Make-Ahead Mommy

Insta-recap

2012-11-04T23:23:00.000-08:00

As the holidays approach, I find myself wishing for finished food in my freezer again. This summer I was busy and careless and always cooking and if I didn't feel like it, we went out. Maybe this is why Deputy Handsome has to work so much - to pay for our restaurant meals. Time to get back to cooking ahead and stocking up ... but until I get that planned out, here is a recap of the last eight months through instagram highlights:

First Dinner at 8: Lessons in Expectations

2012-11-04T21:32:00.001-08:00

last night we finally got to have our first "dinner at 8." I've had a date dinner slot on my weekly schedule since I first started using it at the end of the summer, but this is the first Saturday night (Deputy Handsome's current Friday) that we have been home without any plans and with enough notice for me to make an effort to do something for us. We just put in a new bar off our kitchen and I was anxious to enjoy it for something more than just standing to write a grocery list. I also wanted to use some of the produce from our CSA delivery this week so I decided to just do a simple dinner of pasta (to use up the fennel) and salad (to use some radishes) and suggested we play a game after dinner. I also wanted to meal to be completely made-ahead so that we wouldn't have to worry about dishes - my plan was to have the kitchen cleaned up completely before he even came home from work.

To let Deputy Handsome know what was on my mind, I typed up a simple invitation letting him know the menu, attire and activity for the evening. I folded it up and snuck it into his truck after he went to bed the night before so that he would find it when he left for work. Then in the morning, I walked the kids to the library (even Mister Man can walk almost the whole way himself now!) to tire them out so I could cook and set up the dinner during naptime. The plan worked in that I got everything done - pasta prepared and put away in the fridge, cake baked and fruit topping chopped, bar cleared off and set for dinner with candles and I even did my hair (a monumental task) and yes, I did all the dishes. But the kids were so tired out from their busy morning that they slept late and were not tired at bed time even though we went to the park after their dinner. I had prepped so well at naptime that there was very little for me to do while Deputy Handsome handled bedtime, so I found myself becoming a little frustrated with Little Miss because she is the queen of stall tactics and her daddy is her most loyal subject.

By the time she was finally down, I had reheated the plates of pasta a couple times and they were a little dried out. The bread in the oven was also really hard and I was quiet as we sat down to eat (at 8:23), not because I was mad but because I was disappointed. The past few months have been hard on our marriage (nothing major, just day-to-day business with not enough time for each other) and I was so excited to finally be putting into practice something that I had put so much thought and effort into. Though it is impractical to expect anything to be perfect (especially with kids involved), I had high hopes for the evening to begin at precisely 8pm with no interruptions. I tried not to be upset but then I only got down on myself for letting myself get disappointed in the first place. But, after a few bites of the yummy dinner, a sip of wine and an intriguing story about Deputy Handsome's day at work, I felt more like myself and was a much better companion for the rest of the evening.

Cute Kid Alert: Halloween

2012-10-31T21:34:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! Love, Tigger and Piglet

Book Review: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

2012-02-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I stumble across something that is so in line with my own thinking, it's almost like reading my own mind. This article is a great example of that for me. Another great example of this phenomenon is "The Kitchen Counter Cooking School" by Kathleen Flinn, but in this case, I flipped between nodding along and silently shouting out "yes! it really CAN be this easy!" to nodding along in a more contemplative way as I took in new ideas and silently filed away information in the cooking section of my brain. This is a book I recommend to anyone who is bored, frustrated or overwhelmed by the process of making dinner for her family each night; to anyone who relies on fast food or boxed dinners more than she would like to admit; to anyone who likes the idea of the day-to-day ease of being a make-ahead mommy, but isn't ready to cook that much food all at once.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School does not advocate make-ahead, especially not to the extreme that I have learned to embrace, and in fact, the main takeaway from this book is to shop often and cook daily, so it may be surprising that I rave so highly about this book on a blog that is dedicated to the exact opposite. Cooking ahead is a fairly new venture for me. Prior to the birth of my second child, other than leftovers, I did no kind of cooking ahead (though I have menu planned around what's on sale since I was a newlywed). As much as I love and appreciate the ease of pulling a mostly-cooked meal out of the fridge or freezer on a fairly regular basis, there are still the occasional issues of leftover ingredients, a recipe that doesn't come out quite right or the monotony of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. All of these issues and more are addressed and resolved in The Kitchen Counter Cooking School through case studies of nine volunteer students and a weekly recap of lesson plans complete with recipes at the end of most chapters. I was already enjoying this book, and then I cooked the Rustic Italian Farmhouse Zucchini "Sauce" with Penne - a recipe found at the end of the chapter on knife skills on page 73 - and served it to my entire family, even Mister Man, to enthusiastic response. This pasta meal contained only three ingredients (not counting water, salt or pepper), was so delicious and was just as easy as any made-ahead meal I could have pulled out of the freezer, save for the pre-sliced and seasoned crock-pot dinners. So, I guess I'm still hanging in the middle of the road where I found myself at the end of my last post where most nights I am thankful to have mostly-finished meals ready to pull out of the freezer, but I still enjoy the flexibility of being able to cook fresh, quick dinners for my family if I feel like it.

