Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Thank Heaven for Mothers

Jeff’s mom called early last week and said that she and her husband were going to come for the weekend.  Jeff’s step-dad wanted to spend some time with Jeff and help him with some various handy-man tasks that have come up.  Mom asked if there was something she could help me with while they were here.

Well, I didn’t have to think hardly at all.  Our routine is completely out of whack, and dinner around here has suffered.  It isn’t as though I’m spending too much time away from home to get dinner ready.  I think I’m just overwhelmed by everything and planning  dinner has been the task my brain has abandoned to make room for other things that need attention.  

So when Mom asked what she could do to help, I knew just what to say.  I asked her to go through some of her recipes and help me make some meals to put up in the freezer.  She loves to cook and has tons of wonderful recipes.  And if the meals are already prepped, all I have to do is take one out of the freezer, pop it in the oven, and set the timer.  I’m pretty sure I can handle that.

bagged casserole ingredients We spent about an hour on Saturday morning browsing through the recipes and writing out a grocery list for items I didn’t already have in the pantry.  To make things even easier, I bought three of those rotisserie chickens from the deli to use for the chicken casserole dishes.  (Less prep, and it was only about $1 more per chicken than if I had bought them raw and cooked them myself.)  meatballs

I stacked up our 9x13 and 8x8 foil pans in the middle of the island, and we got cooking.  Mom started an assembly line of sorts, mixing up the other ingredients while I took the meat of the chickens.  Megan helped, too, mixing crumb toppings and running our finished products down to the freezer. In all, we made 4 main dishes, 2 side dishes and 4 desserts that day.

casserole By the time all my ground beef had thawed, we were pretty tired and decided to do the rest later.  Jeff and I finished prepping five meals yesterday morning. 

You can click over on the sidebar for the recipes we used.

3 comments:

Kerri Farley said...

Just checked out your recipe site! Well done! So glad you posted and I'll be trying them.
Thanks for posting!!
Hope Jeff is feeling better!!

Cathy said...

Excellent. I hope this will make your life a little easier while everything else is going on. Looking forward to checking out the recipes.

heidiannie said...

Great idea- and it was so smart to work together while putting these meals together. We need to remember to take advantage of every moment we can to show and share love.
Megan will always remember these marathon meal making times!