard part is that it is a very long process.  Today in church, they showed a video about the unnoticed acts of mothers.  I know that I every day do many things that go unnoticed by my children and husband, but I have to keep in perspective that God sees it even if no one else does.  Often times, when I'm struggling with feeling unappreciated, I remind myself of the verse in the Bible that talks about doing all things as if doing them for the Lord.  This helps me to keep plugging along in the drudgery of unending to do lists that are part of being a mother and also helps me to enjoy those unexpected sweet moments when my husband does notice all my hard work or my son unexpectedly does something nice to help me out.  While thinking about all of the unnoticed things I do, I can't help but also think about the many number of unnoticed things I'm sure my own mom did for me and my sister, and I am so appreciative of it now, even though I can say with all honesty that I did not completely understand all that she did until becoming a mother myself.  So to all of the ladies out there, whether it was the best Mother's Day ever or one full of struggles, know that I am wishing you a Happy Mother's Day and that someday all of you do will be recognized in one way or another!

Rest & Relaxation

Life has been better to me lately and I feel like I can finally get back into a routine and start blogging again.  My goal is to post on Wednesday and Friday during the summer.

My husband and I just returned from a 5 day cruise to Grand Cayman and Cozumel and it was just the time I needed to come home feeling refreshed.  We laid out in the sun, had a few drinks, ate lots of yummy food, and enjoyed adult time doing things such as karaoke that aren't a normal part of our lives.  We had left the day after classes were done and enjoyed a long weekend with our kids and my family in Florida before we left on the ship.  The end of the semester was very difficult for me so I couldn't wait to go, but now that is all behind me and I'm ready to start teaching for the spring/summer semester next Monday.  Right now I am busy planning my baby's 1st birthday party.  While I am excited, it does make me a bit sad that the year has flown by so quickly.  Sometimes I think that I focused to much on other things and should have made time with her more of a priority, but in the end, we do the best we can at the time.  As I am only working 16 hours a week this summer (plus grading, but I fit that in whenever I can), I have plans to spend a lot of time enjoying my time at home with the kids.  We have a 15 foot pool, a trampoline, and by the end of the day, hopefully a swingset so we will have plenty to do.  Do you have any exciting plans for the summer?