If you've been reading along as I attempt to blog my make-ahead dinners for my family over the past few months and you're not quite ready to get on board, but you need some sort of motivation and knowledge about how to pull together quick meals with fresh ingredients, I urge you to find this book at your bookstore or library (I currently have the only copy from the local branch, but I'll be returning it later this week) and make time to sit down and read it and get cooking! And let me know if you do; I'd like to know if I am reading anyone else's mind ...

Smoothies

2012-01-30T16:10:00.000-08:00

... I almost forgot, my other favorite thing in my freezer right now: pre-measured smoothies! Pictured above are two separate kinds of smoothies:

Almond butter, kale, banana with a dash of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg to be blended with almond milk (one of my favorite post-run snacks!)
fruit with frozen discs of plain yogurt (previously frozen in a mini-muffin tray) to be blended with whatever fruit juice we have in the house at the time

I am constantly seeing coupons for frozen smoothies from yoplait and jamba juice that you can buy at the grocery store and blend at home and have even tried them when I could get a good price, but I wasn't that impressed. If I want Jamba Juice, I will go to Jamba Juice. It's worth the extra money to get a smoothie that tastes like Jamba Juice instead of making a smoothie at home that is supposed to taste like Jamba Juice, but actually just tastes like apple juice because I had to pour more juice in than recommended to get it to blend right. So after some not-so-good at-home smoothie experiences, I decided to just make my own smoothie bags for a lot less money and these turned out fantastic. But a quick disclaimer: the first time I tried blending the almond/banana smoothie it was straight from the freezer right after an 11-mile run and I about passed out before I could get it blended through (for real. I had to go lay down on the couch and take a power nap before I could try again). The second time, I put the bag of ingredients in the fridge just before heading out for a shorter distance and when I got home, the banana was still frozen in the middle but the kale and butter had thawed a bit so that it was much quicker and easier to blend. The fruit/yogurt smoothies haven't given me any trouble, probably because the fruit is sliced up fairly small and blends easily. If there were large pieces of strawberry or something in with it, there may need to be a small thawing window.

What We're Eating This Month

2012-01-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

a week or two ago, I did another big cookday similar to what I did in September where I cooked large amounts of a few basic foods, packaged them in single-meal portions and stuck them in the freezer. (Here is the link again to the whole plan.) Despite that, I have only dug into my freezer stash a few times since then and have been cooking a lot more one-offs as I call them (meals that I cook the same day we plan to eat it, how novel). But the food in the freezer is more of a security that if I don't make it to the grocery store or just plain don't feel creative enough to come up with a meal, I can easily reach into the freezer and find something delicious and quick to eat.

my freezer full of one- and two-cup
portions of meat, rice, roasted veggies
and simple tomato sauce.

Having meal-sized portions of pulled pork or baked chicken strips already cooked and ready in the freezer is much easier than having a full, uncooked pork loin in the freezer (which I also have) because of the amount of time it takes, or doesn't take, to have dinner on the table. On Saturday I made Brunswick Stew with Mister Man on my hip in the amount of time it took Deputy Handsome and Little Miss to run to the grocery store for a fresh loaf of artisan sourdough.
So now that I have cooked for the month a few times, doing both full make-ahead meals and building blocks, I'd say that my favorite way to have my freezer stocked is with a little bit of both! To have a blank canvas of cooked meat and sauce for some meals, but on other days when I can't even manage that, it's great to be able to pull out pre-made burrito filling, or dump a pre-measured bag of ingredients into the crockpot.

