When I came home Tuesday night I was so excited! I put all the groceries away and stocked my new shelf Sean put up in the garage with beautiful things like canned green beans, peaches, pears, mayonnaise, mustard, onions, potatoes, carrots, and 5 or 6 different types of pasta. I think I went in there 10 times before I went to bed, just to look at it :) I have to say this...Sean did too! I had 20 pounds of chicken, 10 pounds of beef, and 2 0r 3 roasts, sitting patiently in my refrigerator waiting to be wrapped the next morning.
When I woke up Wednesday morning, I was on it! Pancakes were ready early, I placed a roast covered with cream of mushroom soup in a casserole dish with cut up carrots and whole potatoes surrounding it in the oven. By 9:00, breakfast was done, and dinner was in the oven! Then I started pulling out the meat to wrap it. I've never wrapped meat before, not even once, and here sitting in front of me was around 40 pounds...and I thought...Oh God, what have I gotten myself in to. I was really praying...Oh God...LOL This is when suddenly, in comes my sous chef - Anna - And she wants to help. Of course I am imagining chicken juice and blood getting all over the place and now I am trying to explain to my 5 year old that she can't touch the counter, or anything in the vicinity because I don't want her to get sick. Then the questions begin...Mommy what's this?, Mommy why are you doing that?, Mommy can I tape the present?(aka wrapped meat). And though I welcome it, because I want her to enjoy the kitchen, a part of me is wishing she'd just go away! None the less, we made it through, wrapping about 27 different meals worth of meat in a little over 2 hours. Though I smelled like raw beef when I was done, I again found myself looking in my freezer over and over again, to see...you guessed it...the beauty!
I am not going to write my complete menu, because that would be boring. I will write an overview though. For breakfast I alternated between mostly pancakes, cold cereal, and eggs, toast, and fruit. For lunches (my biggest challenge!!!) I made homemade chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese sand, peanut butter sand, tuna sand, etc, always with a fruit and vegetable. One apple and one orange can feed 8 kids - and I always made green beans or corn with it. I bought 2 economy size bags of frozen vegies, which will go a long way! I do find myself dreading lunch time though - I love sandwiches, but I ALWAYS make sandwiches - Dinners were soooo fun! We all felt like we were eating like kings and queens. On Wed. I made the Roast which turned out amazing, Thursday I made Pesto Chicken Pasta and Pastrami Sandwiches, Friday we had Meatloaf, Asparagus, and Homemade Potato Wedges, Saturday was Chili Dogs, Sunday was Tacos (w/corn tortillas and squeezed lime, mmmmm), and last night was Jerry Pineda's amazing Chicken w/ Angel Hair Pasta and Cilantro, that he showed us how to make at a "Homebuilders" last year. The really cool thing about it, is even though we live extremely busy lives, we ate together at the table every night.
The challenges were there along the way. The kids have been used to eating snack things pretty much whenever they wanted. The problem is that they wouldn't be hungry at dinner, and it cost a lot more. So there were attitudes that would pop up throughout the day about how they were starving. It was always right before dinner, and the thought of having to wait for 30 more minutes about killed them at times. This was irritating, and I would get mad and tell them to stop complaining, and it at times it just wasn't fun. They would want to go out to eat, and we would explain to them that we are working on a budget and this week we are not going out to eat. But you know how kids can be, they still keep asking, and after a while this also got irritating. I was in the kitchen a lot more, so therefore some of my usual house work got left behind, and when you're buying time as it is, I would feel overwhelmed of everything I felt I had to do.
The nice thing about many of life's challenges is you get better as you go. I do believe that as I go forward in this, it will get easier then it even was before. I will actually have more time. I also believe that for my daughters, they will see me overcome obstacles and not give up. I also believe there will be a day when my children won't even think about going out to eat, because eating at home is so much better :)
Tomorrow I will post some ideas of which fruits and vegetables are in season during different times of the year. This is an important element to know, so you get the most for the price you pay.
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