December Recap

2012-01-27T13:14:00.000-08:00

here in the last week of January, is a recap of our December dinners (if I can remember it all!). For the most part, all of the made-ahead dinners were amazing and it definitely helped keep the chaos of December to a minimum by having dinners ready to go each night. The only thing that wasn't perfect was the pizza pasta bake for the crockpot. Since everything in that dish was already cooked and it just needed reheating in the crockpot, four hours was plenty. The day I left the crockpot on all day for close to eight hours while I was away from home, the parts of the casserole that were touching the sides of the crockpot got burned. While the flavor was delicious, it wasn't a dish that you could leave unattended all day. But I would still recommend it for a night that you're planning to be home, but just don't feel like standing over the stove.

With that out of the way, here is an abbreviated recap of the fun month we had getting ready for Christmas without having to worry about where dinner was coming from:

Mister Man and his one front tooth

bundled up to see the elaborate
residential light displays in our city

Little Miss showing us what the monster from
Rudolph says, "ahh! rarrrrrr!"

Gift tags with photos to make it easy for
Little Miss to help distribute them

all together on Christmas Eve

Last dish of the day

2011-12-01T14:40:00.001-08:00

December dinners are cooked and ready! Whoo!!! This was the last dish on my list: Yummy beef filling for lettuce wraps.

Meatballs

2011-12-01T13:54:00.001-08:00

One night when I was pregnant with Little Miss, Deputy Handsome asked for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Just the thought of touching raw meat made my stomach turn, so I taught him how to make meatballs himself. Since then, he has taken on the task often, even though I don't have the constant nausea anymore. Today I recruited him to help me whip up two different batches of turkey meatballs for our month of make-ahead.
The end is in sight! Good thing too, I'm not sure how much more food my fridge and freezer can hold!

Two skillets on the stove

2011-12-01T12:24:00.001-08:00

Back: BBQ-spiced edemame; front:barley risotto. Both require just occasional stirring so it's easy to cook them at the same time.

Break time

2011-12-01T11:34:00.001-08:00

Sitting down for the first time since breakfast to cuddle with Mister Man. I am over halfway done with my meal prep for today and after lunch I'll have a handsome helper in the kitchen with me while the kiddos nap :)

A lot at once

2011-12-01T08:44:00.001-08:00

All the veggies for the day are chopped! In the freezer bags, two BBQ chicken dinners. On the stove, cooked ground beef - half to go into the pot also on the stove (pizza bake!) and the other half ready for taco soup. Four meals just about completed!

Kicking off cook day

2011-12-01T06:44:00.001-08:00

Yummy start to a full day of cooking: Apple Pie Oatmeal for me and Deputy Handsome

What We're Eating This Month

2011-11-29T15:53:00.000-08:00

yes, that says Month up there! This week I'm cooking for the entire month of December. Last time I cooked for a month, I had a specific plan to make five building blocks that could be turned into 20 separate meals with the addition of some fresh ingredients. This time I wanted to make my own menu for dinners, plus include some lunches, breakfast and snacks into my cookday. Here are the dinners I plan to cook on Thursday:

BBQ Turkey Meatballs and Turkey Parmesan Meatballs

I have made both of these meals before and I am recruiting Deputy Handsome to roll the meatballs for me this time around
we'll eat the Parmesan ones on rolls with marinara and melted provolone
BBQ Meatballs will be served with potatoes and veggies

Sesame Chicken and filling for Korean Beef Lettuce Wraps

both from the Flat Belly Diet cookbook
will be fully cooked and stored, ready to reheat

plus five ready-to-cook crockpot meals

three from the mama and baby love blog (look under the bulk/freezer tab)

BBQ Chicken, Chicken and Cherries, Orange Chicken

two from the six sisters blog (look under freezer meals)

Taco Soup, Pizza Bake

These meals will be supplemented by pasta bolognese that I already have in my freezer.

Here's the plan for the other food I plan to make for meals other than dinner:

smoothies

chop all the fruit so it's super easy to just throw everything in a blender

Barley Risotto

Deputy Handsome wouldn't touch this if I made it for dinner, but I think it sounds good so I'll eat it for lunches when he's at work

Romesco Sauce

From the Flat Belly Diet cookbook
Last time I made this, I served it over chicken. Deputy Handsome didn't like it, but I thought it was so good. In the recipe notes, it says this makes a good dip for veggies, and I need to eat more veggies as afternoon snacks instead of chips/cookies/other crap. Having this dip already made will be yummy motivation.

BBQ spiced Edamame

never have eaten soybeans any way other than straight out of the pod, so this should be interesting!

Cheesey Breakfast Muffins

to grab and go on our way out the door to church, park playdates, etc.

What We Ate Tonight: Turkey leftovers

2011-11-28T22:08:00.000-08:00

tonight I finished off the last of our turkey and cranberry relish in this delicious take on a pot pie with polenta topping covered in cheese. The bottom part was typical pot-pie filling: veggies and turkey in a thickened broth/sauce. The topping was polenta with cranberry relish stirred in for extra flavor and a little sweet-tartness and then the whole thing is covered in extra sharp cheddar and broiled. Check out the bubbly deliciousness:

It was so so so good. I used my leftover Apple-Cranberry Relish and the apples went so well with the cheese for an unexpected twist on an old favorite. Only downside was the texture - it was pretty much all mushy, but a crisp side salad would have helped with that. And actually, when I went back for seconds, the polenta had firmed up a bit after a few minutes out of the oven. I could have eaten half the pan. Yum yum yum.

I'm trying hard to finish up all the food in my fridge before my next big cookday on Thursday where I'll be cooking ahead for the entire month of December since it is a crazy month that can go from the fun kind of celebratory crazy to chaotic and cranky crazy really fast. Hopefully having a fridge and freezer full of healthy ready-to-go meals will alleviate some of the chaos. Tomorrow I'll finalize my menu plan once the grocery sale papers come in the mail.

A Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T14:25:00.000-08:00

The kids and I had a great Thanksgiving day yesterday. We took a walk with the wagon to collect leaves in the morning before Mister Man's nap.

Then, with one kid sleeping, Little Miss and I did some art projects - turning the leaves into turkey feathers!

I also found some coloring sheets on Pinterest with a space to write what the child is thankful for, so we did that too. Little Miss is thankful for her friends, Mommy and Daddy, her brother and herself and Grandma and Grandpa and church twice!

I forgot to take a picture of the turkey, but wow, it filled up the whole entire crockpot. I didn't have a specific recipe for how to cook it, but used information I found from a few different online searches for how to cook a turkey in the crockpot. First I stuck a few lemon halves left over from yesterday under the rib cage, then spread canned cranberry sauce over the whole turkey and dropped the extras around what little space was left in the pot. Then I sprinkled the whole thing with a packet of onion soup mix and plenty of black pepper then cooked on low for 8 hours. It was delicious. Trust me.

After we filled our plates and had just sat down to eat, Deputy Handsome looks over at me and asks "don't you want to take a picture of this?" He knows me too well.

clockwise from cornbread: sweet potato, roasted potatoes,
green beans, turkey, cranberry. All recipes posted yesterday.

Make-Ahead Holiday

2011-11-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

today I cooked the majority of my food for tomorrow's Thanksgiving feast. I am pretty excited about this as I have never attempted turkey dinner before. I am thankful that my table will be just for two (Deputy Handsome is working all day, so we'll have a turkey date night meal when he gets home), which takes some of the pressure off, but I really wanted to be able to enjoy the day with Little Miss and Mister Man while their daddy is at work and not be stressed out in the kitchen all day. So, here's what I cooked and/or prepped today:

Caramel Apple and Sweet Potato Casserole

covered in foil and ready to stick in the oven tomorrow
croutons made and set aside

Maple Cornbread

I think I cooked this a few minutes too long. Hopefully the butter/syrup topping helps moisten it up a little for tomorrow. I'll reheat a few squares quickly after taking the potatoes out of the oven just before we sit down.

ready to brush the top with melted butter and pure maple syrup

Apple Almond Cranberry Relish

smells so good. I could have sat down and ate the whole batch during naptime.
almonds toasted and set aside for tossing in just before serving to retain crunch

Maple Flan

not sure how this will be received by Deputy Handsome, but it was a fun challenge for me to make and I think it will taste great. Might make this apple crumble if I have time tomorrow, just in case.

cranberries in the back, bread croutons
for the sweet potato casserole in the front

So for dinner tomorrow, all I need to do besides reheating, is put the turkey in the crockpot (I bought a seven-pound breast!) and also prep some green beans.

out of this world

2011-11-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

last night was the MLS Cup (like the Super Bowl of American soccer) and Deputy Handsome was psyched to watch it and cheer for his favorite team: the Los Angeles Galaxy! I'm a girl who loves a good theme, so I planned a simple easy-to-eat-in-front-of-the-TV meal inspired by the matchup between LA and Houston and made some spacey cookies for dessert.

Tex-Mex Chicken and Rice casserole

slice-and-bake cookies jazzed up with star sugar

This night was a win-win for Deputy Handsome, not only did his team pretty much dominate the entire game, but this casserole is a tried and true favorite of his, probably because the base is a box of Rice-A-Roni (I won't bore you again with orations of how much this man loves Rice-A-Roni). I didn't cook this casserole ahead, although you could (directions are included under the recipe) but it makes fantastic leftovers so that's good enough for me today. If you have the new red and white cookbook from Better Homes and Gardens ("America's #1 Cookbook since 1930"), it's under the poultry section on page 473, or you can click here for the recipe. I don't make many changes to this recipe, except to leave out the can of tomatoes (he would just pick them out) and add a handful or two of cheese to the base of the casserole before popping it in the oven. I think I'm starting to see why I still have ten pounds of pregnancy weight hanging around. Ehh, I'll address it after Thanksgiving! My make-ahead holiday menu is coming up later this week!!

wonderful waffles

2011-11-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

this morning Deputy Handsome and I were both up before the kids (unusual and delightful) so I convinced him to yield control of the waffle iron over to me for a special breakfast treat! Usually waffles and pancakes are his domain, but I had seen this delicious-sounding idea on Pinterest and as a card-carrying member of Cinnamon Junkies Not-So-Anonymous, I had to try this out: cinnamon rolls cooked in a waffle iron for mini-cinnamon waffles. I just about died when I saw the picture for the first time and have been waiting and waiting for a good sale on cinnamon rolls. Here's how it went down:

waffle iron is hot and ready to go!

even with a non-stick surface and Pam sprayed on first,
the sugar on top of the rolls caused the mini-waffles
to stick to the top of the iron when we opened it.

I see you tremble with antici ... pation!

I spread the can of frosting over the
hot waffles before adding syrup.
Just in case there wasn't enough
sugar on my plate already.

The taste was every bit as wonderful as I had hoped. The texture was a little dense, but Deputy Handsome said he loved it. The kids stayed asleep until we were done eating! The only negative to this whole experience was that the waffle iron was really, really hard to clean. If you are fortunate enough to have one with removable plates that you can put in the dishwasher, I recommend this adventure in waffle making whole-heartedly!

return of the cook day!

2011-11-09T15:53:00.000-08:00

Our schedule is slightly back to normal and this week whole chickens were on sale for just 69 cents a pound so I bought three and yesterday I finally had a cook day! I was so excited about it that I skipped my morning run to cook, cook cook - though remind me to never do this again. I can cook during naptime, but I can not leave my children alone in the house, even while sleeping, to go run. However, I did make great use of the morning and am fully prepared with tons of baby food for Mister Man and precooked meals to get us through Deputy Handsome's work week. Here's what I made yesterday:

Red-wine poached chicken

in the crock pot
yummy, garlicy, citrus wine sauce infuses a ton of flavor in to the whole chicken
strained the sauce and put it in the fridge overnight to let fat rise to the top. tonight I'll thicken it and serve it over rice with the reheated chicken

Lemon garlic roasted chicken

our dinner last night, served with mashed potatos
so glad Deputy Handsome was home to help me butterfly a whole chicken!

Chipotle corn chicken soup

made with meat from the THIRD chicken I cooked yesterday
used frozen corn instead of hominy because I already had some in my freezer

Sweet Potato sandwich filling

from Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld
spread on whole wheat bread and toast in a panini press for Little Miss

Mac and Cheese with hidden veggies

from Deceptively Delicious
triple veggies for Little Miss:

pureed cauliflower in the cheese sauce
veggie pasta instead of macaroni
also, I stirred in some frozen peas and carrots when I combined the sauce and pasta because I always add peas and carrots to her mac and cheese, even when it's straight out of the box

Mini Minestrone

for Mister Man from 100 Best Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel
lots of veggies that he has already eaten, plus something new - pasta!

Lovely Lentils

for Mister Man from 100 Best Baby Purees
sweet potatoes and other veggies cooked with lentils for some protein now that he is almost 8 months old! big boy!

Cute Kid Alert: Halloween Edition

2011-10-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

Love, Miss Cookie Monster and Elmo

life happening

2011-10-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

things have been a little crazy around here this month - every single weekend has been spent away from home - but always for good reasons: supporting non-profit by playing golf, getting away for a date night with Deputy Handsome to see our favorite country singer rock the Staples Center and this past weekend, standing up with one of my favorite ladies as she married her fighter pilot in brilliant Navy whites.

beautiful bride and lovely ladies

This weekend we're off to Arizona to cheer as Dad competes in the senior softball world series (for real) and I get to visit with wonderful friends and introduce Mister Man to more adoring fans. So tomorrow I'll be making-ahead to sustain Deputy Handsome while we're away and next week hope to get back to normal with regular planning, couponing and cooking ahead!

intro to baby food

2011-10-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Mister Man has recently started eating food from a spoon! Hurray! It is a load off my boobs to not have to provide his sole nutritional needs (although I do still plan to continue breastfeeding until he is at least one year old), and it is fun to revisit some of the yummy recipes I know Little Miss enjoyed not too long ago. And thinking back on that time, I am pretty sure that making my own baby food is what started me on this desire to make meals ahead of time. By making a big batch or two of baby food for Little Miss, I was able to feed her hungry self quickly every day and I loved just being able to pop a little cube or two of food out of the freezer and be sitting down with spoon in hand for her just a minute or two later. Hardly enough time for her to work herself into a hunger-induced meltdown and I was able to know exactly what was going into her tiny body at each meal.

left: peas in a food mill
(it leaves the hard-to-digest shells behind)
right: the last ounce of sweet potato from the freezer
both appliances from KidCo.

In order to identify any potential food allergies, pediatricians recommend offering just one food at a time for several days before introducing something new (this way, if baby does have an allergic reaction, it will be easy to pinpoint what food gave him the trouble), so for now, Mister Man gets pretty singular meals - for example, just sweet potato or just peas. No combinations other than vegetable with rice cereal (to thicken) or breastmilk (to thin) yet, so I haven't really started making batches of food ahead of time for him. The only food that I have prepared ahead for him so far is the sweet potato because obviously one whole potato is too large for a single serving so after I baked and mashed one the first time, I took the remaining potato and divided it into one-ounce freezer portions (pictured above. looks like I need to bake some more!). Soft foods like banana or avocado, just mash it up with a fork right before serving. For peas and other frozen vegetables, such as broccoli, I do a quick steam in the microwave and then run it through a food mill (also pictured above, on the left) with a little of the cooking water to thin it out. The food mill is really fast and I can feed Mister Man directly from the bowl of the mill, so there is hardly any cleanup.

yummy peas!

Today I will be preparing the following multi-ingredient meals for Mister Man in batches to be frozen:

Baked Banana and Brown Rice

from "Dinner At My Place" by Tyler Florence
this was also the first dish I prepared for Little Miss once she was past the mono-veggie stage
everything that is in this dish has already passed the three-day allergy alert window

Sweet Potato with Greens puree

from "Top 100 Baby Purees" by Annabel Karmel
all ingredients Mister Man has already eaten, plus a new one - spinach!

I'll be sharing more baby food-making details as I get farther along in this process myself but if you're looking for more information right now, I suggest checking out wholesomebabyfood.com and also any of the baby food books by Annabel Karmel. And of course, follow the advice of your babies doctor above all else.

today I cheated

2011-10-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

we're nearing the end of the month of made-ahead meals and this afternoon I just. needed. to. eat. lunch. now.
so I cheated and popped open a can of chicken tortilla soup from the pantry and made a quick quesadilla out of leftover ingredients from the yummy pork burritos we enjoyed a few nights ago.
usually homemade is best and now that it's colder (today it rained for over 12 hours in a row. that's crazy here in Southern California), I am super motivated to make up a couple big batches of soup to stock my freezer for the coming months. But today, all I wanted to do was eat.

And the winner is ...

2011-10-03T17:35:00.000-07:00

congratulations, Kristen!! I, too, hope we can do more crafts together soon! I have your address, so your subscription is on its way. Thanks to everyone who entered and keep checking back, I have a few more giveaways up my sleeve and Little Miss really likes drawing the names.